Eerily Atmospheric Brontë

Yesterday we posted an interview with Shannon McKenna Schmidt, one of the co-authors of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Today it's the other co-author, Joni Rendon, who chooses for USA Today her top ten of favourite literary hikes including Brontë country, of course:

The Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens
Haworth, England

"The windswept Yorkshire Moors immortalized by the Brontës are one of the most eerily atmospheric places to hike in England," Rendon says. "A 2½-mile walk from the sisters' former home, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, through heather-strewn hills leads to their favorite destination, a gentle waterfall and stream. Rest on the stone slab known as the Brontë chair before walking a mile farther to see the ruins of an isolated farmhouse, Top Withens, the possible setting of Wuthering Heights." (Kathy Baruffi)

Hollywood Today reviews Laura Joh Rowland's The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë:

“What particularly stuck in my mind was the thought that no matter how much adventure she’d experienced, she always craved more,” says author Laura Joh Rowland. “Brontë was the ultimate yearning, romantic, creative spirit. I decided that Charlotte would make the perfect heroine for a historical suspense novel.”
British novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) is best known for Jane Eyre. There are other novels employing famous authors who solve mysteries. One that comes to mind is the Jane Austen Mysteries by Stephanie Barron. The big difference is that ‘Secret Adventures’ has Charlotte Brontë telling the whole story, but she uses letters and journals written by her brother Branwell and Emily to add to her story.
“As I wrote the book, I combined the rich material of her life with the political and sexual intrigue beneath the prim morality of Victorian England,” says Rowland. “I tried to give Charlotte the adventure she craved. The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë is my heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest authors of all time.”
Rowland took more than seven years to research and write the book. “I was enthralled by her experience at a grim Victorian boarding school, her extraordinary siblings, her dramatic rise to literary fame, her late in life marriage, and her early, tragic death,” says Rowland. “I love Charlotte ’s letters. She was amazingly frank. She’s always carrying on about something, or telling someone off. She was a very vocal correspondent.”
In ‘Secret Adventures’, Brontë receives a letter from her publisher, George Smith, accusing her of breach of contract. While in London to confront her publisher, Brontë witnesses the ghastly death of a poor lonely girl. Brontë vows that she will solve the mystery of why the girl was killed.
If Rowland had kept the plot simple, it would have been more engaging. Brontë is a famous world figure, so straying too much from what’s known about her tends to strain. For example, that Brontë would have as her protector and possible love interest a British spy seems fantastic. A Victorian Charlotte Brontë dallying in Brussels and in her travels around the United Kingdom unchaperoned with a man goes beyond belief. Still, it’s a fun story. (Gabrielle Pantera)

A brief comment of the novel is also available on Read & Reel.

Although we also said that Rowland's Charlotte goes beyond belief on occasions, we wonder if the reviewer knows that the actual Victorian Charlotte Brontë did indeed dally in Brussels all by her herself.

Another usual guest on recent BrontëBlog newsrounds is Margot Livesey's latest novel The House on Fortune Street. The Christian Science Monitor reviews it and it's not an exception:

Bookworms love to imagine having real life mirror the plot of their favorite novel. What could be more romantic than, say, reliving the first encounter between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester outside Thornfield Hall? Plenty, as Margot Livesey shows in her engrossing new novel, The House on Fortune Street. (...)
Livesey (“Banishing Verona”) then rewinds the action to Dara’s childhood, as related by Dara’s dad. Dara herself covers her relationship with Edward, à la Brontë; and Abigail tells the story of their friendship at St. Andrews college in Scotland. (...)
Everyone had a book, or a writer, that was the key to their life,” Abigail’s beloved grandfather believed, and Livesey changes up her novel by having an English author preside over each section: John Keats, Charles Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll), Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. This is more than a gimmick – Livesey uses each writer to provide extra resonance to her tale. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to have a copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature handy to enjoy “The House on Fortune Street.”) (Yvonne Zipp)

Metro.co.uk reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily:

Its narrator, Emily, is a Glasgow teenager whose struggles to make sense of the litany of woe marking her adolescence are aided by her fascination with the Brontës – in particular, her namesake.
She is plucky yet vulnerable and deserves a book with a little more grit and a little less whimsy than this sweet but essentially unsatisfying tale. (Tina Jackson)

Do you remember these exchange of letters between two young women living in Israel and Gaza? Now BBC News publishes their third letters and Anav, the Israeli, replies to the Heathcliff metaphore used by her correspondent:

I read your second letter with interest, noting that your comparison of Heathcliff with Israel is inaccurate and does not reflect the complete reality of the conflict.

The Brussels Brontë Blog reviews Sarah Fermi's Emily's Journal:

I have loved reading this book. Even though the author, based on her research, had to imagine how things might have been in Emily’s life (since so few real facts are known to us, Emily being a very private person), you can really believe this story and believe that these things actually happened. The author has really succeeded in convincing me of her theory. It made me look at Emily from quite a different perspective. It is a wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable book, one that each Emily Brontë fan should have read! (Marina Saegerman)

Doing it the hard way is always easier talks about Wuthering Heights. La fabuleuse bibliothèque de Madame Charlotte reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in French.

Categories: Books, Haworth, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights

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The Flight of Gemma Hardy - A review

The Flight of Gemma Hardy
Margot Livesey
Harper Collins
February 2012
ISBN: 978-0062064226

Margot Livesey's promotion of her previous novel, The House on Fortune Street, showed us that she was quite a Brontëite and she recently told how she came to write The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

Retelling Jane Eyre seems to be a compelling force to many writers, which only goes to show the strength and reach of Charlotte Brontë's novel. As we have said in previous reviews of retelling, novelists tend to list the highly-marked key events of the novel and elaborate around them as best they know. Not to be misleading about 'originality', Margot Livesey begins by paraphrasing the famous opening line of Jane Eyre:

We did not go for a walk on the first day of the year.

As a disclaimer of this review, we openly state that we are writing it from the point of view of someone very well-acquainted with the original novels. The reading experience of readers who have never read Jane Eyre or who read it casually years ago will be radically different. Where the Jane Eyre connoisseur is hardly ever surprised by the turn events take (or even awaits them to see how they have been redone), the novice is surprised anew.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy moves the action to Scotland in the 1960s. Gemma, our new Jane, was brought from Iceland by her maternal uncle after both her parents died and brought up lovingly by him until his untimely death. The Cinderella-like aspects of Jane Eyre are all there then: Jane banished from the family gatherings and relegated to an attic room and to peeling potatoes in the kitchen with the servant. Unlike Jane, Gemma goes to school and finds a teacher willing to help her and give her advice.

As in An American Heir by Chrissy Breen Keffer, Gemma is sent to a fancy school as a working pupil and befriended there by a Helen Burns-like character. Helen Burns's strength in the original novel lay on her beliefs. The character in An American heir was a bit of a hippy while in The Flight of Gemma Hardy Miriam's spirituality seems to be in seeing a helpful ghost. 

It's in these key differences, which help flesh out the story and shape the novel, that the quality of the adaptation seems to be found. If the retelling sticks to the bare bones of the original too much, the story seems lifeless and one wishes to read the original instead. Margot Livesey seems to navigate these rough waters quite aptly. While she sometimes sticks too much to the original plot, she generally speaking does well on her own. It is indeed when she lets her imagination run wild(er) when the novel is at its best. Perhaps, as we said above, this is a 'problem' only encountered by Jane Eyre connoiseurs, but it's there. 

Jane Eyre can't be retold easily. As with the new Helen Burns, the context and other key plot elements have to be reshaped. Mr Sinclair - our new Mr Rochester - is a somewhat two-dimensional character. Mr Rochester seems to have been too imposing for Margot Livesey to tackle: she has seemingly watched him and depicted him from afar, as if scared to dig deep in the original and thus to properly breathe life in its modern counterpart. While we can easily see why Jane Eyre is drawn to Mr Rochester, we are not so clear as to what Gemma Hardy sees in Mr Sinclair. In Jane Eyre there was the obvious worldly touch, something Jane had never seen before, but that's all there seems to be to the Hardy-Sinclair relationship.

And there comes the key turning point, which we'd say it's the hardest both to retell and to adapt to a 21st century audience. In the case of this novel it is of course the element that lends its title to the novel, thus marking it out as the main point. And yet, when it comes, the 21st century reader will certainly be baffled. Then, later, when the reader has turned the last page, not only will it all make sense but the reader will marvel at Margot Livesey's brave and risky step. Without wanting to spoil the novel, we will just say that she very craftily moves away the action from Mr Rochester/Mr Sinclair and puts Jane/Gemma at the centre of it.

Which leads us to our 'favourite' part of the novel. Who hasn't experienced the anguish of Jane's wanderings when reading Jane Eyre? It's a painful part of the novel. An anguish which Margot Livesey has recrafted, moved into its own context and done amazingly well. We honestly confess to caring much more about Jane than Gemma, yet Livesey's prose at this point, the anguish she conveys, is - we would hazard - at least as well done as in the original novel and we are sure that some will find it even better, 'sacrilegious' as that might sound.

And thus, Gemma's flight is also, in  a way, Livesey's flight and when the novel really goes on in its own. What happens then is - up to a point, this is still a retelling, particularly in the last pages - new even to the Jane Eyre connoisseur.

It takes courage for a Jane Eyre enthusiast to sit down and adapt or retell the novel and that should be taken into account first of all when reviewing a retelling. It's like writing between barriers: you may get too close to them for comfort or you may stray too far from them. It's an impossible hit-or-miss balance whose success lies partly in the writer's skills but also in the reader's mood. As for The Flight of Gemma Hardy, we will hazard that most readers will certainly enjoy it.

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Jane Eyre's fashion sense

More national newspapers reports the sale of the Brontë birthplace. The Telegraph:

The stone terraced house in the village of Thornton near Bradford, west Yorkshire, sold to a private developer last week for around £100,000 after the local council refused to step in in times of austerity.
There has been a long-running campaign to create a museum in the four-bedroom property to celebrate the early years of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
Its literary legacy earned it a Grade II listing. The family lived in it for just five years before Rev Patrick Brontë moved them eight miles to the Parsonage in Haworth, where many of their great works were written.
Steve Stanworth, chairman of the Brontë Birthplace Trust, believes its new owner plans a commercial use. "I understand its been bought by a local businessman and I think he is going to turn it into a bistro" he said
Rev Brontë, who was the curate of the nearby St James's Church, wrote that the time spent at Thornton was the happiest in his life. [...]
The Brontë Birthplace Trust group have vowed to continue their campaign and will bide their time until it comes on the market again.
Efforts to make the house into a heritage centre have a history of failure.
In 1996 the Heritage Lottery Fund rejected an application for a £500,000 grant. Novelist Barbara Whitehead, bought and renovated it in an 1820s style, but visitor numbers were low but her failing health forced her to sell 2007.
Today it is unoccupied and thought to have suffered from flooding. (Hayley Dixon)

Also in the Daily Mail.

The Advertiser's Adelaide Now reviews the play Miss Brontë, giving it 3 1/2 stars.

Charlotte, acclaimed author of Jane Eyre, walks the audience through her seminal years. The loves lost; the tales of triumph and tragedy.
The experience is illuminating, if a little confusing. Marking each year in bold type across the hardcover of a book is a useful device. But it helps to know a little about the family and their published works.
This new play is stitched together from excerpts of Miss Brontë's writing - her books, letters and diaries.
It's fascinating to hear about the true characters that inspired the fiction and the production has a lot to offer, the costume and the old-world setting work a treat. (Clare Peddie)

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reviews Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

When I heard Margot Livesey had written a retelling of “Jane Eyre” — set in the mid-20th century in Scotland and Iceland — I was forced to give up a long-standing bias. For many years, I have steadfastly refused to read “Jane Eyre,” holding (unfairly, of course) the work of Charlotte Brontë’s sister Emily against her.
But I loved Livesey’s last novel, “The House on Fortune Street,” and was eager to read “The Flight of Gemma Hardy” (Harper, 447 pages, $26.99). So, now I have read both “Jane Eyre” and “The Flight of Gemma Hardy,” and I owe Livesey a double debt of gratitude.
I loved both books, and am mightily impressed by Livesey’s ability to adhere to the central plot points of “Jane Eyre” while still rendering her own story moving and suspenseful. Admittedly, reading the two books over a short period time meant that I could predict certain turns of events (and also meant that in the early going of “Flight,” I had to get used to a more modern set of technologies and concerns), but Gemma doesn’t just live Jane’s life by rote. Rather, Livesey breathes life into her protagonist so that she can stride across her story as an individual. (Rob Cline)

The Red & Black continues discussing the new cover for classics:

Sure, the decision by HarperCollins’ teen division to redesign covers for classic works by William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters was likely a financial one to piggyback off the success of the teen novels. The fact remains that the exterior of the book does not change the text within. What it does do is attract a reader’s attention long enough to give the works a second look.
And supposing a reader chooses to purchase Wuthering Heights simply because it’s Edward and Bella’s favorite book, does this motivation make the experience any different? True, these “classics” as we call them do require a bit more “struggle” for a modern reader to understand, but is that an altogether bad thing? They require the same effort in their new hip covers as they would clad in leather backing.
The argument that authors like Shakespeare, Jane Austin [sic[ and the Brontë Sisters shouldn’t be associated with “popular dribble of the day” fails to acknowledge the fact that at one time these authors’ writings were the popular drivel of the day. Shakespeare wasn’t writing for the intelligentsia, he was writing for the masses. His plays were intense and funny and crude and horrifying — they weren’t literature, they were entertainment. Austin [sic] published her popular novels under the pseudonym “A Lady,” and each of the Brontë sisters chose to publish under male names to varying levels of success. What, then, about being linked with one of the most widely-read books of the past decade would lead any one of these authors to roll over in their graves? [...]
 It’s the unparalleled genius that we associate with their names that scares readers away from the “classics.” Shakespeare and Austen and each of the Brontës were humans just like us. It’s the human observations in their work that gives them relevance today.
So what makes these Twilight-inspired covers any different from the equally generic artwork these stories have undoubtedly endured in their lifetimes? Their covers are constantly reimagined in hopes of finding new readers. In my mind, if these new book covers introduce even one of Twilight’s largely adolescent readership to the work of William, Jane, Charlotte, Emily or Anne, then they’ve done their job. (Will Murdock)

The fashion section of The Telegraph reaches an 'interesting' conclusion:

"Austere but romantic," said Consuelo Castiglioni after her show this morning. That conjures up one figure as far as we're concerned: Jane Eyre. Teleport her to winter 2013, arm her with Mr Rochester's full panoply of credit cards, and she'd have a surreptitious splurge on Marni's knee high riding boots, calf length, gently flaring mohair checked skirts and belted jackets. Marni's flat brogues-with-everything approach would almost certainly get the Eyrian thumbs up, although being Victorian and from Yorkshire, Jane would probably have been baffled by their metallic panels. Rest assured Jane, a metallic brogue is very next season, but also a classic-in-the-making. Ergo thrifty. (Lisa Armstrong)

The whole credit-card-surreptitious-splurge has us thinking that the writer hasn't actually read the novel. Or has totally forgotten about that unimportant part of the story that is Jane's independence.

The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page welcomes locals to become volunteers at the museum. Summer Reading Project posts about Agnes Grey. Czytamy książki writes in Polish about The Professor. Musings of a Bookworm discusses Villette. Eastwood Book Club posts about Wide Sargasso Sea.

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Brontës Housepartying

Los Angeles Times reviews Margot Livesey's The House of Fortune Street and highlights the Jane Eyre influence (both the author and the novel has been associated with the Brontës before):

"The House on Fortune Street" is not all psychology, though. It is, in the best sense of the term, a literary novel: Livesey invokes particular writers and even particular works to add resonance to her characters and their situations. Each of the novel's four sections has its own leitmotif: the poems of the great English Romantic John Keats, the life of Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and Dickens' "Great Expectations." Here again, Livesey is supple in her approach. Even if a reader is unfamiliar with those texts, their significance is made perfectly clear. And for the vast majority of her readers, who will indeed know them well, they add a great deal -- all the more so in the hands of a writer as skilled as Livesey. (Martin Rubin)

The Wheeling Countryside carries a funny article, Lame Eyre, about Rochester-inspired romantic fantasies:

My husband walks into the bedroom. I'm sniffling, dabbing at my eyes, watching "Jane Eyre" on Masterpiece Theater.
Hearing the piano notes and seeing the green pastoral hills, he knows he won't be staying. No gadgets, explosions nor cops snarling from a ledge.
As he observes 19th century characters carrying candles in dark hallways, his lips twist into a smile. "Looks like Mr. Rochester didn't pay his electric bill."
We foolish romantics are on a collision course with reality. Imagine Jane Austen stumbling on the bean scene in "Blazing Saddles."
Now if I had been born in the 19th century, I would have groped stone walls to get around the estate, for I'm nearsighted. My teeth would have been crooked because I wore braces. Oh, and because of my addiction to hasty pudding, I would have joined "Corset Watchers."
My poor spouse. I want to transform him into husband Rochester, to be gallant, talk in an English accent and be fitted with a frilly white shirt.
He tugs on the sleeves. "This is humiliating." (Read more)

The Windsor Star, among others, reviews the film Made of Honor. This is how the character played by Michelle Monaghan is described:

He's now a wealthy bachelor who likes to play the field, while she enjoys name-dropping Modigliani and Bronte and wants to settle down, but we know they're truly meant for each other because they both like cake and have bad taste in tableware. (Vanessa Farquharson)

EDIT: Cinema Confidential insists:

Hannah speaks in full sentences, she has good taste in antiques, and can quote the literature of Emily Brontë. (Sean Chavel)

We read on Media-Newswire how

The Women's Studies Program has named Brittany Autumn Swihart and Mingde Mark Chia this year's Henry Jameson Prize winner and runner-up. The award, a recognition of the best undergraduate papers addressing women's lives and roles, was presented April 30 at the annual women's studies spring luncheon. (...)
Chia was chosen as runner-up for “Navigating Difference in the Wide Sargasso Sea,” which explores author Jean Rhys’ approach to gender difference and racial difference in her 1966 “prequel” to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

From the College of Liberal Arts (Texas A&M University) web:

“Wide Sargasso Sea is unique in that it forces one to examine one's gendered identity in more complex terms, [such as] race, ethnicity, class, sexuality [and] culture, without necessarily privileging one over the other or assuming that all categories are equal,” said Chia, who studied at A&M last spring as an exchange student from the National University of Singapore. “This is something women’s studies must always return to.” (Jackie Upshaw)

Now, some Brontës in a college houseparty. Check this article in The Daily Princetonian:

And remember, because Houseparties is a classy affair, every effort should be made to maintain high standards of sparkling, cultured repartee this weekend. This unspoken rule is exemplified by the following conversation.

BRO 1: Bro, Emily Bronte is def. the hottest Bronte sister.

BRO 2: Dude, no way is Charlotte Bronte hotter than the E-Surance girl!

BRO 3: Bro! Totally! Bro!

BRO 1: [woots]

BROS 1, 2, and 3: [exchange high fives, begin singing chorus of “Cherry Pie”] (Ryan Truchelut)

On the blogosphere today:

Les roses de décembre continues posting lots of pictures, videos and accounts of her recent trip to Haworth: rare books on the Brontës, Haworth Church, the moors, more on the moors, Haworth Main Street and The Parsonage.

Hoerbuch-fans.de reviews a Jane Eyre audiobook read by Eva Mattes in German. (Incidentally, the winner of the copy of the Jane Eyre audiobook read by Juliet Mills has already been sent an e-mail.)

Chris from Book-a-rama has brought this mini-challenge organised by Becky's book reviews to our attention.

Renata Cordeiro continues translating poems by Emily Brontë into Portuguese: Hope.

And finally, the most gruesome and bad-taste Brontë mention that we have read in all BrontëBlog history. Concerning the infamous Fritzl case in Austria, this is what Mr. James Hannaham writes in Salon:

[H]er neighbors could have remained ignorant of the Jane Eyre-meets-John McCain situation going on right under their feet.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, Scholar, Translations, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea

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Talking about Gemma

Today, June 3. A talk by Margot Livesey in Wilmington, MA

An Evening with Author Margot Livesey
June 3rd, 2013 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Wilmington Memorial Library

Margot Livesey’s latest book, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, was published in 2012 to wide acclaim. It is an inventive reimagining of the Jane Eyre story. Ms Livesey’s other novels include: The House on Fortune Street, Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, and Banishing Verona.

In the video, Margot Livesey presenting her book at the Concord Bookshop (2/26/2012):

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The minister's daughters

The Red Deer Advocate talks about the premiere of Vern Thiessen's adaptation of Wuthering Heights (on the right, a promotional picture) in Red Deer, Alberta (Canada):

Red Deer College theatre students are planning to stage two well-known works: The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast will be presented as a Christmas-time musical at the RDC Arts Centre, while an original version of Emily Bronte’s brooding novel Wuthering Heights — a stark tale of cruelty and thwarted love — will be a melodramatic Valentine’s offering. (Lana Michelin)

It is scheduled for next February (11-13).

The Vancouver Sun reviews Lorrie Moore's novel A Gate at the Stairs:

The novel’s ending, which invokes Jane Eyre, comes out of left field. It will delight you and leave a sweet aftertaste. (Rebecca Wigod)

Writers Read asks Margot Livesey what she is reading:

Currently I'm re-reading Jane Eyre, and marvelling all over again at Bronte's capacity to invoke the giant passions of childhood and the stages of Jane's journey as she makes her way from girlhood to adulthood. This time I'm trying to pay more attention to Bronte's handling of religion throughout the novel. She was, after all, a minister's daughter.

EDIT: And The Boston Globe insists on Margot Livesey's love of Jane Eyre:

Margot Livesey kicks off the Celebrity Bookclub at Newtonville Books this week. The club was her idea; she thought it would be fun for authors to lead a discussion of a favorite book. Livesey selected “Jane Eyre’’ by Charlotte Bronte, a book that she pays homage to in her most recent novel, “The House on Fortune Street.’’ Many readers first encounter “Jane Eyre’’ at a young age and develop a more complicated response to it as adults. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday. (Jan Gardner)

Época (Brazil) interviews the author Meg Cabot:

ÉPOCA – O que você costuma ler na sua infância e adolescência?
Meg – Eu amava Jane Austen. Mas também gostava de livros mais populares. Eu lia, na verdade, tudo que chegava às minhas mãos: romance, ficção científica, fantasia, livros de humor, Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Charlote Bronte, Michael Crichton, Bram Stoker, Harper Lee. Eu adorava todos.. (Bing translation)

La Repubblica (Italy) quotes Jane Eyre in an article about interior design:

E da queste righe, come un lampo, ci appaiono dettagli di quadri di Vermeer. Praz, per sottolineare queste differenze, poi analizzate nelle altre pagine del libro, dove ci passano davanti case medievali e interni Impero, cucine ottocentesche e salotti liberty, cita, fra i tanti autori, la Charlotte Bronte di Jane Eyre: «Era un leggiadro salotto che conteneva un boudoir; entrambi avevano tappeti bianchi su cui sembravano deposte ghirlande di fiori, entrambi avevan soffitti con nivei stucchi di grappoli e di foglie di vite, sotto cui ardevano con ricco contrasto divani e ottomane di color cremisi». (Bing translation)

Têtu (France) presents like this the new film by Maria Beatty, Bandaged:

Imaginez le romantisme des Hauts de Hurlevent d'Emily Brontë, le côté oppressant de Psychose d'Hitchcock et le fétichisme de Fassbinder, et vous aurez une idée de ce que va provoquer en vous Bandaged... (Xavier Leherpeur) (Bing translation)

According to the Łódź Gazeta (Poland) the autum-winter collection of Hexeline is inspired by the moors of Wuthering Heights:

Wiemy już, czym inspirowali się projektanci łódzkich firm odzieżowych. I tak: głównym motywem jesienno-zimowej kolekcji Hexeline jest wiatr na wrzosowiskach. Projektantki przełożyły to hasło na zbiór charakterystycznych motywów kojarzących się np. z "Wichrowymi wzgórzami" Emily Bronte, ale też z elementami popkultury, np. Robin Hoodem. (Izabella Adamczewska) (Google translation)

Silvia Mina wins a singing contest in Italy with Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights (on targatocn)
Meat and Potatoes highlights Charlotte Brontë's prodigious vocabulary in Jane Eyre and The Koala Bear Writer posts about Anne Brontë's two novels.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Bob Dylan meets Emily Brontë

The Sussex Express is delighted that a local dancer will be in the cast of the upcoming (May 18) London Children's Ballet production of Jane Eyre:

Anu Ogunmefun, 14, from Park Croft in Polegate, beat 500 children in October to join the London Children's Ballet for a Jane Eyre production at The Peacock Theatre.
The Willingdon Community School pupil has been doing ballet pirouettes since she was seven.
Anu said: 'It is really good and I am very happy about it.
'I had an audition, then further recalls, and then another audition to see if I had got in.
'I love the state of moving in ballet, it is so different to other dancing.
'Nothing else matters when you start ballet dancing, it is such a good feeling.'
Foster parents Patricia and Victor Brooker said they were proud of Anu.
Mrs Brooker said: 'We are very pleased she got in after all the hard work.'
Anu trains four days a week after school at Sussex School of Dancing in Eastbourne.
She plans to become a full time professional dancer when she leaves school.

The Independent reviews Blackmoor by Edward Hogan. Say moor and a Brontë reference is waiting to surface:

Hogan's split time-frame is combined with multiple narrative perspectives which enable him to dig deep into his characters. He is aided by writing which is charged with a bite and passion harking back to his Northern forebears: DH Lawrence, most obviously, with a passing touch, perhaps, of Charlotte Brontë. His figurative language is neatly imaginative. When George thinks of Beth's mental state after her breakdown, he reflects, "the drugs coated her like a comorant in an oil slick". (Peter Carty)

An alert from the Jabberwocky Bookshop, Newburyport, MA:

Jabberwocky Bookshop is pleased to welcome best-selling Scottish-born author Margot Livesey for a reading from her latest novel, THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET.
An absorbing and provocative detective story of the heart, Livesey’s latest pays subtle homage to literary figures and works and offers multiple perspectives on the life of Dara MacLeod, a young London therapist. Her best friend, Abigail, says, "Everyone has a book or a writer who's the key to their life." Across four interweaving narratives, Livesey shows how that is true. The first section introduces readers to Sean Wyman, a Keats scholar who is Abigail’s boyfriend. The second section is set in Dara’s childhood and is narrated by her estranged father, who is fascinated by Lewis Carroll and shares his creepy fondness for young girls. The third section mirrors the plot of Jane Eyre and recounts Dara's meeting her boyfriend, Edward. The final section is reminiscent of Great Expectations and is told mainly from Abigail's college-era point of view.

The author and the book have appeared previously on BrontëBlog.

Erdeaka's book review is not very thrilled by Jane Eyre. Teddy's sports, politics, and pop culture blog has a (very) curious theory:

Bob Dylan’s song Lily Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts is my second favorite story telling song of all time after Jay Z’s Meet The Parents. Much has been debated and discussed about Dylan’s songs’ complicated plot, but I believe the characters in the song could be partially based on Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights. Lets look at the main character first. (Read more)

Categories: Alert, Books, Dance, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Best-Loved Author Of All Time interrupted by a mobile phone call

The Daily Mail (and The Telegraph among others) informs about one of those periodical literary polls asking for the best loved book or author or whatever. This one was commissioned by the Costa Book Awards 2008: Best-Loved Author Of All Time. A couple of Brontës are there:

15. Charlotte Bronte
20. Emily Bronte

Hollywood Today reviews The Blackstone Key by Rose Malikan. The review ends with this enigmatic comment:

There could have been a bit more conflict between Mary and Captain Holland. Her hero, or is he? Blackstone Key moves along the lines of the works of Charlotte Bronte with regard to the suspense. (Gabrielle Pantera)

Charlotte Brontë, a Hitchcock avant la lettre?

Another review that tangentially mentions the Brontës is the following:

Fans of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters will be in a familiar landscape reading The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (498 pages; Bantam Spectra; $23) by Galen Beckett. This fantasy debut uses those authors’ famous works as a template. Does the place name Heathcrest Hall ring any chimes? (Robert Folsom in Kansas City Star)

The Concord Monitor talks about one of our usual suspects, Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street:

We hear each of their stories in turn, exemplified by a similar situation in a famous novel or an author's life: Dara becomes a real-life Jane Eyre when a tall, dark stranger literally falls at her feet. Cameron's story parallels Lewis Carroll's, the author of Alice in Wonderland, who was fascinated by young girls and took many photos of them. In Abigail's ending narrative, we learn that her beloved grandfather loved Dickens, and Great Expectations is reflected in her story. You don't have to remember much about the classic works to enjoy Livesey's comparisons. Betrayal is a major theme, as are luck and the search for truth. In the end, you will wonder how anyone can ever know another person, even one living under the same roof. (Claire Davis)

Some days ago we talked about Watson & Oliver sketch comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. MetroLife gives more information:

What these grammar school pals should aim for is more invention and twist on universal themes. They do show they're capable of doing that with a Wuthering Heights sketch, where Cathy and Heathcliff's romantic witterings on the moors take an unexpected turn when they're interrupted by a mobile phone call. As does a fight, batons in hand, between film score composers John Williams and John Barry. (Sharon Lougher)

Another local newspaper, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, presents Tony Earnshaw's Made in Yorkshire (more information on this previous post).

UniversBD reviews Mara's latest comic book: Clues-T1: Sur les traces du passé. According to the author:

Sorte de polar à la sauce victorienne, Clues est, d’après son auteur, un mélange entre Sherlock Holmes, Gangs of New York, My fair Lady et Jane Eyre. (Laurent Boileau)

Le Monde publishes an article about an exhibition of Paula Rego in Nîmes, France:

"Paula Rego, rétrospective de l'oeuvre graphique", Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts, hôtel Rivet, 10, Grande-Rue, Nîmes. Tél. : 04-66-76-70-22. Jusqu'au 21 septembre. Du mardi au samedi, de 10 heures à 18 heures.

Certaines s'expliquent partiellement par la littérature : Rego a en effet consacré des séries d'estampes à Peter Pan ou au corbeau maléfique de Poe. Elle connaît par coeur Lewis Carroll, et la suite que lui a inspirée Jane Eyre en 2002 suit le roman très loin dans le grotesque, la laideur accablante, le désespoir le plus morne. On y retrouve l'humeur noire et railleuse qui caractérisait en 1996 sa galerie de sorcières contemporaines.

Contemporaines : le deuxième terme importe. Ce fantastique à la fois funèbre et comique de Rego pourrait n'être qu'hommages rendus à Hogarth et à Goya. Elle les a salués en effet plusieurs fois et, de temps en temps, leur adresse encore un signe de complicité. Mais, à l'exception des images pour Jane Eyre, tout, dans ces gravures, les situe aujourd'hui, costumes, attitudes, décors et, naturellement, ses ruptures de style, sa manière sèche d'abréger et de couper court aux détails inutiles et encombrants. (Philippe Dagen)

EDIT (September, 3): An English translation of the article can be read on The Guardian.

The blogosphere is pretty quiet today: Lulin olvasmányai reviews Jane Eyre in Hungarian and Tierney publishes an interesting post on Wuthering Heights and on how people tend to - mistakenly, of course - lump the Brontës and Jane Austen together. You're history! posts about Justine Picardie's Daphne.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Comics, In the News, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Charlotte's footsteps in the parlour

The Guardian's Books Section publishes a special report devoted to writers' rooms. Lucasta Miller talks about Charlotte Brontë's one (Picture source):

This is the room in Haworth Parsonage, variously known as the dining room, the drawing room or the parlour, in which the Brontë sisters used to write and discuss their work with each other. When the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte's friend and future biographer, first visited in September 1853, she was struck by its exquisite cleanliness and neatness. In contrast to the "bleak cold colours" of the Yorkshire moors outside, "the room looked the perfection of warmth, snugness and comfort, crimson predominating in the furniture".

Despite having published Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette pseudonymously, Charlotte had, by that time, become a - somewhat reluctant - literary celebrity. Gaskell noted the portrait of her over the fireplace, commissioned by her publisher from the fashionable artist George Richmond. The experience of sitting for it had been a trial for the self-conscious Charlotte, who had collapsed into mortified tears when asked by the artist to remove something odd from the top of her head (he thought it was possibly a bit off the inside of her hat, but it may have been, even more embarrassingly, an unsuccessful hairpiece). Richmond nevertheless captured the fire in Charlotte's eyes, even if he flattered and conventionalised the rest of her face, which Gaskell found plain, with missing teeth and irregular features.

Despite the welcoming warmth of the décor, the parlour retained an aura of melancholy. Charlotte's sisters Emily and Anne had died in 1848 and 1849 - Emily is said to have died on the sofa in this room - and the space seemed to resonate with a sense of loss. After Gaskell had retired for bed in the room directly above, she could hear Charlotte's footsteps in the parlour. The servant told her how the three sisters had been used to walking round the table as they talked late into the night: "Miss Emily walked as long as she could, and when she died Miss Anne and Miss Brontë took it up - and now my heart aches to hear Miss Brontë walking, walking on alone."

The Telegraph publishes an article about the Blackwell's Espresso Book Machine and uses Jane Eyre as an example:

It would be unfair to characterise book lovers as Luddites. Only a couple of weeks ago, I sat down to lunch with one who immediately pulled out an exceptionally space-age gizmo and proceeded to show me how legible Jane Eyre was on its high-definition screen. (...)
Plus, within a couple of seconds in my hands, and one errant touch of the cursor, Jane Eyre had vanished, never to return. (Alex Clark)

The Times asks their readers about summer readings. We liked this contribution:

In the summer of 1990 I had just finished my GCSEs and was looking forward to a dissolute and lazy summer. My mother had other ideas: athree month break would be an ideal opportunity to start on the reading listfor my A-levels. So I spent that summer immersed in Wuthering Heights,reluctantly at first, but with increasing enthusiasm as this great tale ofpassionate love and revenge unfolded before me in my sheltered, middle-classback garden. I've re-read the book countless times since, and always those wildand windy moors bring back memories of that long, hot summer. (100 words) (Liz Gregory, Didsbury)

The Book Reporter reviews Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street:

From a literary point of view, Livesey manages to subtly integrate four different British literary figures --- from Keats and Charles Dodgson to Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens --- into the lives of her characters, at times drawing explicit parallels but more often trusting her readers to make the connections themselves (thereby delighting thousands of English majors worldwide). (Norah Piehl)

Fabula has a reminder of the Jane Eyre: text, context, urtext appeal to contributions that we published a few days ago:

For more than 160 years, Jane Eyre has been the object of all sorts of readings, critiques and sequels. When it appeared in 1847, the novel enjoyed incredible success: Jane Eyre, an Autobiography was widely read, but its plot and heroine were also accessible through the first critical interpretations or the numerous plays that were adapted from the novel as early as 1848. Known at first or second hand ever since its publication, Jane Eyre nowadays belongs to the category of books that one can discuss without having ever read them. Yet, to Brontë scholars and enthusiasts, appreciating the plot without having a taste of Charlotte Brontë's style seems impossible, claiming a clear understanding of the novel without resituating it in its context seems absurd, just as it feels pointless to try to appraise the talent of Charlotte Brontë's literary descendants without having been carried away by her own genius. This special issue of LISAe-journal, to be published in the first quarter of 2009, intends to reexamine Jane Eyre, its context, its text and its scope as an urtext, in order to exploit the full richness of the novel and to allow the readers to become immersed once more in this major text of nineteenth-century British literature.

Returning to sources, with such a novel as Jane Eyre, means first of all exploring what surrounded its creation. Victorian England, Yorkshire, Haworth or the parsonage may all be apprehended as fundamental to the novel, and examining their importance may lead to a better understanding of the thematic background of the text. Other elements in the genesis of the novel equally deserve our attention: the collective reading at the parsonage, allowing each sister to use the other two as touchstones to test the quality of her writing, Charlotte Brontë's involvement in the publication of the three sisters' works, or the energy she spent writing Jane Eyre in only a few months, while her first novel wound its way from publisher to publisher and kept being rejected. The context sheds a precious light on the novel and also functions as a background against which the originality and timelessness of Jane Eyre may be traced.

The text itself, because of its uniqueness and also the way it merges History with its story, has been the object of many readings, from feminist to Marxist, from psychoanalytical to structuralist, and so on. It is true that the novel is very fertile ground for critical discourse and offers an invitation to react, to comment or to decipher. The fields of investigation are as wide as the text itself, wider even, if one considers the importance of intertextuality (Bunyan, fairytales…) and of all the other art forms that punctuate the text (like painting or folklore), incessantly enabling it to transcend itself.

Reexamining Jane Eyre also means reading its sequels and rewritings, considering Charlotte Brontë's text as an urtext, an original text founding an artistic continuation. New connections may then be discovered between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. The notion of quotation in works published afterwards may be of interest in a context of dissemination of Jane Eyre, as well as a study of adaptations for stage, screen or television, or of the illustrated versions of the novel that have been released so far.

Please send your proposals (20 to 50 lines), along with a short bio-bibliographical note, to Elise Ouvrard (ouvrard_elise@hotmail.com) or Charlotte Borie (borie@univ-tlse2.fr) before 30 September 2008 (the deadline for completed articles is 30 November 2008). Please follow the norms for presentation indicated on the LISA e-journal website (http://www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/lisa/presentFr.php?p=1).

Responsable : Charlotte BORIE et Elise OUVRARD

Kwick! posts about a recent German translation of Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, References, Scholar, Wuthering Heights

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A pas de deux with Jane Eyre

As we have informed previously, the London Children's Ballet is preparing a dance adaptation of Jane Eyre to be performed from 15-18 May at the Peacock Theatre (originally premiered by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham.). The Telegraph carries an article about the LCB and particularly the upcoming Jane Eyre performances:
Picture credits: Peter Teigen. Source.

The production they are working on is Jane Eyre: a ballet created specially for the LCB, to be performed in the West End this month. Very few professional dance companies have the chutzpah to invent their own full-length narrative ballets from scratch: music, choreography, scenery, the lot. The company does it every year, commissioning up-and-coming (and already arrived) composers and choreographers to turn a classic work of literature into a stage spectacle. The Happy Prince, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Canterville Ghost, among others, have received the LCB treatment.
Even those of us who tremble at the reinterpretation of Brontëan prose through the medium of dance have to admire the ambition behind it. For this, the credit must go to Lucille Briance, the LCB's founder and artistic director. A former magazine editor who moved here from New York to marry a Londoner, she still carries with her the bullish energy of her native city. Not many English mothers would start a dance company out of sheer frustration. (...)
It is everything this Government, with its cultural quotas for children, its dreams of a Billy Elliot generation, its avowed faith in the voluntary sector, should be embracing; so it hardly needs saying that the LCB has never received a penny of government funding. Instead, it scrabbles together what it can from ticket sales, sponsorship and private donations.
As for me: I must declare myself a convert. Watching Mr Rochester (aka Lee Hoy) practising a pas de deux with Jane Eyre (14-year-old Frankie Ferrer), I find myself quite moved. It's not so much the beauty of their dance - although even my philistine eye can see that they are good - as the dedication behind it.
These children are not precocious, so much as fortunate: they have found something they love, and an opportunity to live out their dreams. They know how lucky they are, too. 'My friends get annoyed when I can't go out with them,' says Daisy. 'It's like, just miss a practice! And sometimes I do get fed up, but then when I'm here I think, I've got the rest of my life to go to the cinema. This is better than anything else. (Jemima Lewis)

Another review of The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey mentions Jane Eyre:

Livesey's subtle characterizations draw the reader on, as the multiple views reveal them in unexpected ways. Each section has a literary partner — Keats, Dodgson, Bronte's "Jane Eyre," Dickens' "Great Expectations" — which enriches the story and engages the mind. Still, the strong sense of fatalism in these character's lives casts a pall over the whole. (Lynn Harnett in The Seacost)

Gwyneth Paltrow is interviewed in The Toronto's Star and clarifies her 'Charlotte Brontë kind of youth':

Paltrow admits she was not familiar with the Iron Man story as she was not a comic-book fan as a child. "I was more into fairy tales and the Roald Dahl books," she recalls. "Then I went though an obsessive Nancy Drew period and then I got very into Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen. But with any great character in fiction, whether it's a comic book or a novel, there's always a redemptive quality about them or something you can relate to or aspire to. (John Hiscock).

The appearance of the French translation of the latest book by Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, motivates this interview in Parutions, where the author says that Jane Eyre is one of her favourite books.

Parutions.com : Pouvez-vous citer quelques romans qui ont marqué vos lectures ?
Maggie O’Farrell : Jane Eyre est l'un de mes livres préférés.

Teen Book Review interviews Maryrose Wood, another Brontëite:

What book do you wish you had written?
I’ll pick three. Jane Eyre, because it’s a timeless classic. Harry Potter, because I would be rich. Feed, because it’s so cool and good. (jocelyn)

Also on the blogosphere: A Romanian blog that talks about Jane Eyre (in Romanian), Shoot for Eternity continues talking about Jane Eyre 2006.

Categories: Brontëites, Dance, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV

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Wildly Tender

There are people that simply don't get it:

There are some books, however, which the author appears to have written not because he wanted someone to read it but because he wanted an editor to commission it. It's into that category, I fear, that Patrick Brontë: Father of Genius must fall. How many, of even the most ardent lovers of Victorian fiction, will want to read tens of thousands of words on Charlotte and Emily's dad when there are already hundreds of thousands of words by Charlotte, Emily, Elizabeth, the other Charlotte (M. Yonge) and George Eliot to delight in, and that's before you even get to the men.

There has been a spate of this stuff recently - biographies of Charles Darwin's wife, studies of Virginia Woolf's servants, lives of Henry the Eighth's second wife's sister-in-law (Lady Rochford, as it happens). Publishers are clearly in the market for niche lives of those whom history has hitherto neglected. But I, for one, don't want the story of the other Boleyn girl, the father of genius or the auntie of greatness. I want the Big Life, Well Told. Which is why I'm looking forward so much to Richard Holmes's Marlborough... (Michael Gove in The Times)

Is it necessary to say once again that such biographies and studies are addressed to a public with quite definite interests? Is it necessary once again to say that sometimes the boundaries of history are as definitory of an era as the Big History of great men/women and Big Events?

The Reno Gazette-Journal asks several booksellers and readers for a list of summer readings:

Victoria Davies of the University of Nevada Press:
13. Davies' second pick is "The House on Fortune Street" by Margot Livesey (Harper, $24.95 hardcover).
"The House on Fortune Street," she said, "goes back and forth in English literature. Part of the plot mirrors 'Jane Eyre,' part of it 'Great Expectations.' I think it will be a fun summer read."

The Times briefly reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily:

“Following the events of a single day,” says the blurb on the back, “her family can never be the same.” Why not just come out with it? The protagonist's mother dies in childbirth. Now that's out of the way, we're free to enjoy Donovan's wonderfully fresh and moving writing. Fiona is a confused, clever teenager, fascinated by Emily Brontë. But she must struggle to find a direction for herself within her fractured family. (Anne Saunders)

Also in The Times we found a review of several recent nature books. Talking about David & Andrew Lack's Redbreast: The Robin in Life and Literature:

Other robins comfort prisoners - or unhappy monks - at their cell windows. Ted Hughes gives his robin a “flaming shirt”. Emily Brontë puts her finger on a paradox of the robin's song when she calls it “wildly tender” (just like her novel?), while Edward Thomas brings out another paradox when he writes of the robin's “sad songs of autumn mirth”. (Derwent May)

The poem in question is Redbreast, early in the morning (1837).

Bibliobibuli talks about the lauch of the most recent book by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, The Princess Shawl:

To write the love story between Princess Hang Li Po and her Sultan, Lim said that she went back to reread Jane Eyre! She also seems to have had delicious fun making the good women get younger, and the bad women get older!

The reviewer of The New Yorker is able to link the Brontës and the film Brick Lane (2007):

Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a beautiful Bangladeshi girl who, in the nineteen-eighties, gets sent to London to marry an established businessman, settles into Brick Lane, a traditional immigrant enclave. Her good-humored but pompous husband, Chanu (Satish Kaushik), is a classic postcolonial subject—he thinks that the British will accept him if he has read Brontë and Thackeray. (David Denby)

In other news: 411mania finds a Jane Eyre reference in Wesley Snipes's direct-to-DVD film The Contractor (2007). Several Wuthering Heights appearances on the blogosphere: Commenti-arte in Italian, Jeraluna is re-reading it and Goddess of Imaginary Light has some notes on Cathy's character. Changing subject, Talesfromthebookshelf talks about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Categories: Biography, Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Patrick Brontë, Poetry, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights

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Reads tolerably - Writes indifferently

Several British newspapers carry a survey commissioned by the commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA):

Almost six in 10 schoolchildren believe they have to work harder now for A-levels and GCSEs than their parents did, a survey suggests.

A similar number believe that news coverage of their results will be critical, regardless of how well they perform. (...)
And he added that history had shown that school performance is not necessarily the best indicator of future success.
"Churchill was a poor performer at school," Dr [David] Wright [,CIEA chief executive,] said.
"Einstein struggled with his school diploma, and Charlotte Bronte's school report in 1825 said that 'she knew nothing about grammar' and wrote 'indifferently'. So what's new?"

Well, the remark is a bit misleading, as the school report was made when she was 8 years old. For the sake of completeness Charlotte Brontë's complete entry at the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School reads:

Charlotte Brontë 8 1824 August 10th Vaccinated H.
Cough Reads tolerably - Writes indifferently -
Ciphers a little bit and works neatly. Knows nothing
of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments. Left Schools
1825 June 1st Governess Altoghether clever of
her age but knows nothing systematically.

The Washington Post publishes a positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne:

The Daphne of this novel's title is a novelist herself, Daphne du Maurier, the bestselling author of Rebecca (1938). Among her other books is a speculative biography, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), for which she's less well known. Yet du Maurier was haunted by the figure of the Brontë brother, that hard-to-decipher and troubled boy who chronicled the world of Angria, an imaginary kingdom he and his sisters could shape. In minuscule script, he dreamed of adventure and conquest, calling himself the Earl of Northangerland; he may have furnished a template for Emily's Heathcliff or Charlotte's Mr. Rochester. When Branwell died at 31, in 1848, he left behind both thwarted ambition and -- with reference to who wrote what -- some mysteries unsolved. Was he an important talent or an artist subject to delusion; which manuscripts are genuine, which forged and when, for what reason, by whom?
Justine Picardie's Daphne is a complicated tale-within-a-tale about literary detective work, the tangled web we weave when trying to make sense of earlier deception. The novel begins in 1957. Du Maurier is famous, 50 years old, unhappily married to an ex-soldier and anxious to prove her intellectual credentials to those who scorn her as merely successful. Compelled by the world of the Brontës, she makes contact with a reclusive editor of their work, buying (on her part, innocently) purloined memorabilia and seeking his advice. In real life, du Maurier did dedicate The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë to John Alexander Symington, a "now-forgotten Brontë scholar" to whom she wrote letters and from whom she received epistolary suggestions; their actual letters are reproduced here. In this fictional treatment of their encounter, the portrait of Symington is deftly drawn, and Picardie evokes the world of scholarship and how it can edge up to self-destructive obsession.
(...)In this novel's accomplished retelling, Picardie moves with ease from Daphne's memories of Barrie ("Uncle Jim) and Gertrude ("Gertie") Lawrence to her attempt to unravel the question of authorship of the Brontë siblings' poems and even, perhaps, the great prose.
Most of this sleuthing is performed by a contemporary narrator, a young woman living in London (near the du Maurier home and burial ground), as haunted by du Maurier as du Maurier was by Brontë. Orphaned, old-fashioned and working ineffectually on a Ph.D., she travels to Yorkshire and visits the Brontë manse, Haworth, then gets lost in the woods of Menabilly, du Maurier's retreat in Cornwall. Near action's end, she explains her compulsion: "I feel alive when I think of Daphne du Maurier; I feel that her life contains all kinds of clues and messages that might help me make sense of mine."
Less successful as a character is the narrator's husband Paul, a "Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester and Maxim de Winter" out of central casting. He may look the part of a romantic hero, but he's a middle-aged scholar of Henry James who still yearns for his first wife, Rachel. As the narrator observes, "I must say, there's nothing like being lectured on Henry James by one's husband to put you off both of them." Rachel, a seductive poet also fascinated by du Maurier and the Brontës, gets equally embroiled in the hunt for lost texts; there's a kind of Keystone Kop scramble for who will find which notebook first. Unfortunately, Picardie's mirroring stories grow not so much illuminating as repetitive, and we care less than do her characters about who first wrote what.
The narrator spells out the problem: "What right do I have to try to make connections between [du Maurier's] books and her life? It's dangerous territory -- like all those dated, sentimental Brontë biographies, spinning the myth about saintly Charlotte and spiritual Emily and bad Branwell and gentle Anne. Those kinds of books make me feel uncomfortable; it's the literary equivalent of catching butterflies, and then killing them, in order to pin them down and display them in a box."
But the reader need not be a devotée of Branwell Brontë or Daphne du Maurier or even the Gothic genre to take pleasure in this novel; the butterflies are brightly colored and the display well-lit. (Nicholas Delbanco)

The London Free Press announces that the Theatre Nemesis's production of Wuthering Heights presented at the London Ontario Fringe Festival:

Four shows have won coveted spots on the Impresario Performance list at this year's Fringe fest.It means extra attention, and an added performance for each of the winners.

A video of the production can also be seen.

The Kalamazoo Gazette publishes the following alert:

Open-call auditions for the first season at Farmers Alley Theatre will begin at 7 p.m. Aug. 17 and 18 in the Community Room of the City Center Building, 125 S. Kalamazoo Mall. Bring a current photo and a resume. Prepare your choice of a short song (no Jason Robert Brown), short monologue or both. An accompanist will be provided. (...)

April 3-18: ``Jane Eyre,'' music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and book by John Caird.

Ok, now you know...but, why is Jason Robert Brown off limits?

The Times publishes an article about The Twilight Saga's creator. Being an interview with Stephenie Meyer we are surprised that the only Brontë reference found is the following:

The plot is closer to Jane Eyre than Drac-ula, with a heavy dose of Romeo and Juliet. And the series is carried along by an elastic sexual tension that one critic has characterised as “the erotics of abstinence”. (Tony-Allen Mills)

The Charleston Post and Courier reviews an old BrontëBlog acquaintance: Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street:

If Livesey's novel is dense with parallels, it never feels as if the connections are forced. Each of the important characters is scathed by childhood trauma, and each builds a life over the scar. Each narrative also has its own literary mascot. Sean is drawn to Keats, Abigail to Dickens, Dara to Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Cameron to Lewis Carroll. (Catherine Holmes)

A Brontë reference introduced in a recreation of another well-known novel is a new kind of metafiction intertextuality. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviews What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn. The K is for Karenina, of course:

As in Tolstoy's novel, Reyn tells two stories, one of Anna Roitman, who's about to marry Alex K., and the other, Lev Gavrilov, who has for years been quietly in love with Anna's cousin, Katia. (...)
A veteran of 14 readings of "Wuthering Heights", Anna is a Romantic with a capital R. She longs more for intensity than for singing birds. When she encounters the hoped-for fiance of Katia, a young writer with his own literary illusions, Anna thinks she has met a soulmate. Even without reading Tolstoy's novel, we know where a romantic's heart wants to go, and Anna goes there. (Sherri Hallgren)

El País Semanal publishes a survey to 100 Spanish-speaking writers choosing the ten books which somehow changed their lives. There are a couple of Brontës: Jane Eyre is chosen by Nuria Amat and Wuthering Heights by Ana María Matute.

Sometimes a Brontë quote can be found in the most unexpected places. Take this article about homeless people taking shelter in a Philadelphia church:

Eric Markle, 37, has trouble sleeping. He sits at a long table poring over a grand jury report on the biggest story in the city - the starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. He is appalled and quotes a line from Jane Eyre: "Such dread as children only can feel." (Jennifer Lin in The Philadelphia Inquirer)

On the blogosphere - several readers of Wuthering Heights: staticmatrix, Only a Novel:

Whoa! Emily Brontë, where did that come from?! As I was perusing this novel, I was just as intrigued by the person who wrote the story as by the novel itself. Who was this Emily Brontë who dared imagine and put into words this bold, brash, intense, in-your-face story? How courageous; how risky; how different; how honest. I like her.

Pixiechick_sw has read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

Wow! That was one intense book! Anne is very ahead of her time. I can see why this book did terribly in the 1840s. It deals with the injustices of a woman's place in society, sex, infidelity, spousal abuse, alcoholism, and other addictions. This book was heavy, painful, redeeming and no matter in what century a person lives--EXACTLY RIGHT!

Categories: Books, Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, Music, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Where Sabrina, the Teenage Witch finds A Room of Her Own

Sarah Barrett's newly released A Room of their Own opens today our newsround as it is featured today in Keighley News:

Rare photographs illustrate a new book marking the 80th anniversary of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
A Room of Their Own celebrates the museum's past and features never-before-seen see pictures from its archives.
Sarah Barrett's £4.50 book offers a short history of each of the rooms in the former home of the Brontë sisters.
There is also information and the garden on the cellar, plus information about Brontë family members, servants and visitors to the house.
The 24-page book, completed with a chronology and bibliography, is on sale at the museum in Haworth. (David Knights)

The Akron Beacon Journal reviews the on going exhibition in the Akron Art Museum, Ohio :

Bill Brandt: Shadows and Substance
May 31, 2008 - August 24, 2008
Isroff and Bidwell Galleries

Bill Brandt, England’s greatest twentieth-century photographer, began as a photojournalist and became a poet of light and shadow. Decade by decade, Brandt (1904 – 1983) moved toward evermore radical dualities of black and white, not just in his new photographs but also in his printing of older images. This resulted in his own reinterpretation of his earlier work. Bill Brandt: Shadows and Substance presents 67 photographs from throughout the artist’s career. All are vintage prints, providing a rare opportunity to see the work as the artist originally conceived it.

As we have posted before, one of Bill Brandt's subjects was Brontë country:

Brandt also documented the countryside as landscapes steeped in the English literary tradition, capturing the settings of famous British writers, such as Emily Bronte's immortalization of the bleakness of the Yorkshire moors.
It took him several tries, but he finally found his image after a winter hailstorm frosted the moors and a high wind flattened the scant vegetation, resulting in Top Withens (''Wuthering Heights''), Yorkshire Moors (1945). (Dorothy Shinn)

Now, some book reviews. The Japan Times reviews The Last Concubine by Leslie Downer but has a slightly biased image of Wuthering Heights:

These include a meaningful encounter with an unkempt but attractively Heathcliff-like masterless ronin. When it came to such men, "She felt a strong fascination for these unfamiliar creatures with their odd, slightly repellent odor. Men though they were, they were of much lower status, so much so that the fact she was a woman and they men was rarely relevant."
Or so it seems at first — but it is a law governing such epic sagas as this that the well-born heroine should eventually end up in such alien arms. It was thus in "Wuthering Heights" that Catherine Earnshaw is last seen in the hirsute embrace of the lowly Heathcliff, and this is what romance heroines have been doing ever since.
Emily Bronte's recipe has proved a lasting one and it continues to nurture, at its lower end, the Harlequin romance series and, at its higher end, this exciting historical novel. One could call it a "bodice-ripper" except that the ladies of the shogun wore no bodices — how about "obi-slasher"? (Donald Richie)

The other reviews are of well known books in these newsrounds: Margot Livesey's The House on Fountain Street in The Globe and Mail:

Less satisfying to the reader are the overt parallels between The House on Fortune Street and Jane Eyre, as well as Great Expectations. The 19th-century flavour of the narrative, its mirroring of similar tropes of discovery and disappointment and betrayal, is so obvious as to overwhelm its strengths. (Aritha Van Herk)

And Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the real Jane Eyres:

The appeal of fiction's most famous governess — Jane Eyre — is the romance, of course. Take away the happy ending and what have you got?
Well, you've got the penury and abuse that made up the lives of most actual governesses in 19th-century Britain. Luckily for historian Brandon, the fascination of history does not depend on happy endings, although there is enough melodrama and injustice to fill a Thomas Hardy novel or two. Or six. (Lynn Harnett in The Seacost)

Inspire Emotion posts a letter from Charlotte Brontë to M. Heger and highlights her drawings. Chainless Soul has posted several posts recently that deserves attention: comments about some Brontës poems, Wuthering Heights and how Sabrina, the Teenage Witch meets Wuthering Heights (in the episode The Long and Winding Short Cut, 3x22, 4/30/1999, written by Carrie Honigblum & Renee Phillips, complete transcript here)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, References, Wuthering Heights

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