Withdrawn from auction

We are quite intrigued by this new development concerning this portrait said to be of the Brontë sisters. As reported by the BBC (and quite a few others):

The portrait of three women was due to be auctioned in Northamptonshire this week.
But it was withdrawn from sale after a collector came forward about a similar Brontë portrait by the same artist.
The auctioneer said this could prove there was a link between the sisters and the artist, Sir Edwin Landseer.
Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said: "In light of the new information and its potential significance, we have postponed the sale and will evaluate the strength and implications of what has now come to light.
"This could help prove beyond doubt, the important link between Landseer, one of the 19th century's greatest artists, and the Brontë sisters, English literature's most perennial siblings."
He added: "We can only do our best to prove beyond doubt, and obviously the more information we have the better our conclusion can be."

Now, Mr Humbert has revealed that a collector has come forward with information about a related pastel portrait of the same era – a copy of which is held on file at the National Portrait Gallery, thought to be the same subjects by the same artist.
“In light of the new information and its potential significance, we have postponed the sale of this picture until May 24 and will evaluate the strength and implications of what has now come to light,” he said.
“Any additional information supporting the historic story of this picture will help ensure the portrait goes to an appreciative home.”
"We are appealing to the purchaser of a pastel sketch of 3 Females With Guitar purchased at the NEC in the 2009 Antiques for Everyone to contact us. This could help prove beyond doubt, the important link between Landseer, one of the 19th century's greatest artists - and the Bronte sisters - English literature's most perennial siblings."

The wind farm plans for Brontë country are still in the news. The Telegraph shows that Prime Minister David Cameron is 'committed to wind farms':

He backed plans for 70 turbines off the North East coast and gave his support to an onshore wind farm being built by the same company that wants to put up turbines in Bronte country. (Louise Gray)

The Telegraph and Argus has a letter from a reader discussing the subject.

Margaret Atwood is interviewed about her book Payback on Salon.

You make no claim to prescience about the financial crisis that hit just as the book version of “Payback” came out. What inspired it instead? In a former life I was a student of Victorian literature, which you can’t be without coming smack up against money to an even greater extent than if you are, for instance, an Elizabethan scholar. The 19th century is the one where money becomes the big determinant. The big story is the industrialists, who are making kajillions of dollars some of the time, and at other times are undergoing big busts in which they close factories and everyone’s thrown out of work.
That’s when investment in the stock market became a thing. People didn’t really understand it. (And they still don’t!) Little old ladies would put their money in and they’d get an income, but then something would happen, as in “Cranford,” and they’d lose all their money.
“Wuthering Heights,” when you’re 20, is about the mad passion of Cathy and Heathcliff. When you’re 50, it’s about, “Where did Heathcliff make his money? How did he get so rich?” (Laura Miller)

This is My Joystick argues the case for game character Kaidan Alenko being a 22nd century Jane Eyre.

Having now completed Mass Effects 1 through 3 and found Alenko to be the character with whom I could empathise the most, I decided to take an in-depth look at him, how he fits with the Mass Effect world, and what makes him a Jane Eyre for the 22nd Century. [...]
The development arcs of Jane Eyre and Kaidan Alenko are remarkably similar. Kaidan is shy, reserved, and excessively self-controlling, and like Charlotte Brontë’s heroine, he built his persona on a traumatic event from his youth. Jane Eyre snapped early in life, and suffered the consequences of her aunt’s rage for much of the rest of her life. Kaidan’s suffering, or at least his inability to relax and release his emotions, came as a result of his own turmoil.
He also snapped and suffered the consequences for many years to come. Jane Eyre’s story and Kaidan’s mirror each other further, as they both felt betrayed and let down by those to which they had respectively opened up. However, they did not let Shepard nor Mr Rochester get the better of them, and they both found the means and strength of character to pull themselves together, learn from their experiences and return as the equal of their former mentors. [...]
That I am able to draw a meaningful comparison between Jane Eyre and Kaidan Alenko serves to highlight the current quality and depth of game writing. Yes, I am slightly tongue in cheek, but the analogy is valid. Kaidan Alenko is a complex enough character with a story arc developed sufficiently well for him to be compared to a classic character from English Literature. Surely now you can see how important, misunderstood and well written he is. (Bryony Stewart-Seume)

The Huffington Post's Artwork of the week is a 1960s photograph of Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton, described as follows:

This particular photograph was Beaton's last sitting with the Queen and, with its kind of Wuthering Heights, wild and windy vibe, very much presents the Queen as a lone individual, deep in contemplation. (Jen Bayne)

Broadway World Florida features a local production of The Mystery of Irma Vep, mentioning its Jane Eyre influences. Rambles of a Writer posts about Edward Chitham's Life of Emily Brontë.

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Mr Rochester under the covers

Metro.co.uk interviews Mia Wasikowska:

What do you think are your biggest acting accomplishments? The first thing I did in the US was HBO show In Treatment – it was one of the most fulfilling jobs I've ever had. Now, I feel that Jane Eyre is a big accomplishment for me. Jane is a great character and so many people love and connect to her story. At its core, it's still very modern: it's about a young girl trying to find a connection in a very dislocated world, and about finding love and a family. The themes have a universality and, for that reason, people can always relate to them. [...]
Did wearing those corsets help you get into character? I hated wearing them – they're so uncomfortable. But getting into full costume really helped me to understand the physical repression that women experienced at that time. The clothing they had to wear went hand in hand with the mental and emotional repression they also felt –   this was a huge part of Victorian culture. Once the corset was on, I couldn't really take in a whole breath, I couldn't eat very much and I couldn't move as freely due to the discomfort it caused. It was painful.
What's the secret to your chemistry with Michael Fassbender? He has a really fantastic energy and is very worldly and so friendly. I feel like we got on very well from the beginning. We have a similar way of working and we were able to counter the intensity of the material by being goofy in between shoots. We channelled all the positive energy that we had into   the material. (Colin Kennedy)

The Spectator Book Blog unveils the novelist and playwright Sue Townsend as a Brontëite:

2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Comics, Mad Magazine, P.G. Wodehouse, The William books, Jane Eyre, Little Women... [...]
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with? Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. (Fleur MacDonald)

The writer Sreela P. Nair is also a Brontëite of sorts. She says to The Hindu,

I have no favourites but I do remember Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights as a book that stayed with me in my initial years. (Suneetha B.)

Maureen Corrigan discusses the novel Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron on WBUR (Boston):

The title character here is a private duty nurse who has recently arrived at an isolated manor called Hart House to tend an elderly woman dying of cancer. Coral Glynn is young, alone in the world, and described by other characters as "rather pretty ... in a plain way." If that phrase puts you in mind of Jane Eyre, it should; Cameron also doffs his cap to Daphne du Maurier's classic about a solitary orphan, Rebecca. 

The Globe and Mail interviews Margaret Atwood about her novel (now also a documentary film) Payback:

In other words, debt invades our decision-making on multiple levels?Atwood: Something that’s always intrigued me about the Victorian novel – which was my field of professional training long ago when I was an academic – is that most people study the front of the stage, which are the characters, the marriage or actions, without looking at the back of the stage, which are the financial arrangements in these novels. But once you start looking at the financial arrangements, you realize they are all based on that – including Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, all of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, you name it.
How much money and how they are making their money permeates Dickens.
And Madame Bovary. The fact is that if she hadn’t been a shopaholic, she could have kept on committing adultery to her heart’s content, and nobody would have noticed. They only notice because she goes into debt and the guy to whom she owes the money turns up and says, Now I’m going to go to your husband and tell him everything. But if she hadn’t gone into debt, she would have been fine. (Guy Dixon)

TMCnet discusses the uses of Twitter as a classroom tool:

But how can that be when 18- to 21-year-old students are bound to be more interested in checking to see if their school made it into the NCAA tournament (go Cuse!), then [sic] they are with commenting on social hierarchies and feminism in “Jane Eyre.” (Carrie Schmelkin)

It's all about Jane Eyre 2011 on the blogosphere today: Death's Head & the Sickly Child, Kajsa, Pausemedia (in French), Ajmaguire and Private Filmkritiken (in German).

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Spring Break

Stars Insider publishes an article about some siblings that are considered geniuses:

The Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—were responsible for writing some of the most celebrated novels in English literature. Acknowledged as literary geniuses for works such as 'Jane Ayre,' (sic)  'Wuthering Heights,' and 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,' the siblings honed their craft at a young age, creating imaginary worlds vividly described in poetry and in plays. As adults, they quickly found success, drawing on life experiences—good and bad—to produce the classics we know and admire today. But the career of each author was also desperately short.

Counterpunch quotes from a Marxist reading of Wuthering Heights:

There’s no silly hope for “the good rich man,” the benevolent capitalist good capitalist in an amazing novel that came out one year before The Communist Manifesto. A brazen lack of sentiment and a daring affront to Victorian morality is no small part of what makes Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights a better novel than anything Dickens ever wrote. There are no decent bourgeois to pat on the back in Bronte’s masterful tale, where we confront a very different orphan than the passive Oliver. Heathcliff is a Liverpool waif who grows up to take bitter revenge on his class oppressors and the love of his life, Catherine, his childhood ally against Christian capitalist tyranny. Catherine, born to a propertied family whose moral hypocrisy and whose vicious classist oppression of her beloved Heathcliff she despises. She has a special relationship with the proletarian servant boy Heathcliff, forged in common rebellion against her older brother’s regime at Wuthering Heights. But after Heathcliff is forced to leave in the face of recurrent class humiliation, Catherine betrays both him and herself by marrying into bourgeois comfort over at a different and propertied estate, Thrushcross Grange. The betrayal proves fatal, sparking a suicidal depression when Heathcliff returns as a new and vicious bourgeois. Heathcliff’s retribution comes not through proletarian revolution but through a climb into wealth that permits him to sadistically use his former class oppressors’ own weapons – money and property – against them. His payback is complete but it brings no relief. Near the end of the novel, one of the finest ever penned in English,  (Paul Street)

Emily, the film, is reviewed on dev-usasports:

There’s a central, almost callous, irony to the film. In its first minutes, her sister asks, “Why did you write Wuthering Heights?” And in the final minutes, we return to that question. But the film’s never really concerned with the why and how of novel-writing — plenty of boring movies have been there and done that. Everything between those scenes is a study of this woman who was never allowed to achieve the things she wanted to. Emily Brontë was born in the wrong time to be a human being with freedom, rights, and happiness, but she was born at the right time to be a good writer. Ain’t that a kick in the head?

Stuff (New Zealand) on the origins of a particular sheep breed, the Drysdale sheep:

Accompanying [Francis William] Dry to Aotearoa was his wife Florence Wilson Swinton, who studied the Brontë sisters. The couple’s research interests had more in common than it might seem: Emily Brontë’s great anti-hero Heathcliff was a sheep farmer. (Russell Poole)

Movieweb celebrates the 50th anniversary of the film Papillon:

There are two main takeaways from 1973’s Papillon. The first is — don’t trust nuns (and after watching Spotlight, maybe the entire Catholic Church). The second — a man is nothing without his freedom, or as Charlotte Brontë wrote in her seminal novel, Jane Eyre, “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”  (Patrick Hayes)

Bad weather as the quintessential British thing in Daily Express:

 We will never know for sure, but inclement weather is a frequent presence in their stories.

Imagine King Lear without the storm, or how much less compelling Heathcliff would have been in Wuthering Heights were it not for the backdrop of the “wily, windy moors”.

That, of course, was Kate Bush’s description rather than Emily Brontë’s, reminding us this little island has for long periods also dominated music. (Patrick O'Flynn)

According to Her Campus Jane Eyre is a 'coquette' novel to time travel back to Victorian romance. Whatever:

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë – We follow the narrative of a young governess, Jane Eyre, and her tumultuous relationship with her employer, Mr. Rochester. With themes of love, morality, and societal norms, this novel is a must-read for any fan of Victorian literature.

Things to do in a Spring Break. Glam recommends:

 Of course, you don't absolutely have to do anything new on spring break. If you're feeling a bit of nostalgia this year, it could be time to revisit an old favorite book. Maybe you read a classic in high school that you've been dying to read again, like "Atonement" or "Jane Eyre." ( Emily Hunt)

The Irish author Louise Kennedy has a love/hate relation with the Brontës. In The Guardian:

 The book or author I came back to

I had a hard time with the Brontës. I adored Jane Eyre up to the line “Reader, I married him”; she lost me after that. I read Wuthering Heights twice and on both occasions found it demented.

SoloLibri (Italy) celebrates the anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's death:

Il 31 marzo 1855 si spegneva, incinta del primo figlio, la scrittrice Charlotte Brontë. Ricordiamo le protagoniste rivoluzionarie dei suoi romanzi: da Jane Eyre a Lucy Snowe, voce narrante di Villette. Scopriamo analogie e differenze tra le eroine create dalla penna di “Currer Bell” alias Charlotte Brontë. (Alice Figini) (Translation)

El Taquígrafo (Spain) reviews Crisanta by Juan Ramón Biedma: 

Parece una investigación noir sobre un cuadro famoso desaparecido como en La tabla de Flandes  de Arturo Pérez Reverte, y una historia de fantasmas durante la Guerra Civil como en El Orfanato de Guillermo del Toro, y una intriga sobre sociedades esotéricas como Inferno de Dam Brown, y una novela gótica con caserón encantado e historias de amor a lo Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë, y una novela política y sociológica sobre cómo se gestó se activó y sucedió la guerra civil española como Los cipreses creen en Dios de José María Gironella, y una novela sobre luchas intestinas de bando como La novela numero 13 de Wenceslao Fernández Flórez y, en suma, una muy entretenida y tenebrosa alegoría sobre nuestro oscurantismo nacional… (Luis Artigue) (Translation)

A story about an A.I. writing a novel in The Age is a bit harsh on the Brontës:

There was a tranche of silence between us. We’d suddenly found ourselves at God’s right hand and had no idea how to behave. I was happy for the fact of this new maestro, but sad for myself. If I could write stories better than those written by Twain, Dickens and the Brontës I’d have written them. I can’t. This person had. I reread the novel, Iratus Avis, and it confirmed my obsolescence, Twain’s irrelevance, and the Brontes as a trio of cheap masochists. (Anson Cameron)

Just Jared Jr. interviews the actor Blake Draper:

I love reading! Whether that’s novels or plays. My favourite book of all time is Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”. Heathcliff is my dream role.

WWWItalia interviews the writer Beatrice Gioia: 

La sua lettura e il suo autore preferiti?

Ho sempre avuto una passione sconfinata per Jane Austen e le sorelle Brontë, dalle quali mi sono lasciata ispirare per l’ambientazione e i balli di società.  (Translation)

The University News celebrates the Women's History Month listing female writers who used male pen names, including the Brontës. The best spring walks in Yorkshire according to The Yorkshire Post include "A walk on the moors above Haworth in the Brontë countryside". Playcrazygame talks about Emily and shows the wonders of automatic translation when Wuthering Heights became Whirlwind Mountain or Whirlwind Hill.

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Security Cameras in the Graveyard

The Telegraph & Argus follows the events after the theft of of the gravestones at Thornton churchyard last month:

The hunt for three ancient gravestones pinched from a historic cemetery with Brontë links is still ongoing as it was revealed locals have raised £700 to pay for security cameras in the graveyard. (...)
Churchwarden Steven Stanworth, who said he was left sickened at the gravestone theft, said he hoped the stone would eventually be recovered.
“It is a bit disappointing,” he said.“Police recovered a lot of stone in Keighley, but we won’t know if any of that is ours until January.
“We have raised £700 to buy security cameras, including £500 from Dean Barker Electricals, and have a Community Payback team coming in March to re-do the decking and revarnish in the grounds. So out of that, we have had some good things come out of it and it has been really positive.
“We have created a commemorative plate to try and raise more money to pay for security measures.”
Officers found 50 slabs at an address in Northcliffe Avenue, Thornton, following information on the theft of flags in November.
A 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the theft of stone from the graveyard and remains on bail. (Dolores Cowburn)

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner recommends tonight's Countryfile programme on BBC One:

Artist Ashley Jackson will be on TV tomorrow – painting the historic ruin he campaigned to save 40 years ago.
The Holmfirth artist has been painting Top Withens – this time for Countryfile which will be shown on BBC1 on Sunday (7pm).
The ruined cottage on a moor, near Haworth, is widely regarded as the inspiration for the Earnshaw family house, Wuthering Heights, in the novel of the same name by Emily Brontë.
In the 1970s, Ashley battled to save the ruins which had been damaged by vandals, weather and over-enthusiastic Brontë fans.
On Sunday, Ashley will be talking to Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison about how the Brontë sisters and Top Withens inspired him and continue to stimulate other artists.
Ashley, who first visited Top Withens in 1966 with artist and friend Stanley Chapman, will also be giving the Countryfile presenter a masterclass in sketching.

The Huffington Post's Word & Film publishes a list of the best book adaptations of the year:  Wuthering Heights is one of them.

This is the live and unplugged version of Cathy and Heathcliff’s doomed love affair on the wind-whipped Yorkshire moors. Writer-director Andrea Arnold distilled Emily Brontë’s novel down to its vaporous and visceral essence using sparse dialogue, stark painterly imagery, and an interracial romance whose savage sensuality emerges out of the primal intimacy of early exchanges where Cathy literally licks Heathcliff’s wounds and sidles up to him to ride over the rocky cliffs on the bare back of a horse nearly as wild as they are. (Christine Spines)

The Miami Herald reviews several new graphic novels:

The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From “Kubla Khan” to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Russ Kick.
This prodigious and astounding collection of literary adaptations is staggering in its ambition, but even more so in its execution and realization. Kick’s anthology, the middle volume of a chronological trilogy, includes graphic iterations of works by Coleridge, Keats, Twain, Blake, Wordsworth and others, by Megan Kelso, S. Clay Wilson, Dame Darcy, Hunt Emerson, Lance Tooks and Kim Deitch, among the superb array of contributors. (Richard Pachter)

The Sunday Express explores heritage trains in Britain and the KWVR is on the list:

Keighley & Worth Valley Railway
Transferring at dark-stoned Keighley station from an electric train from Leeds on to a steam train is to step back more than half a century.
This short, five-mile railway (01535 645 214/kwvr.co.uk) will always be associated with the classic 1970 film The Railway Children, starring Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins.
Beside the characterful station at Ingrow is the Museum of Rail Travel, which supplied period carriages for the filming of TV mini-series South Riding, based on Winifred Holtby’s novel.
Another association with female authors is found at the main intermediate station of Haworth, where a walk up cobbled Main Street to the Brontë family parsonage is almost obligatory.
The final mile to the terminus at Oxenhope is the prettiest on the railway as it follows Bridgehouse Beck, crossed by a packhorse bridge on the Railway Children Walk linking the valley’s sites.
For the more intrepid there are walks out on to the moors and Top Withens, thought to have inspired the setting for the Earnshaw home in Wuthering Heights. (Anthony Lambert)

Harriet Walker talks about New Year's Eve in New York in The Independent (and in spite of her words we can't but be really jealous):

I shouldn't be in this situation. If you believe in karma, I should have every New Year's Eve planned from now until that serene point when you stop caring about feeling bleak if you just stay in and cheer Jonathan Ross from the comfort of your armchair, looking around your empty front-room with all the misanthropic gusto of Heathcliff turfing a houseguest out into the snow.

The Asian Age describes the Indian soap opera Phir Subah Hogi  like this:

Phir Subah Hogi’s complex story — a Jane Eyre-esque romance against the backdrop of socially sanctioned prostitution in a north Indian village — brought Varun Badola and Narayani Shastri back into the limelight, while a brash, effervescent role was inducement enough for Rakhi Vijan. (Priyanka Kelkar & Rohini Nair)

The writer Xu Xi lists 2012 literary highlights for the South China Morning Post:

Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse. Edith Campbell Berry ranks right up there alongside Isabel Archer, Anna Wulf, Jean Brodie, Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp, Wong Chia Chi and other memorable female protagonists who create their own lives (and loves).

El País (Uruguay) asks María Fernández (PR of a local casino resort) for her preferences:

Un libro. Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. Lo leí a los 17 durante mi viaje a clases de inglés y me sumergí de tal manera que viví cada segundo de los personajes principales.

More Brontëites on Lancaster Online; today's Plus Ten puzzle at the New York Times includes a "Brontë heroine" question;  the Bayside Douglaston Patch includes Wuthering Heights 2011 among the best films of the year; the original novel is also included in this top ten of Bella Online; The Daily Prophecy reviews Aviva Orr's The Mist on Brontë Moor; Litterature et cie (in French) posts about Jane Eyre; cinemalodica reviews Jane Eyre 1944; Filmy Kostiumowe (in Polish) talks about Jane Eyre 1970.

Several blogs and websites post pictures and audio from yesterday's 200th Anniversary of Patrick and Maria Brontë's wedding. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook publishes a set of three pictures, the Brontë Sisters and Voice of the Valleys also have pictures; Leeds Daily Photo and Brontë Radio have audios of the Haworth Church bells full peal.

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Tristram Shandy evicted

The New York Times interviews Margaret Atwood who has published Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth:

So what led you to take up the subject of debt?
Long ago, I was a graduate student in Victorian literature. When you think of the 19th-century novel, you think romance — you think Heathcliff, Cathy, Madame Bovary, etc. But the underpinning structure of those novels is money, and Madame Bovary could have cheerfully gone on committing adultery for a long time if she hadn’t overspent. (Deborah Solomon)

EDIT (2 October 2008) (from ohnotheydidnt):

“I became a Victorian. That was my field of study at univer-sity - and that's the age par excellence in which plots are driven by money and people are embroiled in an outbreak of capitalism. Wuthering Heights is driven by money: Heathcliff earns a fortune and then comes back to extract the house from its previous owner. Madame Bovary would have been quite all right had she kept within her budget. It's not the adultery - it's the debt that sank her.”

Today we have just another sample of that (perverse) journalist custom of defending one cause by attacking just another that happens to be on the journalist's mind for some reason. Christina Patterson vehemently defends in The Independent that Shandy Hall (Laurence Sterne's house) in Yorkshire should be preserved but thinks necessary to add:

Apart from the world of Brontë shortbread and sub-Austen samplers, there are a number of buildings in this country that operate not as sacred temples to writers elevated to the top table of heritage Britain – deified, commodified and occasionally revivified by Andrew Davies – but as living, and often leaking, tributes to some of this country's greatest minds, and their work.

The Daily Star (Bangladesh) has reread Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and thinks that

The settings and landscapes of Aymenem can easily be compared to Bronte's Wuthering Heights and give it character. It is very much visible in the book that the kind of landscape the writer grew up in is still very much living in her --- the way she loves a tree or a river or the color of the earth. It is a different kind of love. (Shusmita Amin Chowdhury)

Categories: References, Wuthering Heights

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Sunday walks

A good walk on a Sunday morning. The Telegraph & Argus suggests one around Haworth moors and Penistone Hills:

The Brontë Sisters regularly hitched up their tweeds and strolled over the Brontë Moors, seeking inspiration from the (at times) bleak landscape. They will have undoubted climbed Penistone Hill on many of these walks and here we follow in their footsteps.

There are a number of car parks in Haworth. Choose one and head towards the church and the Brontë Parsonage. It is worth visiting the Parsonage before the walk to gain a feel for the tough upbringing they had. In turn this will bring a greater appreciation to the walk. The path heads up the south side of St Michael and All Angels Church, an impressive building where the father of the Brontë sisters was Reverend for 41 years (and rather sadly outlived all three daughters). Beyond the church the path bears left for 200 metres, passing a car park on the left. After 200m take the signed lane to the right which climbs steeply for a further 250 metres before meeting a minor road. Cross the road and take the footpath heading south west. (...)

This path picks its way through the heather until it meets a wider track. Turn left and follow the track to the Brontë Bridge and Brontë Seat. It is a fine spot. Turn left/south at the bridge and head up on the narrow path past the waterfall. (Jonathan Smith)

The New York Times recommends O Caledonia by Elspeth Parker.

Read if you like: Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle,” the film “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë OR Kate Bush. (Molly Young)

Also in the NYT, an interview with Ralph Fiennes:

When I finally careered into the right place, 30 minutes late, he was sitting alone, looking sharp in a Timothy Everest navy wool suit, eating an appetizer, which he called “a chickpea thing” and drinking a glass of Sancerre. He did not give me a brooding Heathcliff look (though he perfected it in 1992’s “Wuthering Heights”). (Maureen Dowd)

Louder than War reviews Running Up That Hill – 50 Visions Of Kate Bush. by Tom Doyle:

There’s something quite apt about Bush’s voice summoning the hands of pilled-up hedonists at warehouse parties and a kind of payback too. For an artist who sampled Emily Brontë on Wuthering Heights – to be sampled back herself in return must have seemed hilarious in many ways. Bush to her eternal credit cleared the sample anyway.  (...)

From Emily Brontë to Acid House to internet zeitgeist, the truth is Kate Bush has travelled to places other artists can only dream of and perhaps, just perhaps, she isn’t done shape-shifting yet. (Craig Campbell)

The Spanish edition of Esquire has an article about writers and their first novels:

La primera obra en solitario que publicó la británica Emily Jane Brontë fue Cumbres borrascosas. Primera novela y última, pues murió al año siguiente, en diciembre de 1848, enferma de tuberculosis. Solo contaba con 30 años y dos obras en su haber, la citada novela y una colección de poemas que había escrito junto a sus dos hermanas, Charlotte Brontë y Anne Brontë. El poemario apenas vendió dos ejemplares, pero la confianza que ellas mismas tenían en su escritura hizo que publicaran una novela en solitario cada una. La de Charlotte fue Jane Eyre y la de Anne Agnes Grey. Las tres vieron la luz en 1847 bajo los pseudónimos de Ellis Bell, Currer Bell y Acton Bell respectivamente, y tuvieron resultados comerciales desiguales. La obra más vendida fue Jane Eyre, éxito inmediato y hoy día reconocida como una de las mejores novelas británicas de todos los tiempos. Misma situación en el olimpo literario ocupa Cumbres borrascosas, pero en cambio, en su año fue recibida como una obra tosca, salvaje, inmoral, de estructura confusa. Agnes Grey —escrita por Anne Brontë, la pequeña de la familia— no obtuvo la fama de su hermana Charlotte pero tampoco la exacerbada indignación que recibió Emily. Anne falleció también a causa de la tuberculosis con 29 años de edad. Antes de fallecer tuvo tiempo de escribir su segunda novela, La inquilina de Wildfell Hall. Tanto su primera obra como esta segunda son consideradas hoy obras imprescindibles para comprender la época victoriana y clásicos de la literatura en inglés. (Álvaro de Luna) (Translation)

Gatopardo (México) explores the films of Claire Denis:

Por ejemplo, los protagonistas no hablan mucho en Friday night (2002), donde el tráfico parisino provoca que una mujer conozca a un extraño seductor con quien pasa una noche de estrujones y desnudez. El tono y los temas son como una fantasía femenina escrita por alguna de las hermanas Brontë, pero la forma dramática evade por completo lo convencional: hay poco diálogo, una trama escasa y unos delirios inexplicables. Basta ver a Vincent Lindon parado en medio de los coches mientras mira con deseo hacia la nada para entender lo que le despierta a la protagonista. (Alonso Díaz De La Vega) (Translation)

Última Hora (Spain) asks several writers what book they would love to have written:

Por su parte, Maria de la Pau Janer reconoce que «si hubiese sido una escritora romántica, inglesa y victoriana, me hubiese encantado escribir Cumbres borrascosas». «Curiosamente, fue la única novela que escribió Emily Brönte y tuvo un recibimiento editorial más bien tibio. La pasión que destila, el retrato de la amargura de los personajes, la narración de encuentros y desencuentros que nos describe, y las escenas que nos llevan al límite de las emociones siempre me han encantado. En su aparentemente tranquila existencia en los páramos ingleses, las hermanas Brontë crearon universos literarios de una riqueza y singularidad apasionantes». (Clara Ferrer) (Translation)

Espinof (Spain) and Las Furias Magazine (Spain) talk about the films seen at the recent Sitges Film Festival:

Entre estas piezas, a priori, desubicadas, han estado el sorprendentemente solvente y agradable biopic victoriano 'Emily', centrado en la autora de 'Cumbres borrascosas' y carente de cualquier conexión con el fantástico. (Víctor López G.) (Translation)

El debut en la dirección de la maravillosa actriz Frances O’Connor es una auténtica joya. La película, que relata la vida de Emily Brontë, se podría utilizar como un acertado manual de cómo se deben hacer las cosas en el cine.
Emily es una preciosa, misteriosa y excelente película en la que todos sus departamentos están de diez, y, por si fuera poco, su guion nos atrapa desde el principio hasta el final. Su reparto también está de órdago.
Es cierto que excepto una (magistral) escena, la película no da miedo, pero aún así, conocer o imaginar la vida de la autora de la oscura novela Cumbres borrascosas, si nos la cuentan como lo ha hecho Frances O’Connor, vale mucho la pena. (Xesco Simón) (Translation)

Grupo La Provincia (Argentina), El Espectador (Colombia) and The Wom (Italy) also talk about the film.  

Zenda (Argentina) publishes an excerpt of Mariana Enríquez's El Otro Lado where the author discusses her own novel Bajar es lo peor:

Con el romanticismo de Cumbres borrascosas y la geografía del sur de la ciudad porque la conocía y, sobre todo, porque por ahí transitan Martín y Alejandra en Sobre héroes y tumbas (Facundo es un poco Alejandra, también, y el trío que acecha a Narval es un poco la Secta de los Ciegos). Cumbres borrascosas y Sobre héroes y tumbas eran mis novelas favoritas aquellos años. (Translation)

A couple of German podcasts: Detektor.fm's N99 and the F.A.Z Bücher-Podcast interview Mithu Sanyal about her new book Mithu Sanyal über Emily Brontë. Steve Jackson in RAMzine describes Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush as "utterly mesmerising, majestic and quite frankly stunning".

Romantic quotes, including one from Wuthering Heights, in Pinkvilla.

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Brontë pre-history

Mammoth Screen joint managing director Damien Timmer writes for Broadcast mostly about the why and wherefore of the recent Lost in Austen, but he also slips in a comment about their forthcoming Wuthering Heights for ITV.

Truth #2 is that the big titles are coming around faster and faster. Mammoth Screen's upcoming Wuthering Heights comes 11 years after the previous version, which now seems like pre-history.

He is right in that. When it comes to Wuthering Heights, many people feel that no version has even come close to doing justice to the novel, with the arguable exception of Wuthering Heights 1939, which by those standards must be pre-pre-pre-pre-history. With Jane Eyre, on the other hand, a good many people have a favourite version which they claim is as close and loyal to the novel as possible, but - as we see it - that is not the case with any version of Wuthering Heights generally speaking.

And, of course, there is also the fear of producers to tackle lesser-known works (*cough* Villette *cough*, *cough* Shirley *cough*).

Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series quite refuse to abandon our newsrounds. From The Globe and Mail:

Informed less by millennia of vampire tales, or centuries of fiction, then films, Twilight is also grossly indebted to Jane Eyre and that novel's own brutish, wild Edward (Rochester), dangerous pastoral setting and plain-Jane heroine.
While Meyer's Bella reads Jane Austen, it puts her to sleep: The sexually omnivorous imagination of Charlotte Bronte is awakened when, as with Rochester meeting Jane, Edward meets Bella and behaves like a furious animal, which, of course, makes him all the more, meta-Harlequin alluring. (Lynn Crosbie)

'Brutish, wild Edward', huh?

But Stephenie Meyer is not the only one inspired by Jane Eyre. Singer Laura Marling tries to describe to the Guardian what her new album will be like.

Marling also read Jane Eyre three times in the three months before she made the album. 'I love that Brontë era, the creepy, dark romance. It's funny how much what you're reading influences what you think.' (Alice Fisher)

Salon.com reviews Margaret Atwood's Payback:

That fiery gypsy Heathcliff may have loved and lost Cathy, but he paid her back by snatching up her encumbered estate. (As Atwood drolly notes, "The best nineteenth-century revenge is not seeing your enemy's red blood all over the floor but seeing the red ink all over his balance sheet.") (Louis Bayard)

And Eureka Street also uses Wuthering Heights as an example to introduce an article on 'migrants':

In a famous scene in English Literature, conventional Lockwood, the outsider unable to find his way home, is doubly displaced when he is forced to stay the night at Wuthering Heights, a house so strange as to be a foreign land. During the night he experiences a dream-haunting: Catherine, dead 20 years, comes to his broken window and begs and pleads to be let in. Lockwood, terrified, rubs her wrist to and fro upon the shards of glass.
Migrants are like Heathcliff's Cathy, tapping persistently at the window of the past. They realise they can never truly go home again, yet their hearts and spirits continue to yearn. (Gillian Bouras)

Kent News (the news website of the State University of Kent, Ohio)has an article on theatre labs, and a costume lab currently working on Jane Eyre turns up:

Kent's theater productions also benefit from the lab classes. Currently, students are working on costumes for the School of Theatre and Dance's production of "Jane Eyre," opening next semester. "They are making orphan costumes because we have lots of orphans," Russell said, "so we figured it would be a good project for them." (Lauren Crist)

On the blogosphere we find a couple of new readers: The Walking Canvas is reading Jane Eyre and YU has just started The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Hopefully the latter will take some things with a pinch of salt.

Finally, the Brontë Parsonage Blog posts a link to a report from BBC's Look North where the matter of clamping in Haworth is debated.

Categories: Brontëites, Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

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Emily Brontë’s American Psycho is a hottie and loves Yorkshire Pudding

Several Yorkshire news outlets echo the press release from Visit York which listed the best things in/from Yorkshire:

According to brand new research, Yorkshire is best known for its food and drink offering with the Yorkshire Pudding named as ‘The Best Thing to come out of York and Yorkshire’.
The survey, conducted by Visit York, polled over 4,000 people from all over the UK and overseas and found that almost half of all respondents put the classic Sunday lunch accompaniment within their top three choices of the best thing to come out of York and Yorkshire; second place went to Yorkshire Tea with 18% of the votes cast; closely followed by Wensleydale Cheese with 16% of votes.
Leading lady, Dame Judi Dench took centre stage in terms of the most popular person to have come from the region with 15% of votes, giving her fourth place overall. The Brontë Sisters meanwhile reached the wuthering heights of fifth place with 14%. Captain James Cook navigated his way into sixth place with 12% of the votes and Michael Palin travelled to seventh place with 11%.
The survey was conducted by Visit York to celebrate the opening of its new £900,000 state-of-the-art Visitor Information Centre, which acts as a gateway of services for the region, offering visitors plus local residents and businesses with the keys to unlock both York and the wider Yorkshire and Humber area.

Janice Card, the writer and director of the viral video Jane Austen's Fight Club is interviewed on Entertainment Weekly. Upcoming projects?

So does that mean that she’s planning on making a sequel? “People are asking, ‘What’s next?’ I think the first thing that comes to mind is Emily Brontë’s American Psycho. Because that’s what Heathcliff was. Except British.” (Keith Staskiewicz)

We read in the letters to The Guardian a response to Gabriel Josipovici's attack on modern British authors. The missive has a Brontë reference:

Writers from Charlotte Brontë and Dickens to Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis knew that if a truly gifted novelist is telling a story, he or she is already using language as magic. (Richard Cooper)

This article in the New York Times about the upcoming NFL seasons contains an unexpected Brontë mention. Talking about the player of the New Orleans Saints, Pierre Thomas:

Saints running back Pierre Thomas missed the start of camp, but Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis characterized contract talks as “cordial,” which would be ideal if they were negotiating with a Brontë sister. (Mike Tanier)

The Guardian reviews several books for children:

The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
Romance without any vampires makes a welcome change for teen readers. Not that death is entirely absent. When her gorgeous and successful older sister drops dead unexpectedly, Lennie has to learn to live again. Perhaps because of her passion for Wuthering Heights, she finds herself falling in love. How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic and warm-blooded novel.

The main character in that novel is described like this in the San Jose Young Adult Literature Examiner:

She is a band geek and a Wuthering Heights hopeless romantic. (Barbara Bell)

The property section of The Times has an article about Scarborough:

Other highlights include the impressive Victorian architecture of the Grand Hotel, and St Mary’s Church, where Anne Brontë is buried.

Also in The Times a top ten of spots by the river for picnic:

Hebden Water, West Yorkshire. Brontë moors. Walking by the river up this quiet cleft in the flank of the Brontë moors, it is hard to imagine the roar and clatter of milling that filled this dale scarcely more than a century ago. There is a café at the nearby National Trust-maintained Gibson Mill. Start & finish: Hardcastle Crags car park (OS ref SD987292). (Christopher Somerville)

David Gillett travelled around Derbyshire and chronicles it in The Globe and Mail:

We explored Chatsworth, lost in the endless corridors of Mr. Darcy's overblown Pemberley, gliding with reverence through the sculpture gallery, catching glimpses of Her Ladyship's chickens beyond the sash windows. We walked the misty shadows of Haddon Hall, that most perfectly preserved medieval pile, which stood in for Lizzie's bedroom, featured prominently in The Other Boleyn Girl, and played Thornfield Hall in the most recent Jane Eyre. (...)
On the way back down to the village, rain threatening, we passed isolated North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan manor house where Charlotte Brontë had Mrs. Rochester jump from the roof to her death in Jane Eyre.

Priya Ramani summarises in Live Mint (India) her favourite book, Daddy-Long-Legs:

When she goes to college she realizes that she’s missed out on a whole slice of life. She has never heard of Jane Eyre or Robinson Crusoe or Holmes or that Shelley is a poet and George Eliot a lady.
Jerusha and me clicked immediately. She’s the kind of girl who gets indignant when she hears a bishop preach that the poor were put on earth in order to keep the rest of us charitable; Wuthering Heights is her favourite book (I have yet to meet a woman who didn’t think Heathcliff was a hottie)[.]

Margaret Atwood is promoting her latest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, in India. The Hindu interviews her:

Even in the 19th century historical novel, money was important. In Jane Austen debt features consistently. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff goes away poor and comes back having earned a fortune to extract the house from its previous owner. (Bulan Lahiri)

We don't think that Wuthering Heights can be the best example for this discussion on New Zimbabwe:

In societies of past generations (African or Western), marriage was very much a vessel for stability as depicted in several literary works, think Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. (Mtshumayeli Ndebele)

Dick Wolfsie in The Shelbyville News makes the weird Brontë comparison of the year. Discussing the website I Write Like he says,

I took three of my recent newspaper humor columns and entered a few of the funniest paragraphs. Was I as wry as Buchwald or Bombeck? Apparently not. Instead, my style was likened to Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the Smothers Brothers of the 19th century.

A pity that the Smothers Brothers were only two, Anne is not included in the comparison.

The Nashville Gospel Music & Entertainment Examiner takes a (Christian) look at Twilight and doesn't forget the Brontës:

Twilight's teenage vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is a handsome, brooding, hero much in keeping with old Brontë sisters and Jane Austin[sic] novels. (Kathryn Darden)

Le Monde interviews the composer and director of the Festival de Montpellier, René Koering. The journalist seems more interested in knowing why part of the audience deserted during the second half of the recently performed Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera than in the quality of the piece:

Pourquoi, après vingt-cinq ans "d'éducation" de votre part, le public a-t-il déserté la salle en deuxième partie de l'opéra "Les Hauts de Hurlevent" du compositeur hollywoodien Bernard Herrmann, le 14 juillet ?
Je pense sérieusement qu'une partie du public imaginait que l'oeuvre s'arrêtait après une heure trente. L'autre partie a manifesté un dédain ordinaire pour la musique américaine (comme pour les musiques finlandaises, hollandaises ou portugaises, qui ne figurent pas ou plus dans les neurones lyricomanes ordinaires). A cela s'ajoute que le public "cultivé" pense qu'il est incongru d'offrir à un compositeur de musiques de films un fauteuil de velours rouge à l'Opéra. (Renaud Machart) (Google translation)

Fortunately, there are many who enjoyed and discovered Herrmann's opera:

C'est la première partie des « Hauts de Hurlevent » que Fletcher a choisi de raconter, celle traitant des amours de Catherine et d'Heathcliff pour ceux qui se souviennent du roman. Les cinéphiles auront reconnu certains thèmes musicaux de « Citizen Kane », de « La Mort aux trousses » ou de « Sueurs froides ».
Les autres auront découvert une musique ultralyrique, flamboyante et opulente, qui colle parfaitement à l'action de ce mélodrame passionnel : on ne s'ennuie jamais pendant les trois heures que dura la version concert donnée le 14 juillet au Corum de Montpellier. Herrmann y montre une science de l'orchestration inouië, et un talent manifeste à créer des surprises. Normal, pour quelqu'un qui a si longtemps travaillé pour le cinéma.
La révélation d'une chanteuse
Marianne CrébassaIl faut dire que ces « Hauts de hurlevent » était défendue par une distribution sans faille soutenue avec une merveilleuse science des voix par le jeune chef Alain Altinoglu. A noter la révélation de la jeune mezzo soprano montpelliéraine Marianne Crebassa dont c'était un des premiers rôles. Elle fit la surprise au public de jouer une partie de piano solo, puis de chanter en s'accompagnant elle-même. Instant magique. (Nathalie Krafft in Rue89) (Google translation)

René Koering rappelle les retombées économiques bénéficiaires du festival et fait aussi un bilan artistique. Il place en tête L'Étranger et Hurlevent et mentionne : la palme à Piramo, le choc à Berezovsky, le rire à Fazil Say, les honneurs au chef Juanjo Mena. (Michèle Fizaine in Midi-Libre) (Microsoft translation)

Dans ce dispositif, le Festival de Radio France à Montpellier "tient une place à part". "Les festivals de Salzbourg et d'Aix-en-Provence sont prisés mais le festival montpelliérain, original, est recherché pour ses oeuvres rares. Cette année, par exemple, l'opéra Les Hauts de Hurlevent de Bernard Herrmann, le compositeur fétiche de Hitchcock, a été très demandé". (Olivier Morel-Maroger talking with Valérie Hernandez in La Gazette de Montpellier) (Google translation)

Writer Ana María Shua suggests an interesting explanation on why Wuthering Heights is more widely considered a love story than Pride and Prejudice. In Clarín (Argentina):

“Sin desdicha, separación, pérdida, sufrimiento, no hay novela,” cuenta Ana María Shua. “Por eso no recordamos Orgullo y Prejuicio, de Jane Austen, como novela de amor (termina demasiado bien), y sí en cambio Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë.”(Paulina Villegas Vargas) (Google translation)

AlCinema (Italy) reviews the Italian DVD release of Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión:

Un film pieno di invenzioni surreali, sorrette da un portento ironico davvero invidiabile. Invece nella trasposizione di Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë, viene messa in luce la burrascosa storia d’amore tra Alejandro e Catalina. L’irrequieta ragazza cerca la serenità nell’amore, senza sapere cosa le porterà il destino. Quest’opera si presenta con un carattere duro, nell’esplicare l’amour fou nei suoi aspetti più pessimistici e profondamenti dilaniati, che lasciano un aurora di mistero intorno a questa pellicola dalla sua denominazione critica inclassificabile nel corpus creativo di Buñuel. (Maria Laura Platania and Matteo Merli) (Google translation)

And Film-Dienst reviews the German edition of Jane Eyre 1944:

Sie gehört zu den schönsten Schauerromanzen, die die britische Literatur hervorgebracht hat: Charlotte Brontës viktorianische Erzählung um die vom Schicksal gebeutelte, aber aufrechte Waise Jane Eyre, die ihr Herz dem mysteriös-düsteren Lord Rochester schenkt. Eine der besten Filmadaptionen des Klassikers bleibt Robert Stevensons Film von 1944, für den kein Geringerer als Aldous Huxley Brontës Roman in eine stimmige Filmdramaturgie übersetzt hat. Die Hauptrollen werden von der ebenso zarten wie unbeugsamen Joan Fontaine und dem jungen Orson Welles gespielt; die Schwarz-Weiß-Ästhetik erweckt kongenial das von verhängnisvollen Schatten der Vergangenheit heimgesuchte Anwesen Thornfield zum Leben. Die von Alive vertriebene DVD präsentiert den Film in guter Bild- und Tonqualität. (jög) (Google translation)

The Spenborough Guardian lists 'its Brontë heritage' as one of the attractions of Spen Valley, the New York Times reviews Lyndall Gordon's biography of Emily Dickinson and describes as 'highly regarded' her biography of Charlotte Brontë:

Gordon shows how literary these love lives were, how scripted and plotted according to the latest novels. “Susan was sober, a reserved Jane Eyre aware of an orphan’s position as visitor in others’ homes,” she writes of Dickinson’s ­sister-in-law. (Christopher Benfey)

韓裴之隨筆 posts about Jane Eyre and Народная Газета discovers a "Belarusian Jane Eyre" The Sherlockian uploads a Jane Eyre book trailer on YouTube. Finally, the Brussels Brontë Group has an article about the repavement of the Rue Terarken, one of the few surviving stretches of the narrow cobbled streets of the Quartier Isabelle.

Categories: Books, Brussels, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Opera, References, Wuthering Heights

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Post Truth Era: Alternative facts vs Apathy and Negativity

The Telegraph reports that the so-called 'earliest known painting of the Brontë Sisters' has been sold. The article seems to be written only reading the press release of the auctioneers, therefore it seems appropriate to double check some 'facts'.

A painting acquired “by mistake” after an auction house mix-up has sold for £50,000 after it was identified as the earliest known portrait of the Bronte sisters.

Actually it was £40,550 (£50,038 including buyers premium).

Landseer is thought to have met Charlotte, Anne and Emily in 1833 when they visited Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire, where he was an artist in residence. At the time he was a young painter, yet to become a favourite of Queen Victoria. The portrait is dated 1834.

This is pure speculation and it has never been substantiated in fact.

 Clues in the picture include the detail of “Charlotte’s protruding front tooth” and jewellery that matches objects on display in the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, Mr Humbert said.

Again, this is wishful thinking at its best.

“We are never going to be able to prove anything 100 per cent because this is a cold case,” he said.
“But it has been widely accepted by the establishment as a Landseer portrait of the Brontës, as shown by the fact that it came from nowhere and sold for £50,000.” (Anita Singh)

Not widely and decidedly not by the Brontë experts and institutions.

We leave the best for last. This comment by the auctioneer on BBC News/Daily Express is priceless:

"The evidence was compelling that this is the Brontes as painted by Landseer and its successful sale has proved that research and factual evidence will overcome apathy and negativity."  (...)
There's too many details for naysayers to say this is not right.

On Keighley News we also read:

Brontë Parsonage Museum executive director Kitty Wright declined to comment on the sale of the painting.

Of course, solid proof, no mere speculation or wishful thinking aka 'alternative facts', has nothing to do when there is a successful sale. Paraphrasing naysayer Carl Sagan: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary (apathetic and negative as it may be) evidence. It speaks volumes that the most extraordinary evidence supplied is that someone has paid 50000 GBP.

The Antiques Trade Gazette also covers the news in a more objective way.

Keighley News talks about some of the most ambitious projects of the Brontë Society:

A centre for women’s writing could be built in an underground former reservoir above the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
And a long-lost barn could be rebuilt alongside the Haworth attraction to house a visitor centre dedicated to the famous literary family.
The proposed projects – both in the very early stages – have been revealed in interviews this month by Brontë Society executive director Kitty Wright. (...)
The ideas for new buildings on land owned by the Brontë Society near the museum were put forward in the Brontë Society’s recent successful bid to become an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation.
Kitty said that such accreditation with the Arts Council allowed the society spend time and money looking at the feasibility of such projects, but stressed major funding would have to be found to actually carry them out.
She said the large Victorian underground reservoir lay on land behind the parsonage.
She said: “It was built after Patrick Brontë commissioned the Babbage report into public health in Haworth. The village needed a fresh water supply.
“It’s fantastic to have the reservoir for its own historical reasons, with its links with Patrick Brontë."
Kitty said the Brontë Society would have to carry out detailed investigations into utility supplies, engineering, drainage and access, as well as environmental surveys and extensive consultation with local people. (...)
“We have to keep looking to secure or future but we have to be very clear about preserving the things that make us special. It’s absolutely about being true to our heritage and finding a way of expressing that.”
Kitty stressed that the other idea, rebuilding the barn, was only a tentative suggestion at the moment.
During the Brontës’ lifetimes the barn stood on a small hill between the Parsonage Museum and the car park, but there are now mature trees on the land. (David Knights)

Also in Keighley News, great news for the Parsonage:

The international popularity of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is expanding across the entire county.
Yorkshire saw a 30 per cent increase in overseas visitors in the first three months of 2017, with 267,000 people spending £99 million.
International spend in Yorkshire is almost double the national average which is up 16 per cent year on year.
The Brontë museum recently reported a 24 per cent increase in visitors during the Easter weekend including its busiest Easter Saturday to 10 years.
This was blamed on the ‘Brontë buzz’ both locally and around the world from the ongoing five-year bicentennial celebrations for the births of Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne.

More Haworth news. The Haworth Primary School has collaborated in the Claire Twomey Wuthering Heights - A Manuscript project:

Pupils at the school visited the Haworth museum this month to each write a line with support from volunteer Stuart Davies.
Sue Newby, the museum Learning Officer, said ‘Wuthering Heights – A Manuscript’ had captured the imagination of visitors from all over the world.
She said: “We were really pleased to offer pupils from our local primary school the opportunity to sit in the house where Emily wrote her famous novel and take their turn to copy out a line.
“All the children seemed to relish the sense of occasion and we hope they will return next year with their families to see the finished manuscript.” (David Knights in Keighley News)

Haworth's foot-paths have been cleaned:

Parish councillors have spearheaded the clearing of footpaths around Haworth.
Work has been carried out to improve access to footpaths that become impassable due to poor grounding and overgrown weeds.
Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council worked with Bradford Council and Community Payback to carry out the work.
The footpath at North Street, leading from the Sun Inn car park behind the West Lane churches, was strimmed.
Work on the footpath from Cold Street to Woodlands Rise has included weedkiller treatment, and footpaths from Heathcliff flats to the Bronte Parsonage Museum have also been improved. (David Knights in Keighley News)

The Hindu's Book Shelf includes today Wuthering Heights:

Emily Brontë's magnum opus Wuthering Heights showcased the hypocrisy, social classes and gender inequality in the Victorian Era.
Most of the authors, especially in the 19th century, had to write no fewer than four-five books to create a space for them in the revered literary circles. For some, even 20 books might have not sufficed. But, that is not the case of the daughter of an Irish clergyman, who spent much of her life in Hawthorn (sic), England.
Considered one of the best women authors who have put their thoughts to paper, Emily Bronte was as intense, intellectual and elusive as her solo book Wuthering Heights . Alas, she didn't know the profound legacy she was to leave behind, as she had died suddenly at the age of 30. (Arathi M) (Read more)

Psychology Today on ghosts:

When I was seven years old, my aunt Hazel, the youngest of my mother's sisters read me the first two chapters of “Jane Eyre” in the big green nursery with its black board across one wall, at Crossways, the house where my father had just died. You will remember how Jane is carried off unceremoniously and locked in the Red Room where she thinks she sees her uncle’s ghost.
It seems a strange choice of lecture for a seven year old, though my sister who was present was two and older than I.
It had a terrifying effect on me, one that has lasted all my life, and perhaps led me, too, to become a writer in an effort to render active what I had submitted to passively. Mr Reed, Jane’s uncle, in the book, like my own father just down the corridor from the nursery in the big bedroom, with the mauve velvet curtains, has died in this somber, silent room with its crimson curtains.Jane believes her uncle has come back to see if his wife, Jane’s cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed, has carried out his death-bed wishes and is taking good care of little Jane, his sister’s child. (Sheila Kohler)

Pen names in Jezabel:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the tides have turned since the Brontë sisters and George Elliot were publishing under manly names. Or perhaps they haven’t turned—for instance, read Catherine Nichols’s Jezebel essay on the different reception she received when submitting her work as somebody named “George”—so much as there is a huge market demand for psychological “Girl Who” thrillers, often featuring dead or missing women, written largely by women for female audiences. And the guys—and their publishers—want in. (Kelly Faircloth)

And Daily Star:

Anonymity can be liberating. The pen names Currer and Ellis Bell, respectively, allowed Charlotte and Emily Brontë to use influences from their local neighbourhood to craft Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. George Elliott, the famed writer of Middlemarch, was actually Mary Anne Evans. (Sarah Anjum Bari)

Austen vs Brontë tidbits:

Women like Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and especially the Brontë sisters. Charlotte, Emily and Anne are in the middle of 200th anniversaries of their own, as we remember the bicentenaries of their births in the years 1816 to 1820. Along with Austen they crafted brilliant works of genius that are the equal of any novels written by men, and in the public’s eye the Brontës and Jane have become inextricably linked.
I once asked one of the hard working guides at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth what question they are asked more than any other. It was ‘Which of the Brontë sisters wrote Pride and Prejudice?’ followed closely by, ‘Is this where Jane Austen wrote her novels?’ (Nick Holland in The History Press) (Read more)

Treinta años después, en 1847, Charlotte Brontë publicaba Cumbres borrascosas y declaraba que no entendía el interés que despertaban las historias de Austen, a las que calificaba peyorativamente de “jardines bellos, cultivados y aseados” (Rodrigo González in La Tercera) (Translation)

 The nouns are harsh; it’s the verb, though—be prevailed on—that’s key. Even in its superficial passivity, it understands that Lizzy, at least at this moment, is the one with the power. Charlotte Brontë once scoffed of Austen that “the Passions are perfectly unknown to her”; this was, it seems, a misreading. Austen was acutely aware not merely of such Passions, but also, indeed, of the freedoms they could offer. (Megan Garber in The Atlantic)

Certo, nell’Ottocento [Darcy] ha dovuto vedersela con l’imperfetto Rochester, l’eroe romantico di Charlotte Brontë, ma dalla seconda metà del Novecento regna incontrastato nelle fantasie femminili, anche quelle ormai contaminate dall’hardcore. (Il Dubbio)(Translation)

Para muitos, Austen é a rainha da literatura inglesa. Bem... Melhor deixar esse assunto para outro momento. Não é intenção provocar os fãs das irmãs Brontë com esse fato. Porém, a autora consegue transitar entre a Academia e o grande público, composto pelo leitor comum - para citar o termo de Virginia Woolf, que inclusive era leitora e admiradora de Austen. (Ricelly Jáder in Diário de Nordeste) (Translation)

Anders als etwa die Brontë-Schwestern flüchtet sie sich beim Schreiben nicht in eine Fantasiewelt, sondern bewegt sich dicht an der Realität. Allerdings karikiert und parodiert sie ihre Mitmenschen, deren Beziehungen und auch die herrschenden Verhältnisse nach Herzenslust. (Stephanie Pieper in NDR) (Translation)

The death of the film director George A. Romero is reported in this article of Metro which traces a genealogy of zombie films:

George A. Romero didn’t invent the word “zombie,” but he might as well have. Before he unleashed “Night of the Living Dead” upon an unsuspecting world in 1968, the word didn’t instantly conjure up what it would mean from then on out: white terror, hungry corpses, gnawed-upon flesh. “Zombie” simply meant the undead, the deceased reanimated. Sometimes they were bad: Frankenstein’s monster was a zombie. Sometimes they were not: The blank-faced, not-quite-dead wife of Val Lewton’s “I Walked with a Zombie” (a stealth adaptation of “Jane Eyre,” amazingly) was also a zombie. (Matt Prigge)

Image Journal interviews film director Rodrigo García:

I was fascinated by the stories in the Bible, and these are stories that live in the realm of stories, in our heads. I think the world where Hitler lives is the same world where Captain Ahab or Jane Eyre live. We don’t know them. We’ve never seen them. I am not trying to say that Ahab is Hitler or that Jesus is like Madame Bovary, just a fiction; but in our heads, they are all stories. (Gareth Higgins and Scott Teems)

La Repubblica (Italy) interviews the writer Karin Slaughter:

Come ti sei rapportata all’ondata di thriller psicologici che presentano protagoniste femminili?  "Non credo si possa parlare di un’ondata. In realtà si tratta di un fenomeno letterario che ha origini lontane, credo fin da Cime tempestose. (Eva Grippa) (Translation)

Linda's BookBag recommends A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikjawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. CBC does the same with Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley. The Book Lovers Boudoir hated Wuthering Heights. Vesna Armstrong Photography posts recent pictures of Ponden Hall and Brontë country.

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