An historic house with Bronte connections has landed a fifth successive top award.The Telegraph & Argus also publishes further information concerning the recent release of William Grimshaw: Living the Christian Life by Paul & Faith Cook.
Oakwell Hall in Birstall, which has English Civil War and Bronte links, is celebrating winning a prestigious excellence award, recognising the education programmes it runs for visitors.
One of the bygone visitors to have enjoyed Oakwell Hall, built by John Batt in 1583, was Charlotte Bronte who was there in the 19th Century when it was a girls’ boarding school.
She was so impressed she featured it as ‘Fieldhead’ – the home of the heroine in her novel Shirley.
Winning the Sandford Award again puts the Elizabethan manor house in an elite group with only 12 other sites in the United Kingdom to have achieved similar status including Beaulieu in Hampshire and Harewood House in Leeds.
Judges said Oakwell Hall deserved the award because the museum “continued to excite the imagination and interest of successive generations of visitors of all ages”.
The judges praised the hall’s dedicated education team for helping give youngsters an excellent insight into Tudor and Stuart times.
Judge Christine Chadwick said: “The children clearly enjoyed the activities and through observing and talking to them I felt they were gaining useful insight into the lives of both rich and poor in Tudor times and were making connections between objects used now and in the past.”
Oakwell Hall received its first Sandford Award in 1988 and this latest one was presented to staff by the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE at a ceremony at Hampton Court Palace, London.
Councillor Liz Smaje, Kirklees Council cabinet member for leisure and neighbourhood services, said: “To receive a fifth successive Sandford Award is a tremendous achievement and a fitting tribute to the effort and dedication of the staff at Oakwell and the museum’s education team who continue to strive to give all visitors an unforgettable experience.” (Kathie Griffiths)
Especially at a time when much contemporary music requires informed listeners prepared to make a considerable effort to understand and engage, it is easy to assume that being complex – even arcane – is a prerequisite of great art.Tonight (South Africa) reviews a recent performance by the South African a capella group Not the Midnight Mass. They performed an a capella version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights (that was included in their 1992 album Midnight Mass-Live:
One contemporary composer, who has argued against such a view is Frederic Chaslin. In his book, Music in Every Sense, he writes that much of contemporary music does not engage the audience because it is insufficiently accessible. He has been working on his own accessible opera, based on Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights -- not in a garret but in a houseboat on the Seine. Chaslin is also a pianist and a conductor. (Arlene Judith Klozko)
Old Mass-heads will enjoy their renditions of Hallelujah and Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights cuddling up next to the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up. (Zane Henry)EDIT (12/01/09): We read on Tonight:
The Coming of Age runs until January 24 at the Theatre on the Bay (Camps Bay). The a cappella group includes covers of Wuthering Heights, Georgia, the Hallelujah chorus and some original works as well. Tel: 021-438-3300.Another a capella rendition of the Kate Bush's hit was released some years ago by the Swedish group The Sweptaways.
The London Free Press (Canada) announces the nominations to the Brickenden Theatre Awards. The Theatre Nemesis production of Wuthering Heighs has an Outstanding Costumes nomination.I t will surprise no readers of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran to learn that the author is still transfixed by narratives. In that unlikely bestseller, the former literature professor, who walked away from her post at the University of Tehran in protest of the Khomeini regime's dictum that all female teachers wear a veil, described how the students in her breakaway classics seminar were given powerful lessons in the democratic spirit by books. In Nabokov and Flaubert and Austen and the Brontes, Nafisi's students found not only confirmation of the soaring human spirit, but of their own plight as well. Reading fiction became an exercise in resistance, an affirmation of art's inherent revolt. (Geoff Pevere)
Caucasian woman, 50s, with ruffled blonde hair, wearing heavy winter coat, Baffin winter boots, carrying a bright floral purse.Cupcake Chronicles talks about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1996, One Girl and her books briefly posts about Lynn Reid Banks's The Dark Quartet, Art Comments reviews briefly Sam Taylor-Wood Yes I No exhibition
In 1940, Laurence Olivier and soon-to-be second wife Vivien Leigh arrived at the Academy Awards just months before tying the knot.Merle Oberon, who played Cathy in the adaptation, is mentioned in The Ridgefield Press, where Byron Nilsson - an ex-usher at the Ridgefield Playhouse - reminisces about the 'good old times':
Leigh was riding high from the success of "Gone With the Wind" while Olivier had came to the attention of US audiences with his performance as the brooding Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights."
Olivier would have to wait for his first Academy Award however, losing out to Robert Donat for "Goodbye Mr Chips." Leigh meanwhile won for her legendary performance as Scarlett O'Hara.
For example, Merle Oberon attended a movie there in 1973, a quiet but dazzling event that nonplused me. She still looked as she did in “Wuthering Heights,” and paraded on the arm of a much younger man. Even in the anonymity she sought, she had star presence.As for music, we must mention the a capella version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights by Not the Midnight Mass again as, according to Art Zone (again),
Tiffin’s rendition of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights later had me sobbing at its sheer haunting beauty. (Christina Kennedy)The Washington Post asks a few (female) writers to pick 'any fictional character in the world' with whom they would spend 'one unbridled night'. Two of them pick the one and only Mr Edward Fairfax Rochester:
Susan Isaacs: You have to ask? Edward Rochester, of course, from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. He's got that quivering-with-barely-suppressed-passion business, but he's also elegant. (A guy has to do more than simply spritz testosterone when the sommelier hands him the wine list.)Meanwhile, Sudha Devi Nayak writes for Express Buzz (India) about a well-known feeling among book-lovers: 'the quiet joy of coming back home'.
Adriana Trigiani agrees: Rochester -- he's a mysterious man on a horse in the English countryside -- sounds like a keeper to me. (Ron Charles)
Out came Emma and Jane Eyre and Billy Bunter with names and dates scribbled on them bringing home the reading pleasures of a whole family. I must reread them for the sake of all of us who thumbed these pages with such excitement and joy.Now for some fun things: the BBC has a quiz on biblical references whose first question is from Jane Eyre:
In the very last line of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, which book of the New Testament are the words "Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus" taken from?If you are a Sagittarius, your horoscope comes with a Brontë mention in the Winipeg Free Press today:
1. Corinthians
2. Colossians
3. Revelation
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)And if you are in the Somerset (UK) area today you might have a plan according to the Somerset Standard:
Lucky Sagittarians are not reading this column today; they're off on vacation somewhere. It's a play day! Romance, love affairs, the arts, the entertainment world, the theatre, movies, sports and all other kinds of playful diversions are calling your name. "Heathcliff!" (Georgia Nicols)
Fans of Inspector Morse and anyone with a taste for classic literature can head for Strode Theatre, in Street, to see and hear from the inimitable Colin Dexter, writer of the Inspector Morse novels, when he visits the theatre on Wednesday. [...]More information about Colin Dexter's readings can be found in previous posts.
He is an avid lover of Wagner's music, a cryptic crossword wizard, teacher and educationalist, classical scholar, great wit, real ale enthusiast and, most of all, a man with an all-consuming love for the finest English literature and poetry.
Colin is also a born entertainer and loves a good tale with a humorous twist. He will read from his own work and talk about his life, work and professional relationships.
In addition, you will hear his favourite passages from such literary greats as Hardy, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and AE Housman read on stage by the actor Gabriel Woolf, Colin's "all time favourite BBC Radio voice".
Tickets for the talk cost £14.50, concessions £12.50 and are available from the Strode Theatre box office on 01458 442846.
"They are intriguing books," Ms. MacLaughlin said, adding that they are today’s answer to the novels of the Bronte sisters. [...]Meanwhile The Lima News (Ohio) features 18-year-old Carla Cooper, who
Ms. MacLaughlin likes the fact that the books allude to classics by Shakespeare and the Brontes and that author Stephenie Meyer gets around potential violence and horror issues by making her vampires "vegetarian." (They eat only animal blood.) (Monica Graham)
is working on several ideas for novels and is reading "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte and "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.On a different (musical) note, Brontës.nl reports that the Dutch take on Gordon and Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical goes on stage this coming weekend in Rotterdam.
"I love the classics," Cooper said. "I like the philosophies behind it, how they do things, why they do things. Books today don't really have that insight." (Pam Dunno)
It’s a wonderful sight to witness NTMM in full flight, giving fresh impetus to a host of classical material that includes Kate’s Bush’s haunting “Wuthering Heights” (with Tiffin’s vocal prowess fully tested). . . (Peter Feldman)The Mirror publishes something that is nearly as old as the internet: Book-a-minute's take on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights:
JANE EYRE: Charlotte BronteA couple of blogs A Year in the Classics and Porcelain (in Spanish) post about Wuthering Heights. Meia Palavra has written a short biography of Anne Brontë in Portuguese and Hello World has just paid a visit to her grave in Scarborough. Flickr user Sylvie Van Hulle has painted her Wuthering Heights.
(People are mean to Jane Eyre.)
Edward Rochester: I have a dark secret. Will you stay with me no matter what?
Jane Eyre: Yes.
Edward Rochester: My secret is that I have a lunatic wife.
Jane Eyre: Bye.
(Jane Eyre leaves. Somebody dies. Jane Eyre returns.)
WUTHERING HEIGHTS: Emily Bronte
Lockwood: I think I’ll stay here. Tell me a story, woman.
Nelly Dean: I’m no gossip, mind you, but this guy Heathcliff got adopted, everyone hated him, and his love Catherine died.
Heathcliff: NOOOOOOOOOO! (Dies.)
Lockwood: I’ll be on my way.
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produced in partnership with The Open University, examines original texts, manuscripts, letters and diaries to uncover the stories behind the creation of six classic books.One of the books is:
In these extracts from the series, television dramatist Tony Jordan, actor Simon Russell Beale, award-winning writer and Virginia Woolf expert Dr Alexandra Harris, singer and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, journalist and author Bidisha and scientist Prof Alice Roberts decipher the manuscripts which mean most to them.
Charlotte Brontë: Jane EyreHere's the link to the corresponding clip. The episode on Great Expectations aired on Tuesday and the one on Shakespeare's First Folio is announced for next Tuesday (September 9th). The date for the episode on Jane Eyre is still to be announced.
At the British Library, Bidisha and Ann Dinsdale (author of The Brontës at Haworth) examine Brontë’s ‘fair copy’ of Jane Eyre and a letter to Prof Constantin Heger, with whom the author was infatuated.
A distiller with ties to Brontë Parsonage Museum has launched a liqueur that pays homage to the literary family’s heritage.A columnist from the Sunshine Coast Daily lists 10 books that have stayed with her in some way.
Sir James Aykroyd stepped down from his role as chairman and shareholder of Speyside Distillery to develop Brontë Liqueur, a blackberry and sloe-based beverage that is targeting the popular cocktails market.
Based in Birstwith, North Yorkshire, Sir James discovered a honey-based drink named Brontë Liqueur in Paraguay 40 years ago.
He was attracted to the drink as a result of his family’s ties with the Brontës.
‘Back in 1928 my great grandfather, Sir James Roberts, bought the Haworth village parsonage and gifted it to the Brontë Society,’ Sir James said.
‘Today that building is the Brontë Parsonage Museum and this is something our family is immensely proud of - I still hold the key to the parsonage’s front door.’
Prior to joining Speyside Distillery, Sir James held senior roles with Buchanan’s whiskey and Martini and Rossi. When the opportunity arose to purchase the trademark for the drink, Sir James founded Brontë Liqueur Co, which will make a small donation to the Brontë Society from all sales.
The liqueur has been adapted from its original recipe to include elements of the Yorkshire Moors.
Brontë Liqueur is marketed as an ingredient for cocktails. Suggested recipes include the Brontë Royale, which is topped with champagne, and ginger-beer based Brontë Mule.
9. Wuthering HeightsWhile Mashable recommends '8 Books to Check Out While Waiting for Fall's Hottest Reads'.
This book refuses to bow down to any notion of a happy ending and that's partly what I like about it.
Yes, the second generation has a chance to right the wrongs of the past, but it's not them we truly care about, is it?
Catherine and Heathcliff have to be two of the most flawed lovers ever paired in a novel, but sometimes when a love is expressed as powerfully as this, is doesn't seem to matter.
Emily Bronte's writing is so powerful it's no wonder this book is still treasured today and thought by many to be the best of the novels written by the three Bronte sisters.
Maybe with the exception of Romeo and Juliet, rarely do we see a love story so tragically rendered. (Carlie Walker)
8. While you wait for Text From Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations With Your Favorite Literary Characters by Mallory Ortberg, pick up Alice in Tumblr-land by Tim Manley.Rochdale Online reports that the Rochdale Library Classic Reads Group is looking for new members. So if you're in the area and
Both books ask the question, what would happen if our favorite literary characters existed in a world where they could tweet and reblog GIFs with the rest of us? (Molly Horan)
you have always wondered what Jane Eyre and Lady Chatterley have in common or you harbour an ambition to explore the modern relevance of Great Expectations, then this is a group ideally suited to your interests.We are late reporting this as it took place last night, but Chicagoist invited local fans of Kate Bush to have their dose on that side of the pond too:
Thankfully there is plenty of cocktails to drown our tears and an evening of Kate Bush originals and inspired tunes to ease the pain tonight at The Whistler. All the Love: A Tribute to Kate Bush features live sets of Kate Bush covers from Savage Sisters and Kyle Greer as well as DJ sets inspired by Kate Bush as well, including originals, remixes and covers of her popular tunes as well as artists who were inspired by her work. Of course the evening will be accompanied by vintage concert and television footage as well as music videos, keeping the evening all things Kate. Sticking to the theme, a Midnight "Wuthering Heights" dance will take place, where Meagan Fredette will wear white and participate in a mass recreation of Bush's video for her iconic song. A perfectly suitable thing to enjoy at midnight on a weekday through the haze of a few tequila cocktails, one can assume you shall feel free to dance along if the mood strikes.Straight features Midge Ure, who also mentions Kate Bush's take on Wuthering Heights:
Not long after that, he was plunging the U.K. into its modern-romantic period with Ultravox and the paradigm-shifting 1981 megahit “Vienna”.The Positive reviews the ChapterHouse open-air production of Wuthering Heights:
“I think it was quite a brave—or ridiculously stupid—move that Ultravox did to release something that went so against the grain,” he says. “But if you look back over musical history, it’s the ones that go against the grain that change everything—the ‘Wuthering Heights’ or the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s or whatever. For us to put out a four-minute-long electronic ballad that speeds up with a viola solo in it, you know—it could easily have gone the other way, but it became hugely successful. Which, of course, catapulted Ultravox into the stratosphere.” (Adrian Mack)
Overall, the play succeeds in appearing more traditional than it actually is; exterior wise, Wuthering Heights is as it has always been: a beautiful romance between two characters who were destined towards different paths due to a series of events which circle around their personalities, wants and desires. However, Chapterhouse’s take on what makes Wuthering Heights a play that is worth watching again and again is really something to see; the gothic mist, backdrop from day to night and gorgeous ending allow the audience to fall in love with the story they once fell in love with some time ago. (Simren Handa)
The sun may be hiding behind grey clouds, but for hundreds of people in flowing red dresses dancing on Yorkshire moorland it'll take more than a threat of rain to dampen their spirits.This is Brontë country, after all, so it's fitting that it's also perfect Brontë weather.The group, swaying in unison, have come together to re-create the music video for Kate Bush's 1978 song Wuthering Heights, inspired by Emily Brontë's novel.Every year, thousands of people around the world don red robes – and in some cases long black wigs – for The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.Events have previously taken place in places such as Sydney, Copenhagen, Berlin, Folkestone and Preston.This particular "Mass Wuther" perhaps has an even stronger claim than most – it's held on Penistone Hill, not far from the famous Brontë parsonage in Haworth, in the Pennines.From the field on a clear day can be seen the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens, believed to be the inspiration for the titular farmhouse of Brontë's novel. (Fiona Callow)
It’s a bitterly cold Dunedin morning when a bright red wave of Kate Bush lookalikes gathers in the Octagon to dance. By noon, the temperature is a brutal four degrees (feels like -0, according to the weather app), and as the winter sun peeks through the grey clouds above Dunedin’s city centre, the group of dancers dressed in red waits quietly. When the opening piano notes of Kate Bush’s song ‘Wuthering Heights’ burst out, they begin to move in unison, lifting their arms and waving them above their heads. As their crimson clothes blow in the icy wind, Bush sings the famous line that today takes on a new meaning: “Heathcliff it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home… I’m so cold.” (Tara Ward)
Or BBC in Bristol, Euronews, The Jonesboro Sun, The Adelaide Advertiser, Hello Rayo, in Folkestone...
For her debut album called The Kick Inside, Bush’s first official single was “Wuthering Heights.” Inspired by the classic novel of the same name by Emily Brontë, Bush wrote the track in the span of one night the year before, when she was just 18 years old.Still a teenager by the time the song officially came out, Bush’s music was an impressive success and a huge start to her career. In particular, “Wuthering Heights” gained a lot of fans.The song is a story told from the perspective of the character Catherine Earnshaw after her death, when she’s a ghost pleading with her former love, Heathcliff. Just like how she wrote the song in a few hours, Bush also recorded her vocals for the tune in one take.The mixing for “Wuthering Heights” took place over the course of one night as well, starting at midnight and going until around six in the morning. Music engineer Jon Kelly recalled working with Bush on the song. (Devon Forward)
6. Haworth, West YorkshireA steam train service arrives at Haworth in West Yorkshire, one of the most beautiful places in EnglandYou may not think that you know this Yorkshire town, but you’ve probably seen its steep street, which climbs up the valley of the River Worth, on screen. Haworth is popular with location scouts for film and TV, and many of its lugubrious millstone grit houses have become whimsical shops selling everything from hemlock candles and vintage dresses to “fat tyke” biscuits. The town has one foot in another era, especially when the steam locomotives from the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway chunter into its station. The Brontë sisters grew up in the parsonage at the top of the street — it is now a museum that details how claustrophobic and intense their upbringing must have been. Further uphill from the parsonage, the moors beckon anyone who wants to wuther a few heights. We’d recommend staying close to the Brontë parsonage in the thoughtfully renovated boutique guesthouse Weavers of Haworth. (Andrew Eanes)
Cumbres Borrascosas pertenece a ese linaje, y así se lee mayoritariamente: como una historia de amor imposible entre Catherine Earnshaw y Heathcliff, una pasión tan poderosa que ni la muerte logra extinguirla.Es una lectura legítima pero incompleta porque Emily Brontë no escribió solo una historia de amor. Escribió al mismo tiempo una novela de terror.El terror que Brontë explora es más moderno y perturbador que el terror gótico popular en aquella época: el miedo que puede causar la convivencia doméstica con alguien que nos odia. La diferencia esencial entre Cumbres Borrascosas y sus predecesores en el género del amor obsesivo es que aquí la pasión no se consuma ni se frustra en un instante glorioso: se pudre durante décadas, se transforma en rencor sistemático y aplasta a quienes tienen la desgracia de estar cerca. No hay ningún Romeo que muera joven y hermoso. Hay un Heathcliff que vive demasiado tiempo.La pasión de Heathcliff por Catherine es real e irreductible, y la novela la trata con toda su complejidad, tal y como veremos en el apartado siguiente. Frente a esto, lo que define a Heathcliff como personaje no es lo que siente por Catherine, sino lo que hace con ese sentimiento cuando la sociedad —y la propia Catherine— lo rechaza por su origen. Lo que comienza como un malentendido marcado por la confusión entre lo que Catherine siente y lo que cree que debe ser desencadena en Heathcliff un odio que se vuelve sistemáticamente contra quienes no tienen ninguna culpa: Isabella Linton, su esposa, a la que somete con crueldad calculada; y la segunda generación, a la que manipula y arruina sin remedio. (Read more) (Translation) (Eduardo Antuña Zarzuelo)
Wuthering Heights of Opulence. I visited the English region made famous by Wuthering Heights with old-fashioned villages and celeb-visited hotels. (...)Despite the changeable weather – one minute I’d be battered by gusts that pierced like kitchen knives, the next smothered in mist then bathed in sunshine – I instantly fell head over heels in love with the moors.Emily Brontë and her sisters Charlotte and Anne grew to adore these wilds, right on their doorstep.I hiked to ruined farmstead called Top Withens, said to have inspired Wuthering Heights the fictional home of Cathy.A further trek then took me to the Brontë Waterfall, Brontë Bridge, and Brontë Chair rock (in the shape of a seat), which were all places close to the sisters’ hearts.Back in Haworth, the limestone cottages and cobbled main street lined with gift shops, cafes and pubs had an old-fashioned charm.At the sisters’ old home, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, I saw the simple wooden table where they used to write. (Fiona Whitty)
Nu Sass, a company that promotes marginalized genders in all aspects of theater, presents Courtney Bailey’s “Brontë Sister House Party” (Aug. 14-Sept. 12) at Van Ness on Main Street (4340 Connecticut Ave., NW). In life, the Brontë Sisters, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne, wrote their 19th century English lit classics in the virtual isolation of their father’s remote York parsonage. Now, stuck in purgatory, they’re suffering through party after party in an endless time loop. For them, hosting is truly hell, until they finally find a way to make it tolerable. (Patrick Folliard)
In conclusione, la citazione ci consegna una straordinaria meditazione sull’interiorità umana. Ci ricorda che siamo anche, e forse soprattutto, ciò che abbiamo sognato. Che non tutto ciò che conta deve essere realizzato per essere vero. Che alcune delle nostre trasformazioni più autentiche derivano non da eventi visibili, ma da visioni invisibili, che attraversano il tempo e noi stessi. Ed è forse proprio in questa alterazione silenziosa che si nasconde la vera poesia dell’essere. (Patrizio Lo Votrico) (Translation)
Times Now News compiles some beautiful and/or brutal love confessions in literature (with a lot of sloppy AI illustrations), quoting Wuthering Heights. AnneBrontë.org posts about when Charlotte Brontë quietly used her connections with publisher George Smith to help friend Harriet Martineau attempt a secret, anonymous return to novel-writing in 1851 — a book that was ultimately never published.
AMN: What advice would you give yourself just starting out in your career?M.L.: I would probably tell myself to go more with the flow, be more flexible, not be so rigid. To not try to control every aspect of every minute of every day. One of my favorite quotes is by Charlotte Brontë, “Life is so constructed that the event does not, will not, cannot, match the expectation.”
Es una figura rara en el panteón de escritoras; publicó una sola y enigmática novela. Emily Brontë fue parte de una familia literaria donde la muerte llegó muy pronto. Se sabe poco de ella. A poco más de 175 años de su partida, la escritora chilena María José Navia se propone rastrear el interés que ha generado hasta hoy, los espacios que ha abierto a la imaginación. Para ella, Cumbres Borrascosas es el mejor de los regalos, porque nunca sabemos con certeza qué nos trae: una casa que esconde fantasmas y, quizás, también un corazón. (...)Yo creo que Emily Brontë nos dio una casa propia en la cual estar inquietas. Una casa para despertar y no para dormir, que recibe a quien entra con todo el peso de una historia de fantasmas. Una historia que creíamos saber (por las películas y las referencias pop) pero que, al leerla por primera vez, y el resto de las veces que sea necesario, nos damos cuenta de que es tanto, pero tanto más. Una historia oscura de todo lo oscuro que podemos ser, con personajes raros que no tienen que entenderse para ser leídos con voracidad. Personajes inexplicables pero seducidos por el poder de un relato. El que ellos y otros cuentan sobre sí mismos. Sí, de fondo está la historia de amor. O quizás ni siquiera de fondo, es otro fantasma que a veces se acerca a la ventana para ver qué tal nos va o, tal vez, para ver si lo dejamos entrar. (...) (Translation)
A creative media hub curated by Eden Mae Aguanta, a 26-year-old Mass Communications graduate turned Literature postgraduate, it represents a departure from the contemplation of ancient libraries. (...)“My favorite authors are the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, and Oscar Wilde. Growing up, I also read Bob Ong. My favorite Filipino writer is Lualhati Bautista. I loved reading Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez and Seek Ye Whore of Yvette Tan,” she said. (David Ezra M. Francisquete)
Yesterday, Radio 1 announced that its “Sound of 2024” is the young indie rock band The Last Dinner Party. The music is electric but the aesthetic is steeped in history. Think Wuthering Heights-era Kate Bush crossed with medieval goth-wife: corsets, lace, ribbons, cotton nightdresses, fishnet tights. (Alice Loxton)
Meredith, meanwhile, gives Wuthering Heights after Catherine is dead and haunting the moors. (Joan Summers)
Then there’s Miranda Seymour’s I Used to Live Here Once, a new biography of Jean Rhys. I’m familiar with some of the details of Rhys’s extraordinary, rackety life, which featured periods of exile, heartbreak, alcoholism and literary obscurity. But I know hardly anything about her Caribbean childhood, and nothing about the writing process that produced masterpieces like Wide Sargasso Sea and Good Morning, Midnight. So I’m excited by the prospect of reading Seymour’s book, which promises to supply all that and much more.
The Plains was followed by Inland (1988), Murnane’s fourth novel; the reason we are talking today is that Inland is being reissued this month. Like all Murnane’s mature fiction, it is plotless and light on character, taking the form instead of perfectly weighted sentences reflecting on memories and images in the narrator’s head; the people, places and books he has known, from his experience of reading Wuthering Heights to the memory of a girl from his childhood. (John Self)
Quelles sont les sources d’inspiration de ces Balades en imaginaire ?A.H.: Ce sont les contes et les légendes celtiques, mais également l’époque victorienne avec le début de l’industrialisation, des machines à vapeur etc., une période faste en Angleterre au XIXe siècle. Mes œuvres s’inspirent beaucoup de la littérature : ici, Jules Verne, comme Emily Brontë ou encore Charles Dickens, ont nourri mon travail. (Translation)
En él mezcla la semblanza de escritoras con el análisis de la representación de las mujeres en la literatura, incluyendo textos sobre las hermanas Brontë, que «se tomaron muy en serio el carácter amenazante de la vida real». (Translation)
Tras su publicación, Nada fue considerada por la crítica como una innovadora novela existencialista y llegó a ser comparada con obras maestras de la literatura como La náusea, de Sartre, El extranjero, de Camus, o Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. El resto es, una vez más, Historia. (Inés Martín Rodrigo) (Translation)
A few highlights from our first week of conservation! This week we've been focused on checking the condition of any wooden furniture & some of our items in storage. Whilst our furniture on display is regularly cleaned and checked throughout the year, this period allows us to spend time thoroughly inspecting these items for any possible damage and waxing them. Our Conservation Period is also the primary time for assessing the condition of our collection items in storage that don\u2019t get looked at as often since they are in a more controlled environment. More behind the scenes content to follow ... The museum will be open this weekend from 10am - 5pm. Come and see our shiny furniture!
Thornfield Hall in Jane EyreMore spookiness. Every Eye (Italy) interviews actress Sarah Gadon about her role in the film Dracula Untold:
Mr. Rochester’s mansion is full of long hallways, plenty of unused rooms, a troubled owner who’s always leaving, and a terrible secret in the attic. When Jane Eyre arrives at Thornfield, she notices that “a very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitaire.” There’s also a lot of weird, ghosty laughter that floats around after midnight. (Tori Telfer)
Quale è il tuo rapporto con il romanzo di Bram Stoker? Sarah Gadon: Mi piace molto il romanzo di Bram Stoker, ma amo la letteratura gotica in generale, come Frankenstein di Mary Shelley e Jane Eyre. (Translation)The Independent reviews another film: Effie Gray, which looks at the life of John Ruskin's wife, Euphemia Gray.
[Emma] Thompson’s screenplay approaches the breakdown of the marriage between Effie and Ruskin, one of the great scandals of the Victorian era, as if it is a dark Gothic fairy tale. Effie (Dakota Fanning) is introduced to us as a “beautiful young girl who lived in a very cold house in Scotland.” Like a heroine in a Brontë novel, Effie is plucked from her childhood home to begin her new life faraway. (Geoffrey MacNab)
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| Sargasso Sea (Source) |
Besl also alludes to Josephine through the image of the swan. Josephine adopted the swan as an emblem, in part because she admirSargasso Sea,” shows it sitting amid an abundant bed of hair. The work appears simultaneously serene and menacing, as achieved by the eerie greenish light that emanates from it, punctuated by warmer pink and orange tones. The title of the work lends a great deal to understanding this rather haunting scene.The Guardian brings up the age-old discussion of art vs. having children.
ed its elegance and aggressiveness. One work in which the swan appears, “
The Sargasso Sea, located in the Atlantic Ocean, is a free-floating mass of seaweed that forms an unusual ecological world unto itself, much like Besl’s world where abundant, coiling strands of hair become home to symbolic objects. The title also seemingly refers to “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys’ prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” a story of a woman driven to madness by the patriarchal world in which she lived and who also had an affinity for the lush green botanicals of her Jamaican home. (Brooke LeBoeuf)
We can, if we like, list the successful women artists who have had children (Rego, Spero, Ayres) or come up with long lists of those who didn’t (Kahlo, O’Keeffe, the Brontës, Austen). It’s the old pram-in-the-hall argument, that parenting is the enemy of great art. There is a truth in it. Children stop one separating from the world. They interrupt one’s sense of self as the most important thing ever. This is not always a bad lesson for artists to learn. The domestic sphere is not one of imagination, goes the script Try telling that to Kate Bush. Motherhood can be miserable, of course, and an excuse, and a source of terrible conflict. Plath said it was her muse. But Emin’s adherence to the myth of creativity versus motherhood is so old-fashioned. Emin would have been able to afford childcare and this is the actual issue. What stops women being able to write, or paint, is trying to do everything. It’s Emin’s prerogative, but it is all part of her increasing conservatism. (Suzanne Moore)The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy looks at October 7 Daily Show where
The mock chaos continued into the interview portion of the show, with Jones and Bee tag-teaming to welcome guest (and former “Daily Show” correspondent) Wyatt Cenac, who was promoting his new Netflix special, Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn (available October 21).This Daily Telegraph (Australia) columnist doesn't 'plug' Wuthering Heights:
But apparently even those who are no longer on the Comedy Central series are able to take “The Daily Show” seriously when someone else is in the anchor chair “remolding [Stewart's] ass groove.” The interview was more like a drunken reunion of college buddies, with Cenac dressed in Jeffrey Lebowski chic, complete with a knitted sweater right out of the Dude’s closet, opting to “plug books from dead authors” (including “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and “‘Charlotte Brontë’ by Jane Eyre” (erm)) over his own work. (Sarene Leeds)
I’m still wondering what I actually learnt from writing all those essays on metaphors and symbolism — other than I absolutely hate Wuthering Heights. (Melissa Matheson)This Craven Herald & Pioneer columnist looks at a Brontë connection in his family history. The books editor of The Boar is quite a Brontëite. Lifeline Theatre's blog looks at education in Jane Eyre's time.
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