Yes. Well. Hmm. A curio, Victorian or otherwise. The blurbs seem to promise something that was seldom seen in this evening, which was in equal parts frustrating, unique and, at times, unintentionally entertaining. What is this new Victorian manifesto? Not a clue, unless it was vocalist-keyboardist Nick Pagan's dictum that true poets and artists must continue to aspire in the face of adversity - something he banged on a bit more than his Casio. I went expecting this singular soul, who speaks in an accent somewhere between Mid-Atlantic and Liberace, and who has worked with Siouxsie and the Banshees, to meld contemporary music with the verse of Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte, Matthew Arnold, et al. And, while there were two examples of this at the top of the program, the rest of the hour was spent being forced to acknowledge Pagan's own versifying (a song about Prozac was particularly forgettable) or find him creatively trying to shoe-horn the Beatles and John Cale into this vague Victorian manifesto. The oddity of the evening was enhanced by a startling time-warp in the room. There was Pagan, mop-topped and passionately attacking his keyboard, as if still auditioning three decades ago for a chance to open for Spandau Ballet. But to his left were two sleek, elegant French musicians (Catherine Lubatti on electric violin and Damien Soupizet on eclectic [sic] guitar), both brilliant, and both seemingly visitors from a more promising future. Under what circumstances did these people meet? It's one of the hour's greatest questions. Still, STILL, Pagan is unlike anyone else. He is his own man, complete with his own loves and manias, and more power to him. He's a true original, and, in this dull age of stifling conformity, I salute him. (Steffen Silvis)The Provincetown Banner reviews a local production of The Mystery of Irma Vep (at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater):
The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater jumps into its 25th season with this Charles Ludlam play, subtitled “A Penny Dreadful.” It is, and is intended to be, an over-the-top send-up of everything from “Jane Eyre” and especially “Rebecca” to Edgar Allen Poe and every other book, poem and movie of the genre. (Sue Harrison)Broadway World presents yet another production of the Charles Ludlam's play by The Atlanta Shakespeare Company at The New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, Georgia. And The Arizona Daily Star talks about another one by the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson:
"It's a wonderful spoof of movies like 'Rebecca' and 'Wuthering Heights,' " said [Leslie J. ] Miller, adding that puns are plentiful, too. (Kathleen Allen)Amanda Ash in The Times-Colonist gets a nomination for this most unBrontëite of references. Reviewing Jumpin' Jack by Lyle Victor:
The play is filled with witty one-liners and laugh-worthy expressions, but as a whole, it feels like reading Jane Eyre. An 80 minute one-man play is simply too long.The Chicago Tribune reviews Lilian Pizzichini's biography of Jean Rhys: The Blue Hour:
Yet she was holed up in a bungalow in Cornwall working for decades on what would be considered her masterpiece, "Wide Sargasso Sea," which evokes Rhys' childhood and rewrites one of the most famous screeching mutes in literary history, Charlotte Bronte's lunatic Bertha Mason in "Jane Eyre."A local musician competing in the Edmonton Provincial Music Festival (Canada):
"I wanted to write her a life," Rhys said of Antoinette Cosway, her tragic Creole heiress. Lilian Pizzichini's goal in her new biography, "The Blue Hour," is also to rescue Rhys from the caricature of a life of ill repute and drunken dissolution. (Kate Zambreno)
Jordyn Appleby is competing in the musical theatre category, which includes singing and dancing in costume from a stage production. Her piece is a song called Forgiveness from the musical Jane Eyre. (Crowsnest Pass Promoter)And in Xalapa, México at the Festival de la Lectura:
Hoy, los estudiantes volverán a estar en el Festival de la Lectura, de 12:00 a 14:00 horas en la Casa del Lago, mostrando está técnica de grabado y regalando a los asistentes grabados de las portadas de la Biblioteca del Universitario.And even more students with Brontë leanings. In Volgograd, Russia, the winner of the regional competition Герой нашего времени (The hero of our time) is Надежда Дружинина which devoted her work to Jane Eyre according to Volgograd.ru.
Algunos de los autores de los grabados de la colección son los siguientes: (...)Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë. (Juan Carlos Plata in Diario de Xalapa) (Google translation)
Die Schwestern Anne, Charlotte und Emily Bronte faszinieren ihre Leser seit anderthalb Jahrhunderten und bereits seit 1850 interessieren sich Literaturtouristen für die Orte, an denen die Familie lebte und die in ihren Romanwelten beschrieben wird. Der Bildband „Die Welt der Brontes“ zeigt auf wunderschönen Fotos Häuser und Orte, die mit der Familie verknüpft sind. Das Pfarrhaus in Haworth, in dem die Brontes den größten Teil ihres Lebens verbrachten, ist selbstverständlich zu sehen, aber auch die Apotheke, in der sich ihr Bruder Branwell mit Opium versorgte, ist noch erhalten und die von ihrem Vater, dem Reverend, erbaute Sonntagsschule. Hinzu kommen Orte, die in den Texten beschrieben werden, und für die es – mal gesichert, mal wahrscheinlich - ein Pendant in der Realität gibt. Charlotte beschreibt in Jane Eyre das Dorf Morton, und man darf annehmen, dass sie dabei den Ort Hathersage vor Orten hatte. Wo Wuthering Heights liegt, das bleibt allerdings weiter ungeklärt.And hearing aids and Jane Eyre in the Bemidji Pioneer, Cornucopia of Books reviews Wuthering Heights, Concursori (Romania) invites you to win a copy of Charlotte Brontë's The Professor in Romanian just by answering a very easy question.
Nun kann man sich fragen, warum man einen Bildband braucht, wenn in den Romanen doch alles dargestellt wird - reicht das nicht? Schon. Aber irgendwann möchte man eben genauer wissen, wie ein Herrenhaus beschaffen ist, das „nicht gerade riesig, aber doch von stattlichem Ausmaß“ ist, wie die karge Heidelandschaft aussieht und die Bilder von den engen Dorfgässchen geben sowieso vor, die Zeit sei stehen geblieben. (Pia Helfferich) (Google translation)
Brontë countryIncidentally, though certainly not a walk, children (and adults too) might enjoy a ride on the famous Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, whose tours resume today according to The Telegraph and Argus.
A great way to bring literature to life for your children. Start at Penistone Country Park and wander across the dramatic Yorkshire moors where the young Brontë sisters played. Many devotees head to the peaceful Brontë Waterfalls, where children can play safely, and carry on to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse said to have been the inspiration for Wuthering Heights.Finish at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the picturesque village of Haworth.www.visitbradford.com/bronte-country (Alice Miles)
Families climbed aboard a classic carriage and were served cream teas by a butler on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway yesterday.A video can be seen here as well.
Passengers sat in the UK’s oldest working railway carriage, the Victorian Old Gentleman’s Saloon. Famously used in the 1970 film The Railway Children, it was in action to give tours of Bronte Country. The 1871 wooden carriage, hauled by a Victorian steam locomotive, visited six stations, Haworth, Damems, Oakworth, Ingrow and Keighley, leaving Oxenhope station to the sound of a brass band playing on the platform.
The tours resume today, from Oxenhope at 11.45am, 1.15pm, 2.45pm and 4.15pm. Prices start at £12. (Ben Barnett)
On this day in 1849, the literary Brontë sisters Anne (1820-1849), Charlotte (1816-1855) and their friend Ellen Nussey travelled by train from their home in Yorkshire to the seaside town of Scarborough. Anne was ill with consumption, and as their brother Bramwell and sister Emily had both died of consumption within the previous year, she was under no illusions as to the seriousness of her condition. She decided to use her small inheritance to fund the trip, in the hope that the sea air would be beneficial. As soon as they arrived, the young women treated themselves to dandelion coffee, and bought season tickets for the spa and the famous Cliff Bridge. Sadly, it was too late for Anne, who was already very ill and frail, and she died in their lodging house only a few days later. [...]Quite interesting to read about the intriguing dandelion coffee. However, while we're at it, the beginning of the story is actually a little less straighforward. Ellen Nussey had agreed to meet Charlotte and Anne at Leeds station on May 23rd. She waited and they never turned up (though a coffin apparently did, and she got quite a fright). She went back home and on May 24th returned to the station and did find them - Anne looking shockingly ill. They decide to stop at York for the night (and some shopping) and them resumed the journey on May 25th, when they finally arrived in Scarborough and drank the dandelion tea in question.
Dandelion coffee was not a cheap alternative in the Bronte sisters’ time. It was a relatively expensive medicinal treat - which seems surprising given that the dandelion grows like a weed in Britain but the coffee bean is of course imported.
McClory was born in Dun Laoghaire in 1926. He was related to the English novelists, the Brontë sisters and his own life reads like an adventure story. (Devin Zydel)The wikipedia entry on Mr McClory has a little more info on this:
McClory was born in Dublin. His grandmother, Alice McClory, was related to the Brontë family (Patrick Brontë's mother was a McClory).We don't really know how many generations there are between Patrick Brontë and Kevin McClory, though. However, the name Alice seems to have run in the family as Patrick's mother is sometimes called Alice too (as well as Ayles, Eleanor and Elinor).
Rhys is the Caribbean-born writer who spent much of her life in Europe, personified the louche life in ways that have guaranteed her an everlasting cult following and stunningly amplified Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” by writing one of the few great books hitched to an existing classic. That is “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a novel that envisions the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, the one locked in Mr. Rochester’s attic.Western Mail carries an article on artist Gerald Scarfe who gave a talk yesterday at Hay Festival. A screen showed some of his cartoons, among which was...
To see that among Ms. Rhys’s many alternate title choices for this classic were “Story of the First Mrs. Rochester,” “Le Rouge et le Noir” and “Wild Sea of Wrecks” is to understand how much of her renown may have been built on backhanded good fortune. “The Blue Hour” only furthers that impression. (Janet Maslin)
Gordon Brown was depicted as Heathcliff on the hilltop, cape flying in the wind with the caption Dithering Heights. (Chris Haines)This great cartoon can be seen here on the artist's website.
Wednesday 1 April, 7pmCuriously the Elle Magazine's April book recommendations include Lilian Pizzichini’s The Blue Hour:
BOOK LOVERS GROUP
Venue: Sheraton Hotel, Exchange Bar
Join us at the popular SBC Book Club. Enjoy lively discussions over a drink or two. Whether you are an avid reader or would love to read more, you'll love our relaxed group.
Our book next month is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. "Wide Sargasso Sea is a great novel, it is many brilliant books in one. Multi-layered and complex, Jean Rhys's prelude to Jane Eyre vividly illustrates how accounts and understanding differ, and creates a sense of the characters' past being inescapable." The Independent.
Optional light dinner available for just £10 (decide on the day).
Biographer Lilian Pizzichini’s The Blue Hour (Norton) delves into the turbulent life of Dominicaborn, Europegrafted Jean Rhys, whose groundbreaking 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea—a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre that was published when Rhys was 76 years old—made her a poster-fem for women writing in obscurity, dislocation, and fragile circumstances. (Lisa Shea)2. At the Cinémathèque Française in Paris:
Retrospective André Téchiné:3. And belatedly we report some performances of Charles Vance's adaptation of W
Wednesday, April 1 - 21h30 - SALLE GEORGES FRANJU - 35mm
LES SOEURS BRONTË
France - 1979 - 115’
Avec Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier, Pascal Grégory, Patrick Magee, Hélène Surgère, Roland Bertin, Alice Sapritch, Roland Barthes.
With the presence of the screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer.
uthering Heights in Bangalore, India:Orange Sky Productions presentsA flyer can be seen here.
Wuthering Heights
Directed by Kanak Narayan Sen
Playwright: Charles Vance
(based on the novel by Emily Bronte)
With: Sonu Sonkar, Dhanya Menon, Kartik Iyer, Pulkit Bhuwalka, Parthasarathy Devarajan, Aparna Warrier, Madhubanti Banerjee, Ratish Mani, Salil Lal Ahamed and Vidya Belman.
Lights: Mohammed Mustafa A.
Music: Siddhartha Chattopadhyay
Speech Consultant: Nazu Tonse
Productions Managers: Irene Daniel, Ameya Sarda
27th March 2009 at 7.30 p.m.
28th March at 3.30 p.m & 7.30 p.m.
At the Alliance Française de Bangalore, India.
Had she been alive today Jean Rhys (1890-1976) would certainly have been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Or as hovering on the very edge of the Asperger's spectrum. Poor woman.The same Daily Mail publishes a profile of Samantha Morton which highlights her performances of Jane Eyre in 1997:
As Lilian Pizzichini's excellent biography makes clear, Rhys, author of such troubling novels as Quartet, Good Morning, Midnight and the radiantly brilliant Wide Sargasso Sea, was an absolute nightmare. And, of course, such a volatile personality is God's gift to a biographer. (...)
How she managed to write Wide Sargasso Sea (the Jane Eyre prequel about the first MrsRochester) is one of the great literary mysteries of our time. Pizzichini describes the original draft as being 'stained with grief, sweat and face powder' - as well as splashes of whisky, we must assume, as by now Rhys was getting through at least a bottle a day. (Val Hennessy)
It was her performance as Jane Eyre in 1997, in ITV's adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte classic, which established her as leading lady material. (Tim Oglethorpe)The Star (Malaysia) recommends a visit to Haworth and the Brontë country:
If you’ve read The Canterbury Tales or Wuthering Heights and wondered what it must be like to be in the landscapes that inspired the story, why not take a look yourself? (...)Two early Brontëites. Author Hilary Mantel is interviewed in The Financial Times:
At the opposite end of the country, and of no less literary significance, is the town of Haworth in the bleak but beautiful Yorkshire Dales. It was here that some of the great romantic novels of the 19th century were written.
Inspired by their surroundings, three of the five daughters of Patrick Bronte became some of the most famous literary figures of all time. Known as the Bronte sisters, Charlotte is famous for writing Jane Eyre, Ann, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Emily, one of the classic romantic tales Wuthering Heights.
Haworth is a former industrial mill town, but is now given over almost entirely to tourism, with its main street consisting of numerous gift shops, pubs, restaurants and bed-and-breakfast accommodation. However, it is not a tacky place and retains its charm, mainly due to the lack of modern buildings and its dramatic location on the Yorkshire Moors.
It is these windswept, rugged grasslands which fired the imagination of the sisters while they gazed out of the windows of their house. The Parsonage (priest’s home), where they spent most of their adult lives, is now maintained as a museum to the family.
It has kept many of its original features, including, rather macabrely, the sofa on which Emily died. In fact, ill health dogged most of their lives, as it did many people in this area in the 19th century. It was their frail compositions which led them to spend much of their time indoors or around the Parsonage — with their energies being put to literary pursuits.
Of less morbid interest, there is an interactive exhibition based on the family’s life and works, and each room is decorated authentically and full of information about the sisters.
Many people opt to take the Bronte walk, which leads from the Parsonage and past the graveyard (don’t take this walk at night if you are easily spooked) and down a well-used footpath to the picturesque but not very big, Bronte Falls. On a hot day (unfortunately not very common on the moors), it is great to just sit here with a picnic and admire the beauty of the scenery.
In fact, this is what the Brontes were said to have done in the so-called Bronte Chair, a large stone on which the sisters allegedly sat in and took turns writing their novels. For those who are feeling a little fitter, the walk continues uphill to a ruined cottage called Top Withens, which is apparently the setting for Heathcliffe’s (sic) home in Wuthering Heights.
Gazing down from here at the undulating expanse of moorland, you could easily lose yourself in the story and imagine Heathcliffe frantically searching the moors and calling out for his beloved Kathy (sic).
Back in the town, Haworth has many attractions in its own right, but it is also the centre of what is known as the Brontë Country, which includes sites of scenic beauty, 19th century railroads, castles and thriving market towns.
Indeed, after spending some time in this harsh but inspiring area, one can see how the sisters were inspired to write what they did. (Wayne Johnson)
Which literary character most resembles you?And Guillaume Musso in Nice Matin:
When I was a child I empathised with Jane Eyre, as women writers often do. Since then I haven’t thought of books in that way: I know me and I know the character and the two don’t merge. (Anna Metcalfe)
Les livres, une affaire de famille ? L'écrivain confirme : « Mes parents m'ont appris à être éclectique. Vers 10-11 ans, je passais mes étés dans la réserve de la bibliothèque et je dévorais tout ce qui me tombait sous la main. C'est comme ça que j'ai découvert Les Hauts de Hurlevent d'Emily Brontë. Un choc. » (Google translation)He insists on his passion for Wuthering Heights in Metro:
Quels classiques vous inspirent ?Les Echos reviews Sam Savage's Firmin:
Mes deux romans cultes sont "Belle du Seigneur" d'Albert Cohen ainsi que "Les hauts de hurlevent" d'Emily Brontë. (Google translation)
La première fois qu'il sortira avec sa mère et ses frères et soeurs (douze crétins incultes) et qu'il goûtera une feuille de laitue, il aura cette réflexion profonde : « Elle a le goût de Jane Eyre. » « Firmin », sous-titré « Autobiographie d'un grignoteur de livres », est le roman singulier d'un écrivain philosophe excentrique, Sam Savage - devenu, grâce au bouche-à-oreille, un best-seller outre-Atlantique. (Philippe Chevilley) (Google translation)The Globe and Mail talks with Margaret Trudeau who seems a little bit confused about who lived at Thornfield Hall's attic:
And after the Trudeaus' 1977 separation, she “lived in the attic at 24 Sussex and at Stornoway, like Jane Eyre,” for two to three years before buying her own house. (Sarah Hampson)Briefer news: an impersonation of Emily Brontë in a flowing, blue dress in The Burlington Hawk Eye. Sufi mystics and Wuthering Heights in the Denver Examiner. The Australian celebrates that Penguin mugs (including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights) are finally available in Australia. The Bethel College (Indiana) announces a production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre: The Musical scheduled for February 2010. Bella Online remembers how Vivien Leigh was offered the role of Isabella in Wuthering Heights 1939 and how she turned it down for Gone With the Wind. Finally, Le Journal de Dimanche (in French) links together once again Wuthering Heights and the Twilight saga.
One of those cads, writer Ford Madox Ford, encouraged her to write. And in her writing Jean found the outlet for her pain. Her novels and short stories distilled her life-long, and growing, sense of alienation. She was 76 when her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, was published. Writing it took her nine years, during which time she was in and out of hospitals and prisons; she often subsisted on a bottle of whisky a day. The novel, in turn, brims with what Pizzichini calls the “triumphant poetry of despair”. (Ángel Gurría-Quintana)Appropriately enough, The Boston Globe has an article on 'Why movie-goers love a good back-story' (and perhaps not just movie-goers as readers also like their back-stories).
Jean Rhys' 1966 novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" (and the fine 1993 movie adapted from it) envisions what Rochester and the missus were up to before "Jane Eyre." (Ty Burr)And a passing comment on PopMatters in a review of the novel The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed goes along those lines as well.
There are no new stories under the sun, only creative reworkings of a few plotlines: love, loss, revenge, redemption. That’s four. The fifth may be classified as variations on Victoriana, in this case, Jane Eyre. [...]Sandra Howard mourns the loss of her sister in the Daily Mail and reminisces about other famous sisters in history:
The Servant’s Quarters is clearly the work of a seasoned writer, elegantly written, compact, flowing. Yet it is utterly predictable—Brontë combined with Beauty and the Beast, leavened with Cinderella’s witless, nasty relatives. (Diane Leach)
The Bronte sisters, too, were in competition, all writing powerful stories about doomed passionate love, yet remained intensely loyal and tight-knit. Jane Austen similarly revered sisterhood in Pride And Prejudice and in her own life.The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article on music band the Avetts where one of their tracks is described as follows:
"Salina," off the band's 2007 album Emotionalism, became a winding suite that evolved from slow waltz to jiving jig to melancholic cello showcase, with a cinematic tone worthy of Wuthering Heights. (A.D. Amorosi)A couple of things from the blogosphere: Normblog has rererad Jane Eyre and A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore has been reading an advanced review copy of the forthcoming novel by Denise Giardina, Emily's Ghost.
A little late for a reminder, but you might catch it: on Radio 4 this evening (19.45) - in the Writing the Century programme - Linton Andrews holds forth. He was Editor of the Yorkshire Post - and Chairman of the Brontë Society half a century ago. 1954 is the year for today.... (Richard Wilcocks)
Elaine Showalter discusses the enormous impact of the Brontës – through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette and Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë – on American women’s writing in the 19th century: writers black and white, novelists and poets, from Emily Dickinson to Sarah Orne Jewett, who used the lives and novels of the Brontës as inspirations for American stories. A professor emerita at Princeton and former chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize, Elaine Showalter has just completed a new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American women writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, published by Virago Press in May. Her previous books include A Literature of Their Own: British women novelists from Brontë to Lessing.Categories: Alert, Audio-Radio, Books, Jane Eyre, Music, Wide Sargasso Sea
The talk will be held, as usual, in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre at the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, WC2, and will begin at 7pm, with doors opening at 6pm. (Rachel Page)
A photograph of the father of the Brontë sisters, lost to the literary and art world since it was auctioned in 1898, has been discovered at a provincial antiques fair and will be sold by Surrey fine art auctioneer Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers. The sale is on June 24-25.That book by Alice Law which will be thrown in with the photograph should be quite a fun thing to read, as Alice Law firmly believed that Branwell Brontë had at best worked alongside Emily in the creation of Wuthering Heights, at worst written it all himself only to have it stolen by Emily. Another book by Alice Law, a biography of Branwell published in 1923, can be found on the Internet Archive.
The faded sepia photograph of the Rev Patrick Brontë. still in its original oval gilt frame, was uncovered among papers in an old Ilford film box. With it was a dog-eared copy of the 1898 auction catalogue for the dispersal of “The Museum of Brontë Relics” conducted in The Strand by Sotheby Wilkinson and Hodge. The portrait photograph had previously been on display along with other Brontë mementoes at the Temperance tearooms in Haworth, in Yorkshire where the family lived.
A foreword to the 1898 sale catalogue reads: “A large proportion of these relics was given by members of the Brontë family at various times to William Brown (father of Mr Robinson Brown), Sexton at Haworth Church during 20 years of the Rev P Brontë’s incumbency, and to his niece Martha Brown, who for many years lived in the Brontë family. Those relics which were not inherited from these relatives by Mr Robinson Brown, he acquired from Mr A Gledhill, Keithley; Miss Nussey; Mr W Scruton, Bradford and others; a few were purchased by him in the locality.”
A further note reads that the collection of 107 lots was to be offered for sale in one lot with a reserve price. It adds: “If this sum be not realised, it will then be sold in detail as catalogued”. The latter course was taken.
It is not known how much was raised by the sale of the photograph, which was Lot 105 in the catalogue, but the sale was not well received. In her book “Strange World of the Brontës” (Sigma Leisure 2001) author Marie Campbell states that when Robinson Brown’s Museum of Brontë Relics closed, it had been hoped to sell the treasures at the Chicago Exhibition “… but it was not to be. A further attempt to auction 107 lots was made on Saturday 2 July 1898 at Sotheby’s. Even this failed to attract many serious bidders. Amongst the effects that didn’t receive a bid at all were J.H. Thompson’s oil portrait of Charlotte [Brontë] and her doll’s cradle. The Brontë Society spent just under £20 on the day, purchasing several Brontë mementoes. An unfinished counterpane worked by all three sisters was knocked down for £1.2s (£1.10), a signed watercolour of Anne’s pet dog Flossy for £12, a lock Charlotte’s of hair belonging to Martha Brown and taken after her [Charlotte’s] death cost £1.14s (£1.70), while yet another fetched double that amount”.
An inscription on the reverse of the portrait, which was presumably the original museum description, reads: “Rev P Brontë; Various relics including an oval photograph framed and glazed, a small china blue and white plate often used by him and a sword stick. The photograph was owned by Martha Brown and was bought from the Ratcliffes from whom came also the plate. The swordstick is accompanied by a framed certificate from C Stansfield who sold it to Mr Dixon. It was given by Mr Brontë to John Hudson the elder of Haworth who repaired Mr Brontë's boots for many years and was bought by Stansfield from John Hudson the Younger his son”.
The copy of the1898 auction catalogue is being offered with the photograph, as is a copy of “Emily Jane Brontë and the authorship of Wuthering Heights” by Alice Law a book published by the Old Parsonage Press. The lot is estimated at £400-600.
Patrick Brontë (1777-1861) was born in Emdale, Drumballyroney, County Down, the eldest of 10 children. His father was an agricultural labourer and the boy was originally apprenticed to a blacksmith and also later to a draper and a weaver. However, largely self-taught, he became a teacher and subsequently gained a place to study theology at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1806.
It is interesting to note that it was around this time that Patrick changed his surname from the Irish Brunty and various theories have been given for the reason. It has been suggested he simply wanted to hide his humble origins, while others think his classical training persuaded him to adopt the name with a dieresis – the two dots over the “e” – to highlight the second syllable as in the Greek. In Greek mythology, brontes means thunder and was the name of one of the three Cyclops.
He was ordained into the Church of England in 1807 and married Maria Branwell at Guiseley Church in 1812. His famous daughters Maria was born in 1814, Elizabeth in 1815 and Charlotte in 1816, Emily in 1818 and Anne in 1820, He also had a son Patrick Branwell, born in 1817. In 1820, Patrick was appointed perpetual curate of Haworth. He died there in 1861 at the age of 84, having outlived his wife and all six children.
Viewing for the Summer sale of fine art and antiques at Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers is on Saturday June 20 from 10am to 2pm; Monday June 22 from 10am to 5pm and Tuesday June 23 from 10am to 8pm. There will also be viewing on each sale day from 9.30-10am.
The sale catalogue with all lots illustrated will also be available for viewing on the Internet at www.ewbankauctions.co.uk a week prior to the sale. For further information, please contact the auctioneers on 01483 223101.
If it's tipping downCharlotte Brontë visited the area - which is, after all, also known as Shirley Country - often, but we are not so sure about her visiting Oakwell Hall itself so often, though, as it was a girls' school in her time and she didn't teach or study there.
Oakwell Hall country park, with its Elizabethan manor house, is 30 minutes' drive away. It was often visited by Charlotte Brontë, and was the inspiration for Fieldhead, the heroine's home in her novel Shirley. oakwellhallcountrypark.co.uk
Of the 33 per cent of towns to escape censure [villages branded as clones], Hebden Bridge, in the Yorkshire Pennines, scored the highest for best retaining its individual character. The four other towns with the most distinctive high streets in Britain are Peebles and Bo'ness in Scotland, Normanton in West Yorkshire, and Frodsham in Cheshire.We are not leaving Yorkshire yet, as the Ripon Gazette is warming up for when Tamasha's Wuthering Heights arrives in Harrogate next June 16.
Duncan McKie, who owns Pot Stop, a cook shop on Hebden Bridge's high street, said: "Shop-keeping here is how it was years ago. We give old-fashioned service - something that's lacking in the big chains."
The tourist office recommends shopping and walking as the top two pursuits in the old mill town, which is in the heart of Bronte country. Any visitor glancing out of the tourist office's front door won't see a single chain store. Instead, quirky boutiques await, from a fair trade shop (known locally as "that hippie shop") selling ethnic goods and a kitchenware shop, to a country tailor for all your hunting, shooting and walking needs. (Susie Mesure)
EMILY Brontë meets Bollywood in the world premiere of a show which is taking place at Harrogate Theatre.The New Zealand Listener takes a quick look at Wuthering Heights adaptations when announcing that the 2009 miniseries will be broadcast there next Sunday, June 14.
The acclaimed Tamasha group will be bringing their new musical adaptation of the classic novel Wuthering Heights to the town, combining all the thrilling drama, dance and enchanting music of classic Indian cinema.
Brontë's timeless tale of passion, jealousy and revenge will be relocated from the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors to the sun-scorched desert of Rajasthan as Shakuntala (Cathy), the fiery and headstrong daughter of spice merchant Singh, falls for Krishan (Heathcliff), the wily street urchin from Bombay that Singh brings home after a trip to market.
With this version of Wuthering Heights, Tamasha retain the dark and brooding atmosphere of the original novel, while seeking to create a fresh musical style with a fusion between a Bollywood cinematic treatment and other more classical elements of a western musical. Wuthering Heights follows Tamasha's previous large-scale populist productions, East is East, Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral, and Strictly Dandia.
To celebrate the world premiere production, Harrogate Theatre, in association with Punch Records, will transform their foyer and bars to house two visually stunning exhibitions, Soho Road to the Punjab and Bollywood Stills – Style, Sweat, Glamour.
Soho Road to the Punjab maps 50 years of bhangra music, culture and style in UK, while Bollywood Stills – Style, Sweat, Glamour explores the use of photo stills in Bollywood film publicity, drawing on the large 'Action Stills' archives from Kamat Foto Flash in Mumbai, India.
Wuthering Heights will be at Harrogate Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday, June 16 to 20. Tickets cost £11 to £15 with concessions available from the Box Office on 01423 502 116.
The exhibitions run from Monday, June 1 to Friday, July 31. Admission is free.
A brand new production of the classic story of doomed love.Heathcliff has won a new 'title', according to the Brisbane Times:
The earliest film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, was made by prolific British director AV Bramble in 1920. Then came the famous 1939 version with an all-star cast of Laurence Olivier, David Niven and Merle Oberon. Since then, there have been French, Japanese and Filipino versions, operas, stage plays and musicals, including one narrated by, of all people, Ray Winstone. Let’s not forget, although some might wish to, Kate Bush’s wailing debut single in 1978. Cliff Richard played Heathcliff in a musical in 1996. There is a Monty Python sketch entitled The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights.
And still the adaptations arrive – a film next year will star Gemma Arterton and Ed Westwick – which implies one of two things: either the story still fascinates 162 years after it was published (in a 2007 poll, British readers voted it the greatest love story of all time), or the adaptations aren’t getting it right.
So how does the latest television version of Wuthering Heights (TV1, Sunday, 8.30pm) measure up? The Brits are yet to pass judgment, as this two-parter hasn’t screened there yet due to the financial chaos at ITV. It has screened in the US, however, where one reviewer said that the performances of Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Burn Gorman and Andrew Lincoln were “compelling”. The reviewer did think that director Corky Giedroyc (Elizabeth I) “goes over-the-top gothic at every opportunity”, but a story of love, jealousy, madness, alcoholism, ghosts on the moor and cruelty to children is no time to hold back on the gothic, surely. And the brooding. Especially the brooding. (Fiona Rae)
Sandra Yates, chairwoman of the Sydney Writers' Festival, nominates Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights as literature's greatest bounder. . . (Conrad Walters)StaticGirl is slowly uploading her very own comic adaptation of Wuthering Heights to ComicSpace. So far there are five pages in total: here's the latest one.
THE delights of Oakwell Hall will be seen on TV later this month when ITV1 screens a new, two part adaptation of Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights.The Guardian has an interesting article about Paula Rego which mentions in passing her Jane Eyre series:
The Elizabethan manor house at Birstall was one of several locations used for filming the Mammoth Screen production which stars Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Cathy. It also features Sarah Lancashire and Andrew Lincoln.
The museum was closed to the public for the whole of July last year to allow a film crew to transform the historic house into Wuthering Heights. That included redressing rooms and adding props and atmospheric lighting.
Now, a year later, Kirklees Museum staff, who were on hand throughout the filming, are eager to see the part Oakwell plays in the drama.“Oakwell is popular as a historic film location but this was by far the biggest production to involve the site,” said Deborah Marsland, Kirklees Museums operations manager. (...)
“It was very exciting having the film crew here and it will be interesting to see how much of Oakwell Hall we can recognise. “Many of the museum’s historic items of furniture, ornaments, paintings and wall hangings had to be removed for safekeeping to allow the crew to prepare their sets.”
“Staff rubbed shoulders with the stars and got a real behind-the-scenes insight into the making of a major drama. But it wasn’t as glamorous as expected.
“It sounds like endless fun but the days were long and fairly tedious – and you had to be very quiet,” said collections assistant Linda Levick.
Joanne Catlow, Museums and Galleries education manager, had to spend an evening sitting in a ‘set’ in Oakwell’s Great Hall.
“The windows were blacked out and there was a coffin sitting in the middle of the room. It was very spooky,” she said.
Staff also saw tricks of the trade – a specially-made latex kitchen floor to avoid injury to the actors during a fight scene and when Heathcliff was having his infamous tantrums; and the use of identical twin babies to play Cathy as a baby, both of whom had to be squeezed into original gowns worn by much smaller 18th century babies.
Museum staff also experienced the end of filming celebrations. When the director uttered those famous words “It’s a wrap”, the sound engineers flooded Oakwell’s Great Hall with the sound of Kate Bush’s hit single Wuthering Heights.
An exhibition linked to the filming of Wuthering Heights will be going on display at Oakwell Hall in September. (Val Javin)
Much of her work is directly inspired by literature, from Brontë's Jane Eyre to Kafka's The Metamorphosis to Martin McDonagh's play The Pillowman. (Simon Hattenstone)Another of Paula Rego's inspirations, and as a matter of fact the one that brought her to Jane Eyre, is Wide Sargasso Sea. The latest biography about its author, Jean Rhys (Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour) is also reviewed in The Guardian by no other than Elaine Showalter herself:
Ezra Pound's cruel "Portrait d'une Femme" uncannily foretells the life of Jean Rhys: "Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, / London has swept about you these score years, / And bright ships left you this or that in fee." Like Pound's femme, Rhys was a passive and exotic temptress, who hoarded fragments of the literary and artistic demi-monde she inhabited. But unlike Pound's siren, who has finally "nothing that is quite your own", Rhys was an artist who managed to survive poverty, alcoholism, loneliness, mental depression and physical dilapidation, and produce one great novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a prequel to Jane Eyre which tells the story from the viewpoint of the first Mrs Rochester, as well as four other fine novels, short stories and an unfinished memoir.UIT in Brabant (Netherlands) presents the October performances of Wuthering Heights by the Artemis Theater Company:
Schuilt er in ieder van ons een Heathcliff en valt deze te temmen? Wuthering Heights is bekend van de vele verfilmingen, bewerkingen en songteksten. In de voorstelling van Artemis speelt een groep veelbelovende jonge acteurs dit indringende toneelstuk.This comment in The Independent (Ireland) mixes a good point with a deeply wrong one. Guess what's what:
Cathy en haar broer Patrick wonen op het afgelegen landgoed Woeste Hoogten, waar het leven zich in alle vredigheid en harmonie afspeelt. De harmonie wordt flink verstoord wanneer Heathcliff in hun leven verschijnt. Dit weeskind brengt tweespalt in het gesloten gezin. Patrick haat hem direct en Cathy sluit hem in haar hart. Wanneer Cathy uiteindelijk toch kiest voor de fijnzinnige Edgar, verdwijnt Heathcliff uit haar leven. Maar niet voor goed…
De chaos die zijn terugkeer veroorzaakt sleurt alle bewoners van de Woeste Hoogten mee de diepte in. (Google translation)
I have met people who start to shake with fear at the mention of Wuthering Heights because they had such a bad experience with it at school. I read it a couple of years ago for the radio show book club. It's a tough little read and probably a girls' book in reality but it was worth looking at and the film with Laurence Olivier is a melodramatic treat (and that's before I even mention Kate Bush). It seems a shame that a whole generation of people will end up hating that book due to an uninterested teacher or a poorly thought out curriculum.The New York Times reviews Valerie Martin's new novel, The Confessions of Edward Day. Faithful readers of BrontëBlog will remember the Wuthering Heights references in her previous novel Trespass but what the NYT reviewer quotes is not from this novel but from what is, still today, her best known novel Mary Reilly:
In fact the novel “Mary Reilly” is so riveting, in a “Jane Eyre” kind of way, that when I misplaced it halfway through, I was in psychic pain until I located it again. (Laurie Winer)
El autor, además, acude al argumento de Jane Eyre en una maniobra inteligente y sutil que proporciona la clave de diversos enigmas. (Jorge de Cominges) (Google translation)
The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth has an exhibition of costumes from the upcoming ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights, a newly-refurbished exhibition focusing on the Brontes’ lives with interactive displays and arts and crafts drop-in workshops. The event runs from Tuesday to Thursday.But as if that wasn't enough of a hint, the same newspaper also features a stand-alone piece on said exhibition:
An exhibition of costumes from the forthcoming ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights is just one of the activities for visitors to the Bronte Parsonage Museum during half-term week.Publishers Weekly publishes a short notice of a forthcoming biography of Jean Rhys.
The week will also feature a newly-refurbished exhibition focusing on the Brontes’ lives with interactive displays for families, and arts and crafts drop-in workshops.
Bafta-winning costume designer Amy Roberts has worked with the museum to display several of the costumes that she designed for ITV’s adaptation.
The drama, which will be broadcast later in 2009, stars Tom Hardy, Sarah Lancashire and Charlotte Riley and was filmed in Yorkshire last year.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Education Officer Susan Newby will be running free drop-in arts and crafts activities for families.
Visitors to Haworth should look out for special entry coupons in the town’s cafes and shops during half-term week offering special entry prices to the museum from today.
The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean RhysYou thought the Valentine's Day mentions were over and done with until next year? Well, we are sorry to have to post one that passed us by when it was published on the day in question on NY Examiner, which introduced its list of the 'most romantic reads' with a quote by Charlotte Brontë:
Lillian Pizzichini. Norton, $29.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-393-05803-1
The genius of novelist Jean Rhys (1890–1979) is painfully depicted in this compelling short biography, exploring what it was like to live such a tortured life. Rhys was overlooked for decades until Wide Sargasso Sea, her postmodern shift of emphasis on Jane Eyre, became an instant sensation in 1966. Three times married to ne’er-do-wells and enduring an unhappy dollop of motherhood, Rhys was better known as the lover of Ford Maddox Ford. According to British author Pizzichini (Dead Man’s Wages), both Ford’s “predatory paternalism” and his novelist’s flattery attracted and repelled her, as did the criminal element of society. Pizzichini searches Rhys’s background for clues to her self-destructive judgments. Born in Dominica as Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, she was later a free-spirited young outsider in starchy, empirical England and elsewhere in Europe. Stuck with men who couldn’t make ends meet, Rhys had a brief career in prostitution and also worked as a chorus girl. Evocative and empathetic, Pizzichini still offers no fully satisfactory explanation for the explosiveness of Rhys’s interior life: “She found life difficult because she found it hard to be herself.” 20 photos. (Apr. 29)
As Charlotte Bronte wrote in Jane Eyre, “human beings must love something.” In that spirit, here are some of my favorite books about romantic love. (Katie Henderson)As for the blogs: Points of View writes about Jane, Rochester and the treatment of Bertha; My Curate's Egg Blog has been to see the Seattle production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical. And nothing.future has uploaded a Wordle mosaic of Jane Eyre to Flickr. All Things posts about Wuthering Heights and Children's books for grown-ups writes about the recent documentary Why Reading Matters.
If you were to condense the plot of Wuthering Heights and put it in a teabag, the result would make a pretty thin brew. This may be why Emily Brontë's wild and blustery love story has proved such a draw for the stage. What people tend to remember from the book isn't who did what to whom, but what it felt like. Atmosphere is all – howling gales, moorland crags, hard box-beds, the glowering dark – which partly explains why, just as a Bollywood musical version closes in the West End, a contemporary dance treatment has blown in from Switzerland. Directors can't leave it alone.The Northern Echo reviews Tamasha's Wuthering Heights with an overdose of metaphors:
And sure enough, the best thing about Cathy Marston's 70-minute Wuthering Heights for Bern Ballet is the feeling it captures with minimal means. A few irregular blocks do for the upland scenery, providing slopes for the lovers to gambol on and clifftops to wuther them. Designer Jann Messerli also does drop-down bamboo blinds which clatter oppressively like anger darkening a mind. David Maric's score, for electronics and live double bass, is a meterological marvel with its high, sighing melodies and rumbling climaxes that threaten to burst into heavy rock but never do.
At the start, too, Marston's choreography is thrillingly outdoorsy, suggesting endless space as Jenny Tattersall's Cathy flips and scampers, repeatedly flinging herself, spread-eagled, into Gary Marshall's Heathcliff to hook a leg around his shoulder and wind around his neck. It's fast, free, virtuosic stuff, joyfully executed.
The trouble comes when other characters intrude. There is Hindley (Cathy's nasty brother), Edgar (her rich husband-to-be), and Isabella (Edgar's prim sister), yet little of consequence happens. No wonder Marston felt obliged to amplify the leading pair with four other Cathy and Heathcliff couples, who echo their steps at moments of heightened emotion. And that's most of the time. All praise to Tattersall for her intensity, but, frankly, after Cathy's fourth or fifth tortured duet with the moody hunk she apparently doesn't want but can't keep her hands off, I was itching to give the girl a hard slap. For all its ingenuity, this Wuthering Heights serves only to highlight the frustrating aspects of the original. (Jenny Gilbert)
WHEN it comes to an arranged marriage between brooding Bronte and the bling of Bollywood, there are signs that Tamasha’s efforts are close to hitting the Wuther-lode.Another usual suspect in recent reviews is Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour. Today's The Scotsman's turn:
Ex-EastEnder Deepak Verma’s inspiration of switching the brusqueness of the Yorkshire Moors for the sandstorms and heated passions of Indian’s Rajasthan desert adds the essential Asian dimension to this well-worn love story.
Thus fiery Heathcliff becomes Krishan (Pushpinder Chani) and headstrong Cathy is Shakuntala (Youkti Patel), locked in a lifetime of impossible love.
But what of the ambitions of this becoming a full-blown Bollywood musical, with a film version already being discussed? Surely you need songs with as much instant appeal as Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, not to mention the unromantic element of comedy characters?
Verma and director Kristine Landon-Smith cleverly turn to the lip-synched music and lyrics of Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee, which bravely attempts the leap between traditional regional sounds and contemporary composition.
Most of the laughter is produced by bickering servants Ayah (Rina Fatania) and Yusuf (Adeel Akhtar), although even a glossary of Hindi words at the back of the book/programme fails to help with some sharp, clearly-funny exchanges, which even shoot over the heads of the native language speakers in the audience.
Verma cheekily throws in a homage to My Fair Lady with The Camel Races song matching the eye-catching Ascot scene, complete with infamous four-letter word.
Major complaints are that the lengthy first half is clearly in need of a trim, with actors taking ages to make an entrance for no apparent reason, and Chani’s portrayal of Krishan lurches towards Captain Hook in need of a chiropractor.
Using a series of ramps is clever, but not always easy to negotiate for a hard-working 11-strong cast, varying in terms of age, size and colourful dress.
This heart-warming project may not have reached the heights in all areas, but Wednesday’s opening night was a lot nearer Barcelona than Manchester. (Viv Hardwick)
Rhys is the Caribbean-born writer who spent much of her life in Europe, personified the louche life in ways that have guaranteed her an everlasting cult following and stunningly amplified Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre by writing one of the few great books hitched to an existing classic.Precisely, The Times talks about Rebecca Hall and mentions her role as Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea 2006:
That is Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that envisions the story of the first Mrs Rochester, the one locked in Mr Rochester's attic. (Janet Maslin)
The closest she has come so far to losing all control is as Jean Rhys’s pyromaniac heroine in the BBC’s Wide Sargasso Sea. (Jasper Rees)The Independent (Ireland) interviews Ronald Masin and Maria Kelerman (from the Young European Strings) who reminds of us the following anecdote:
"I think it was more Ronald who chose me, because I didn't think of myself as being very attractive," says Maria. "I was so busy trying to survive life and learn French, that I wasn't attracted to anyone. We had to communicate with one another in English, some of which I learned from reading Wuthering Heights with a dictionary beside me." (Andrea Smith)The theatrical agent Duncan Heath talks with his daughter Laura in The Times. This reference,we hope, is not to be taken literally:
My biggest wish is for her to meet someone and be happy. But she’s a great romantic. She doesn’t want free love; she wants Wuthering Heights.The Times also brings another bizarre story. Do you imagine Shaolin monks being inspired by Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights choreography? Reality surpasses fiction:
The few in the West who are at home in their bodies are dancers such as Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, born in 1976 in Belgium, to a Catholic mother and Moroccan Muslim father. At 14, he saw Kate Bush performing Wuthering Heights and was knocked out.Movies Buzz classifies Wuthering Heights 1939 as one of the Top 10 Love Stories. Bloggerel informs (quoting the last issue of The Bookseller) how the recently published Swedish translation of Agnes Grey (see this previous post) enters the top 10 of April bestsellers (is number six, no less). The book by Anne Brontë is reviewed by holydread. Pequena Infante has bought the Complete Brontë Collection and Corner of the Library posts a nice bookmark with the Brontë Waterfall.
“I was quite chubby,” Cherkaoui says, “and very much a brain child, but I really loved the way she was moving. I thought it would be so liberating to be able to move like that. I started imitating artists with some friends. I think the body really needs to use its intelligence to do things. When you’re a child, your body screams to do things.” (Bryan Appleyard)
Let's start today's newsround with Paul Auster's reading recommendation to a child. Today in The Financial Times:What novel would you give a child to introduce them to literature?This Saturday's Walking Holidays section of The Guardian is devoted to the Brontë moors:
I gave my daughter Wuthering Heights when she was 11 or 12. (Anna Metcalfe)
Walk in a nutshellMore information a map and step-by-step instructions here.
This walk takes you out of Haworth, the village where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote, along pathways they walked and through the moorland that inspired them. Beginning near the church that holds the family vault, you walk up to the Brontë waterfalls, described by Charlotte Brontë as "fine indeed; a perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful," then up again to Top Withens, the supposed setting of Wuthering Heights. The Pennine Way is followed for part of the return and the walk ends at the parsonage where the Brontës lived and wrote, now an excellent museum.
Why it's special
The Brontë sisters lived most of their short but fruitful lives in Haworth. In 1847, Charlotte published Jane Eyre, Anne published Agnes Grey and Emily published Wuthering Heights, but within eight years all three had died, outlived by their father. This walk, especially combined with a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, really brings their milieu to life. Although there is no evidence that the now ruined farmhouse on Top Withens was the inspiration for Heathcliff's dwelling, locals and the Brontë Society say Emily was most likely thinking of its moorland setting when she wrote about Wuthering Heights. Describing it, she wrote: "One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun."
Keep your eyes peeled for
A stone at the waterfalls known locally as the Brontë chair. Also, part of the open moorland on the way to the falls is renowned for the birds that breed here, including curlews, golden plover peregrines and merlins. Between mid-March and mid-July the birds court, make nests in the heather and grass, lay eggs and raise chicks.
The talented writerly sisters make their way through 19th Century England. (Kristin Kloberdanz)The Huntington Newsday talks with the fantasy and S/F author Christie Golden, also known as Jadrien Bell:
You’ve also written under the pen name Jadrien Bell. Does it have a special meaning?Another Brontëite is the writer Adriana Trigiani as we previously posted. The Scotsman confirms it once more:
“Bell” is a nod to the Bronte sisters, who each chose that for their pen name. “Jadrien” because, well, I once saw a British production of “The Secret Garden” and one of the actors was named Jadrien and I thought it was cool. (Mary Beth Foley)
"One day a teacher hands me, Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. I probably read it 150 times. I'm obsessive like that. I re-read Jane Eyre every year." (Lee Randall)Also in The Scotsman there is a review (by Claire Harman, author of Jane's Fame) of Lilian Pizzichini's biography of Jean Rhys: The Blue Hour:
Was Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966, a "modernist masterpiece", as Ms Pizzichini keeps saying? Not at all, though Rhys's much better books, Good Morning, Midnight, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie and the passive-aggressive Smile, Please are tremendous. Rhys was ill-read, preferring to pass out over a thriller rather than Proust or Trollope. She wasn't interested in other people's books, just as she wasn't interested in other people (part of the reason she was so impressed by Jane Eyre – to the extent of writing its prequel – was that she had read so little like it). This leaves her a singularly uncommunicative, even chilly writer.The Quincy Patriot-Ledger recommends The Mystery of Irma Vep's performances in Cape Cod:
Those headed to the Cape can catch the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater production of “The Mystery of Irma Veep.” This fast-paced show throws together elements of Hitchcock's "Rebecca," the novels of the Bronte sisters and a slew of monster movies to create one very clever comedyAnd The Reading Chronicle talks about the recent launch of the British Literary Manuscripts Online c1660-1900:
There are also documents from Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Robbie Burns and early drafts of some of Charles Dickens’ work.Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Angel's Game is now published in Australia. The Courier Mail talks about its Brontë references:
The collection is called the British Literary Manuscripts Online c1660-1900, launched on Tuesday by Gale Cengage Learning, an e-research and educational publishing firm.
It is available from subscribing schools, colleges and libraries, and eventually through a pay-per-view service. (Annabel Williams)
Zafon litters The Angel's Game with references from literary classics such as Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. He covers a range of eras and subjects such as mythology, nature, film noir and even comic books. (Fiona Purdon)The Fort-Wayne News Sentinel interviews Roxanne Gregg, director of the Upward Bound programme at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne:
“If I had to pick a favorite, I think it would be one of Jane Austen's books - probably ‘Pride and Prejudice.' I've seen every version on ‘Masterpiece Theatre' and think it is fabulous! I first read Jane Austen in school but annually watch the productions on PBS. ‘Jane Eyre' is also a favorite, and I've watched it on television, too. Timothy Dalton was my favorite Rochester. (Betty E. Stein)La Gaceta and other Argentinian outlets report the death of the actress Fanny Dupré who performed Wuthering Heights in an Argentinian radio adaptation. AgoraVox compares the Brontës and the Anguissola family, BD sélection reviews Yann & Édith's Les Hauts de Hurlevent comic:
Le crayon acéré d’Edith y fait merveille : croquant des personnages aux trognes savoureuses qui évoluent sur les landes balayées par les vents du nord, tout en proposant des ambiances colorées dans des tons bleu-nuit. Quant à la narration, très fluide, elle est significative du style romantique du prolifique Yann, incorrigible scénariste qui n’a pas pu s’empêcher de rajouter un petit fond caustique et cruel : et c’est ce qui fait l’originalité de ce bel ouvrage nous racontant le destin tragique de cette famille prise dans les tourments violents de la passion et de la vengeance ! (Gilles) (Google translation)The Little Professor reviews Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger, arteyliteratura reviews Jane Eyre 1944 (in Spanish), Red Curtain publishes (a lot of) Wuthering Heights 2009 screencaps and Insert exciting blog title here talks about Wuthering Heights (the novel). Jane Learmonth posts a video reading of Charlotte Brontë's Evening Solace.
On Thursday evening the new exhibition Sex, Drugs and Literature: The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë was viewed by an appreciative crowd. Branwell's life is presented in a balanced way, with recent research appropriately incorporated. (Read more)Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëites, Comics, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
We have a good and a bad review for Tamasha's Wuthering Heights. The good one (more or less) comes from The Guardian:This Wuthering Heights has something which never overburdened Emily Brontë: a sense of humour. At the same time, the melodrama of the moors - its wails, its glowers, its gnashings and thunderings - translates perfectly into Bollywood's eye-rolling, breast-heaving extravagance; Kristine Landon-Smith's production takes its cue from the 1939 movie with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, and wind-whipped, nostril-quivering profiles.The bad one comes from The Independent:
The choreography is limited: the lovers spend an awful lot of time running from side to side of the stage to show their entrapped passion; the dialogue is occasionally slurred; the stage is sometimes - and this is India? - underpopulated; the prevailing mood is alluring rather than alarming. But Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee's music expands the emotional vocabulary, with its big strings, its drummings and its sidling rhythms. A patina of irony is added by everyone lipsynching, Bollywood-style. Pushpinder Chani and Youkti Patel shimmer as the lovers. It's 13 years since Tamasha produced East is East; 11 years since they helped to propel Parminder Nagra towards stardom with Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings And A Funeral. Wuthering Heights is less surprising, but equally buoyant. (Susannah Clapp)
From this silly romp we bound away to the tempestuous romance of Wuthering Heights, turned into a Bolly- wood-tinged musical by the British-Asian troupe, Tamasha.The Independent talks about Jean Rhys now that Lilian Pizzichini's biography of her, The Blue Hour, is going to be published:
It must be said, Kristine Landon-Smith's touring production has its risibly cheesy moments as Heathcliff and Cathy – renamed Krishan and Shakuntala – lipsynch to pre-recorded songs. Burning ardour loses all conviction when your hero and heroine are visibly just mouthing along. And there is more unwitting bathos in Felix Cross's lyrics. "She walks across the sand, like she's floating on air," croons the smitten Vijay – Krishan's wealthy rival – even as Youkti Patel's Shakuntala hobbles out of a wheelchair, recovering from a gunshot wound to the calf. I know love is blind, but this is ridiculous.
That said, adaptor Deepak Verma's concept, translating Emily Brontë's 1840s tale from the Yorkshire moors to the desert landscape of Rajasthan, is seductive. The ensemble spin in beautiful scarlet turbans and green saris on the zigzagging slopes of a golden dune (design by Sue Mayes). The Indian setting, moreover, enriches the tragedy, as the caste system proves a devastating barrier between the ragged Krishan and his socially superior childhood sweetheart.
A couple of the songs, jointly composed by Cross, Sheema Mukherjee and Chandru of Bollywood Strings, prove haunting, too, with echoing ululations, a husky bamboo flute and pulsing tablas. (Kate Bassett)
She carried on, in a third unhappy marriage and drinking ever more heavily, until 1949, when a writer and actress called Selma Vaz Dias placed an ad in a newspaper looking for her. She wanted to adapt some of Rhys's work for the BBC; an editor, Francis Wyndham, wanted more work from Rhys. She had, she told him, a novel under way. It was Wide Sargasso Sea, the story of Bertha Mason, the first wife of Mr Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.And yet another article from The Independent. Talking about the Poet Laureates, a mention is made to Robert Southey and his infamous 'advice' to Charlotte Brontë:
It's perhaps not surprising that Rhys's greatest work was about a woman who is rejected by the man she loves and goes on to destroy herself. Rhys constantly felt abandoned, yet was constantly searching for the man who could take care of her and, finally, make it all right. Yet, as Pizzichini rightly says, her writing was her true partner. It is possible that Rhys never fully realised this, or didn't want to realise it, perhaps: the path of the artist is often by necessity a lonely one, and Rhys drank not to feel lonely.
And so, her response to the sudden fame and fortune that Wide Sargasso Sea brought was classically self-pitying and the lament of the ingénue: "It has come too late." Rhys, ever the contradiction, wouldn't let it happen for her, however much she wanted it to. The truth of Jean Rhys's genius is contained within that contradiction, however: the little girl who wouldn't grow up, yet whose work depended, ultimately, upon the maturity of experience. I believe that she understood that contradiction. She knew what lay "deep and primitive" in her own soul. In her writing she was able to use it, and it was a relationship with a male writer that taught her how. (Lesley McDowell)
The first Poet Laureate to receive a salary was Henry James Pye (1790), who was given £27 a year and was not widely held to deserve it. The post in relation to women was defined by Robert Southey (1813), who in 1837 received a letter from Charlotte Brontë, asking for his advice about her poetry. He replied, discouraging her from writing anything further and advising her that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life". (Katy Guest)Finally, students who love Jane Eyre in Neighborhood Star, plays on words with Wuthering Heights in The Independent (Ireland) and Wuthering Heights evocations in Alaska in the Sunday Herald.
Unless explicitly said
