A news release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:Also on the Brontë Parsonage Blog and The Telegraph & Argus.GHOSTS: AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM TAYLOR-WOOD
Image courtesy of Sam Taylor-Wood and White Cube
An exhibition of landscape photographs by one of Britain’s most famous artists, Sam Taylor-Wood, will go on show at the Brontë Parsonage Museum on Friday 17 July until Monday 2 November 2009. The exhibition will be formally opened on Friday by broadcaster and art critic Matthew Collings.
The series, titled Ghosts, was shot on the moors near Top Withens, the fictional place where Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is set, and the novel serves as a backdrop to Sam Taylor-Wood’s photographs.
The landscape in Ghosts is bleak and unremitting, and echoes the brutal portrayal of heightened passion and suffering found in Wuthering Heights. Traces of the novel are found in Taylor-Wood’s landscapes; in Ghosts II, two solitary leafless trees, twisted towards each other, embody ‘Cathy and Heathcliff’ and throughout the series Sam Taylor-Wood’s response to the book has been to photograph the wildness of the air that inspired Brontë’s novel.
The series was originally exhibited as part of Sam Taylor-Wood’s most recent show, Yes I No, at White Cube, London in October 2008. The photographs have been resized to fit the Parsonage and will be exhibited in the period rooms of the Brontë Parsonage Museum as part of its Contemporary Arts Programme 2009. The exhibition has been made possible with the support of Arts Council England and the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.“Exhibiting such powerful work by such a prominent artist is tremendously exciting. As well as showcasing the ways in which the Brontës continue to influence contemporary culture, Ghosts is also an important addition to the strong legacy of landscape photography in the area. We hope that by exhibiting Ghosts in the place that inspired it, new layers and connections will be drawn between the work and the Parsonage, as well as offering the public a unique opportunity to see important contemporary art in an unusual setting”. (Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer, Brontë Parsonage Museum)Sam Taylor-Wood (b.1967) graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1990 and has received international critical acclaim for her work in photography and film. In 1997 she was awarded the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale and a Turner Prize nomination followed in 1998. Taylor-Wood is at the centre of the Young British Artist movement of contemporary British art, part of the same generation as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Since her first solo exhibition at White Cube in 1995, she has had numerous solo exhibitions, including being the youngest artist ever to be granted a solo exhibition at The Hayward Gallery. In 2004 she famously exhibited a film of David Beckham asleep. The work was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and is in their permanent collection.
Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zurich (1997), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek (1997), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (1999), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2000), Hayward Gallery, London (2002), State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (2004), MCA, Moscow (2004), BALTIC, Gateshead (2006), MCA Sydney (2006), MoCA Cleveland (2008) and Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2008).
For further information about the exhibition or arts events contact jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk/ 01535 640188.
Sam Taylor-Wood's upcoming exhibition at the White Cube Gallery contains a series of photographs inspired by Wuthering Heights:Sam Taylor-Wood: Yes I NoPicture sources: Ghosts X, Ghosts I.
24 Oct—29 Nov 2008
Mason's Yard and No. 1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8HA
Opening times:
White Cube, Masons' Yard
24 October - 29 November 2008
Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm
No. 1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8HA
24 October - 5 November 2008
Monday - Saturday 10am - 6pm / Sunday 12 - 5pm
Supported by Covent Garden London
A friendly, gamine blonde in skinny grey jeans, black shin-high boots and a leather jacket bursting with zips and rakish lapels, Taylor-Wood leads me on a breathless tour of her two-level studio. One room is lined with her latest work - some turbulent but formal Yorkshire landscape photographs, all planes and horizontals and big skies, from a group called "Wuthering Heights"; and a nocturnal set where a kitsch clown struts his stuff under disused London railway arches. (Jackie Wullschlager)The Times:
The romantic landscapes were done in Yorkshire, near the house in which Wuthering Heights was set. See the two trees braced heroically against the weather? That’s Cathy and Heathcliff. And the Klitschko picture was made in New York. (Waldemar Januszcza)The genesis of this project is documented on The South Bank Show, in an episode directed by Matt Cain that will be broadcast next November 16 on ITV1:
Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Wuthering HeightsMatt Cain’s self-shot documentary for The South Bank Show follows a year in the life of film-maker and photographer Sam Taylor-Wood.With exclusive and intimate access to Taylor-Wood’s life and work, the film follows her as she makes her first narrative film and then promotes it in Cannes; attends the opening of her first major retrospective in the US at Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art; and prepares a body of new work for an exhibition at White Cube gallery to open this autumn in London. Taylor-Wood is also interviewed in the film by her close friend Elton John. (...)
The film documents Taylor-Wood’s working processes as she creates the new pieces Ghosts, Escape Artist and Sigh; all of which will be shown as part of her new exhibition opening at the White Cube gallery at the end of October. Taylor-Wood travels to the Yorkshire Moors and Bronte country, to shoot her Ghosts photographic series, inspired by the book Wuthering Heights.
1. Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts exhibition opens today, October 30, in Brooklyn, New York:Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts”Picture: Sam Taylor-Wood (British, b. 1967). Ghosts VIII, 2008. Chromogenic photograph, 43 x 55½ in. (109.2 x 141 cm). © The artist, courtesy of White Cube, London
October 30, 2010–August 14, 2011
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Brooklyn Museum
Ghosts, Sam Taylor-Wood’s 2008 photographic exploration of the Yorkshire Moors, was inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic Victorian novel Wuthering Heights, whose famously atmospheric descriptions of the bleak, wild landscape almost turn that locale into the novel’s third major character. For many years Taylor-Wood kept a country house in the same West Yorkshire region where Emily Brontë and her literary and artistic family lived. In the ten images from the series to be shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Taylor-Wood captures the stark and haunting character of the windswept moors and gray skies surrounding Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged setting of Wuthering Heights. Drawing inspiration from the Brontë sisters’ gothic romantic fiction, the artist followed the footpath from the stone parsonage where the Brontës lived and died up across the moors to Top Withens.
Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts” is the latest exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which is devoted to subjects that explore the significant contributions of the women named in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.
This exhibition is organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.
Hebden Bridge Literary FestivalCategories: Arts-Exhibitions, Biography, Talks
Juliet Barker ‘The Brontës Revisited’
12 noon at The Little Theatre, Holme Streeet, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8EE
Tickets: Hebden Bridge Bookshop, 7 Crown Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8EH: tel 01422 843686
Juliet says: "Despite being a patron of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival for many years, it’s been a long time since I did an event in the town, so I’m pleased to have been invited to talk about my new edition of The Brontës for the literary festival organised by the new Hebden Bridge Bookshop. A small town that can boast two fantastic independent bookshops has to be worth visiting!"
A couple of newspapers carry articles on Sam Taylor-Wood's Yes I No exhibition in London. Sam Taylor-Wood herself writes a piece for The Independent focusing particularly on the Ghosts section of the exhibition, which is devoted to Wuthering Heights-inspired photographs: How Wuthering Heights inspired a series of wild and romantic photographsThe Independent also includes a gallery of pictures featured in Ghosts, some with an explanatory note. A great resource for those not able to make it to London.
I shot the new Ghosts photographic series, based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, on the Haworth moors, Yorkshire, near the farmhouse ruins of Top Withens. This place has long been associated with the Earnshaws' fictional home in the novel, and the surrounding moors were a possible inspiration for it.
I hadn't read the book until last year, but I picked it up because I had it in my head that it would be fantastically romantic. I was at our second home in North Yorkshire at the time, not far from the moors, and it just seemed the right book to read on a November evening, in the howling winds.
Reading it made me want to get up there on the moors, with my camera, to experience the wild landscape, which was the only thing that felt redemptive in the whole novel. I wanted to feel the turbulent emotional weather of that book and the harshness of the landscape that had inspired her.
I set off in February, with my assistant, struggling unromantically across the wild moors, in heavy sleet, with lots of cameras, almost as if I intended to photograph the wind. I wanted to do something that didn't have people in but was peopled in its romanticism in our memory. It was the right time of the year to be going, in the freezing cold. I wanted to capture the sense of the unremitting weather there.
Filming was over about three days and we started work at 7am to catch the dense mist that rolls in during the morning and typifies the Yorkshire landscape, and we worked right through until dusk.
Wuthering Heights is one of those books on a list of books that you should read in your lifetime. It is amazing when you read it that there is not one redeeming feature about any of the characters. It is just unremitting pain and relentless torture of each other throughout.
I was amazed at how Heathcliff has become such a romantic figure. There is an underlying, burning passion and love that holds them together, even though it is projected in pain and misery. But within the constantly sadistic relationships and the unremitting cruelty I was trying to find in my pictures some sort of redemptive quality in that landscape, as well as capture the bleakness that those characters are set against in Brontë's novel.
All the photographs were taken in a four-mile radius of where the fictional Wuthering Heights is supposed to be set. I don't think any of the pictures are too direct in their links to the actual book. Wuthering Heights served as a backdrop. I soaked up the landscape that Brontë's inspiration came from and then made it my own. (Picture sources: 1 & 2)
However, the Guardian gives it two stars out of five: A linked show is at White Cube Mason's Yard. Upstairs are landscape photographs of the Yorkshire moorland where Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights. The sequence is called Ghosts; the idea is that traces of the book are inscribed on the landscape. In one, a burly tree seems to be Heathcliff to another's gnarly Cathy. Such pathetic fallacies should be resisted: if Ghosts does anything artistically useful, it is to send us back to the novel.The image on the right is the one Mr Jeffries refers to. The Independent picture gallery has a note on this image by Sam Taylor-Wood:
From downstairs wafts ardent music that sounds, in this context, like the incidental score to a Sunday night Brontë adaptation. Taylor-Wood's video installation, Sigh, features members of the BBC Concert Orchestra, playing Anne Dudley's specially commissioned score - without their instruments. (Stuart Jeffries)
Ghosts II: This picture of two leafless trees is one of the ones I call 'Cathy and Heathcliff' to myself for obvious reasons. It feels like their roots are intertwined and they are inhabiting the same land. But everything is rumbling on beneath the surface and those two solitary figures are standing opposed to each other.EDIT: In the White Cube Mason's Yard website it can be found a video of the artist discussing her work.
Get prepared for a blubfest as the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë's epic tale arrives on the small screen this Sunday and Monday on ITV1.The New Statesman poses a question:
The drama has a stellar cast, including Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, Charlotte Riley as Cathy, Sarah Lancashire as Nelly and Andrew Lincoln as Edgar. (Sarah Wallis)
Will Tom Hardy snarl or simmer as Heathcliff? New adaptation. (Rachel Cooke)The Yorkshire Evening Post goes a little further explaining how the economical crisis has also arrived to the Heights:
I was interested in some of the comments in particular.... "Screen Yorkshire's valuable investment and productive support along with the fantastic crew and facilities in the region" and Hugo Heppell's comment "We hope this production will further cement Yorkshire's reputation in the top destination in the UK for location drama."The Telegraph & Argus goes to Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Parsonage:
What a pity that several of the 'fantastic crew' i.e. the editing/ post production team at Yorkshire Television, who worked on Wuthering Heights along with many other excellent drama programmes, are no longer employed in the region, if still in the industry, thanks to the untimely loss of almost 200 jobs in June this year.
The team at YTV were creative, talented and dedicated . What a shame more could not have been done to secure their jobs in the region. Yorkshire needs its own properly-funded film and post production facility. I look forward to watching Wuthering Heights but there will be a part of me thinking of those, whose names will appear in the credits, who no longer have a secure future and may never again be privileged to work on such excellent productions. (Glynis Dickson, email)
“It fits into different settings and has been translated into at least 26 different languages,” she says. “It’s a fascinating book, a huge life-changing novel. It’s part of popular culture, inspiring countless interpretations.”And also in the Telegraph & Argus there's an article on the exhibition of costumes at the Brontë Parsonage. Picture: Jenna Holmes admires the costume worn by actress Charlotte Riley (Source):
Ann says the romantic appeal of Heathcliff is largely down to films, and she hopes the new TV drama will present a more rounded version.
“He’s one of the darkest characters in literature, he’s brutal, violent, cruel, vindictive,” she says. “But there’s a romantic ideal of him, based on films. I hated the 1939 film. It’s largely responsible for the romantic gloss cast over the novel. “A lot of films tend to end with Cathy’s death, but it’s only when you cover the whole story that you get a rounded view of Heathcliff. In later years he’s abusive, broken and middle-aged. He’s not an attractive, brooding young man anymore.” (...)
Peter [Bowker] will visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum in October to talk about the process of adapting a classic novel for television.
And next month Leeds-born best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford will be at the Old Schoolroom, Haworth, talking about her love of the Brontes with arts critic and journalist Danuta Kean. (Emma Clayton)
Bronte Parsonage Museum arts officer Jenna Holmes admires the costume worn by actress Charlotte Riley as she plays Cathy in the latest small-screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights.Another exhibition at the Parsonage, Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts is the subject of an article in The Moment (New York Times blog):
Costumes from the two-part drama, which hits the screens on ITV on Sunday and Monday at 9pm, can be seen in the period rooms of the museum at Haworth, the home of the Bronte family including Emily who wrote the Wuthering Heights novel. The costumes also include the outfit worn by actor Tom Hardy who plays Heathcliff.
Visitors can also see details of upcoming events with writer and pundit Bonnie Greer and Leeds-born best-selling author Barbara Taylor Bradford.
The passionate, maddening love between Heathcliff and Catherine in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” has long been fodder for many artists, from Albert Camus to Death Cab for Cutie. Recently, the photographer Sam Taylor-Wood has expanded the Victorian novel’s influence by shooting the very place that inspired Brontë: the area near the village of Haworth in West Yorkshire. For many years, Taylor-Wood — who shared a country house in the region with her then husband, the art dealer Jay Jopling — photographed the wind-swept lands of heather and moors, and ominous gray skies. In the series, “Ghosts,” which is on display at the Bronte Parsonage Museum through Nov. 2, Taylor-Wood has created romantic, melancholic reflections offset by simple beauty — gray skies, spidery trees, the odd ram — giving a redemptive quality to a harsh landscape. (Marina Cashdan)Another NYT Blog, Paper Cuts, gives voice to John Williams (editor of Second Pass) to select his favourite bookish playlist:
Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush, Pat Benatar and a thousand others. Like the Cure’s Smith, Bush was a teenager when she wrote this, and it was her debut single. But this is a literary adaptation of a very different sort: There’s dewy sentiment lacquered all over it. In a voice so high that LP listeners must have frequently checked to make sure the turntable speed was correct, Bush sings, “How could you leave me / When I needed to possess you? / I hated you / I loved you, too.” The verses just about drown you, but the melody of the chorus provides a lifeline of beauty (“Heathcliff, it’s me, your Cathy / I’ve come home”), and that might be the reason so many performers have been inspired to cover it, from Pat Benatar to the punk band White Flag to Hybrid Kids, whose jokey version from 1979 is both awfully strange and strangely awful. (Joke or not, the vocals sound like a drunken pirate singing reggae at a karaoke night — not pleasant.) (Blake Wilson)Michelle Kerns continues her biased gender-oriented book preferences in the Book Examiner. Now for women:
You love and adore Charlotte Bronte; he won't touch your copy of Jane Eyre regardless of your pleas. (...)Sarah Schmelling, author of Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float mentions the Brontës in an article in The Huffington Post:
75 books every woman should read (...)
9. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
15. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
33. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Or, how about a translation of The Canterbury Tales--which is actually quite raunchy, any Apatow lover would revel in the fart jokes--without having to memorize the Whan that Aprille? Or any Shakespeare play. The Brontës: yes, Heathcliff and Rochester still hold up.Grey Area reviews the radio adaptation Jane Eyre 1994 (recently on BBC7), the original novel is the subject of this post on Totally Tina. För nöjes skull posts about Wuthering Heights in Norwegian and Cheerful Cynicism about Wuthering Heights 1939. Eyrial likes Charlotte Brontë stuff.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum was recently awarded £50000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to support an exciting programme of developments that will take place at the museum in January 2010. This blog is a forum for people in and around Haworth to keep up to date with the project, and make comments and suggestions.Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights
The free local residents day on Saturday 8 August was a great success with 270 local people taking advantage of the offer, almost half of whom were first time visitors to the museum. (...)
Remember if you are intersested in having a more in depth opportunity to give us your input and are able to attend either of our residents evenings on 15 and 23 September, please contact Andrew McCarthy on andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk
Originally exhibited at London's prestigious White Cube, Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts photographic series is here resized to find its remote cultural home amid the Brontë paraphernalia of west Yorkshire's Haworth. Shot on the bleak moorlands near Top Withens, the setting for Emily Brontë's wonderfully moody novel Wuthering Heights, Taylor-Wood's landscapes are deceptively simple and direct. While avoiding over-emphasising the moody romanticism, they achieve a rare atmospheric resonance. There are few artworks in any medium that are as grounded in a particular landscape as Wuthering Heights, and Taylor-Wood's series here pays fitting on-site homage to the fact. (Robert Clark)The Globe and Mail recommends summer reads. Aislinn Hunter has a very original and Brontëite proposal:
My favourite books of letters are Letters: Summer 1926, by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Rainer Maria Rilke; Paula Modersohn-Becker: The Letters and Journals, by German Expressionist Modersohn-Becker, edited by Günter Busch and Liselotte Von Reinken; The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, by Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats, edited by Anna MacBride White; and the three-volume (epic) set of Charlotte Brontë's correspondence, which brings Haworth and the family's day-to-day habits to life.Heather Vogel Frederick writes in The Christian Science Monitor about her literary trip searching for Jane Austen. It mentions Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon
a “book-lover’s Baedeker,” full of detailed travel advice, commentary, and anecdotes about the authors profiled.The New York Times revies Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour:
Co-author Schmidt clued me on the fact that that what I was doing – a writer tailing another writer – was actually nothing new.
“A lot of writers were literary travelers,” she informed me. “Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Sir Walter Scott’s castle in Scotland, and Louisa May Alcott toured Dickensian sites when she went to London.” Edith Wharton and Henry James toured literary landmarks as well and once “visited George Sand’s chateau together.”
An avid aficionado of this brand of travel herself, Schmidt’s favorite destination is Bronte country. “I loved Wuthering Heights, and for me, the moors were as much a part of the story as the characters,” she says.
“Wide Sargasso Sea,” a prequel to “Jane Eyre” that brought Jean Rhys fame in her late 70s, was the product of hard-won wisdom about how a fragile psyche can be crushed by the habits of dominance and submission between men and women, and between Europe and its colonies. As with Rhys’s four other novels, it was written during snatches of diligence amid episodes of paralyzing depression and alcoholic rage. (Mick Sussman)The Times reviews the TV series True Blood:
Obviously and understandably, at this point, many people will be having an automatic embarrassment-reaction to the subject of vampires. Even the superlative work done on Buffy the Vampire Slayer has failed to quell many people’s default Vampire Alarm. “Vampires are strictly for overweight teenage girls, into gallimaufry with capes,” they will tut. “It’s all just Wuthering Heights with silly teeth. It’s not proper drama. Proper drama is about corrupt cops shouting at each other in parked cars, or divorcing couples shouting at each other in hallways. Vampires are just the default metaphor of the over-excited.” (Caitlin Moran)The Elk River Star News revies a local production of the musical The Secret Garden by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon:
“The Secret Garden” is a daunting musical, one few community theaters are willing to tackle.The Guardian explores some of the activities that the National Trust offers. Including visiting Belton House which was Gateshead Hall in Jane Eyre 2006:
Elk River Community Theatre (ERCT) loves a challenge, and will present this tale of mystery, misery, dreams, lost love and redemption, set in a spooky mansion on the Yorkshire moors in the early 1900s, beginning Friday at Zabee Theater.
“This play does not get done often. The vocals and theatrics are demanding and the sets are complex,” said Eileen Bowersox, who’s both directing and playing a role,
Bowersox and fellow actors viewed this play in another metro area theater and left “totally confused,” but she is confident the ERCT can pull it together.
“This play has some light moments but also some very intense scenes,” she said. “This is not fluff. We want to showcase our acting and singing talents.”
Noting the ghostly figures and moving sets, she quips: “This is like Harry Potter meets Wuthering Heights.” (Bruce Strand)
At Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal in North Yorkshire, the It's a Monk's Life guided tour invites you to dress up in robes and learn about the daily life of a monk, while at Belton House in Lincolnshire children and parents can dress up like Victorians to explore the house, which has seen filming for Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Tom Jones within its walls.The couple Ryan Gosling-Rachel McAdams is qualified by the National Post as
Canada's answer to Heathcliff and Catherine swooshed off to differing orbits. (Shinan Govani)The Book Reporter interviews author Stephen L. Carter, whose latest book is Jericho's Fall:
Q: Jericho's house, Stone Heights, is itself a character in this novel, one with its own secrets and surprises. It harks back to such stories as WUTHERING HEIGHTS or REBECCA or an Agatha Christie mystery where the physical setting is as much a character as the people. Did you have any of those stories in mind as you wrote this?Pakistan Views interviews actress and director Savera Nadeem:
SLC: Oh, yes. I remember reading Thomas Hardy as a teenager, and being fascinated by the way that the house or the pond or the moor was always brooding over the action. Here, I had in effect two "physical" characters, the house itself, and the mountains that surround both Stone Heights and the town of Bethel. By the way, the town of Bethel is fictitious, but of course bears a biblical relation to Jericho.
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are my favourite books of all time. They are works of the highest order,” Savera fondly reveals.ClicRBS (Brazil) selects Wuthering Heights 1939 as a 'crying' film:
O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes (Wuthering Heighs) – o magnífico William Wyler dirige com maestria esta história de amor, ódio e vingança, baseado no romance de Emily Brontë. Clássico obrigatório para os amantes de cinema. O filme conta a trágica histórica de Heathclif, um jovem pobre que enriquece e decide se vingar de todos os que o humilharam. Será que sua sede de vingança é tanta que nem mesmo o amor pela bela donzela Cathy será capaz de apagar seu ódio? O final....? Quem anda não sabe, que vá assistir. Mas por favor, o clássico de 39. (Ju Lessa) (Google translation)El Diario Vasco (Spain) interviews author Claudia Casanova:
Ella se crió leyendo a «Walter Scott, Dumas, Flaubert, las Brontë. Los clásicos y los románticos. Más que por mi trabajo de editora, que ayuda, escribo como lo hago por mis lecturas de siempre», asegura. (Elena Sierra) (Google translation)Lourdes Ortiz talks in El Diario Montañés (Spain) about Simone de Beauvoir and her Brontëiteness:
La escritora también recordó lo dura que fue la parisina con sus contemporáneas, a las que acusaba de seguir siendo «dependientes» aunque escribieran o pintaran. «No le interesaban sus colegas, a las que en general despreciaba. Sólo salvaba a Virginia Wolf y a Brönte (sic)». (Violeta Santiago) (Google translation)A couple more of German papers contain articles about the Annelies Štrba exhibition at the Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem in Troisdorf, Germany:
Das Licht ist diffus, die Farben entstammen einem Reich, das nicht von dieser Welt zu sein scheint, das irgendwo unter Wasser oder mitten in einem wunderlichen Dschungel liegt.
Die Stimmung lässt sich am ehesten als märchenhaft bis schaurig beschreiben. So wie die Schweizer Fotografin Annelies ?trba ihre ätherischen Mädchen im Märchenwald inszeniert, so stellt man sich die Fantasiewelt der Brontë-Schwestern im Heidemoor von Yorkshire vor. Erst recht die zwischen Idylle und Albtraum oszillierende Stimmung in Emily Brontës Klassiker "Wuthering Heights" ("Sturmhöhe", 1847) findet in trbas opulenten Farbfotografien ihren kongenialen Gegenpart.
Service Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem, Troisdorf; bis 6. September. Di-So 11-17 Uhr.
Mit dem Foto-Projekt "My Life Dreams" ist die Schweizerin im Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem zu Gast, das beim Komplex "Rotkäppchen und der böse Wolf" um die Ecke die wundersame Welt der Brontës zelebriert. Den Anfang machen Fotos und Dokumente aus der Sammlung des Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Porträts zeigen die zarten Gesichter von Charlotte und Emily, die mit geschicktem Strich 1829 eine Ringdrossel zeichnete oder den Hund "Keeper" im Aquarell verewigte.
Eine hübsche Landschaft mit Kirche erscheint auf einem Blatt der jüngsten Brontë-Schwester Anne, ein winziges Büchlein, über dessen Inhalt nur Spekulationen möglich sind, war einst im Besitz von Charlotte. Und wenn es um die Interpretation geht, muss der Name Balthus fallen, der mit einem Schuss Lolita-Erotik 1933 "Wuthering Heights" illustrierte. Tatsächlich findet sich in der Ausstellung ein Druck des großen Balthus.
So ganz unberührt von einer latent erotischen Aufladung sind auch Annelies ?trbas Bilder nicht, auch die Darstellung der jungen Mädchen als somnambule, in einem Zwischenzustand zwischen Traum und Tod treibende Wesen erinnert an Balthus. Den Plot zu ?trbas Bildessays aber hat Emily Brontë selbst in ihrem Roman geschrieben: "Ich habe in meinem Leben schon Träume gehabt, die mich immer wieder verfolgt und meine Ansichten verändert haben. Sie haben mich durchdrungen, wie man Wasser mit Wein mischt, und meinem Denken eine andere Farbe gegeben."
Annelies trba setzt solche Texte in fließende, atmosphärische Bilder um, ähnlich wie bei den Studien aus ihrem engsten Familienkreis, den Porträts und Städtebildern, die sie schon auf der ganzen Welt ausgestellt hat, und die eine Autorin einmal als "Innenaugenbilder" bezeichnete. "My Life Dreams" verwischt die Grenzen zwischen Fotografie und Malerei im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes und reizt sämtliche Möglichkeiten und Tricks digitaler Bildbearbeitung aus. Ein schaurig-schönes Fantasy-Abenteuer. (Thomas Kliemann in General-Anzeiger) (Google translation)
Winzig wie eine Babyhand ist das Buch, das in einer Vitrine liegt. Die kleine Häkelschrift ist nicht zu entziffern. Wird hier vielleicht von den Königreichen Angria und Gondal erzählt? In diesen imaginierten Rückzugsort nämlich flüchteten die Geschwister Brontë als Kinder. Ihre Erzählungen hielten sie in selbst gemachten „Zeitungen“ fest; vielleicht auch in jenem Büchlein, das sie aus Zuckerpapier bastelten.Martin Stannard, who has spent 15 years researching Muriel Spark's authorised biography, publishes an interesting article in The Guardian. A couple of passing mentions to Muriel Spark's book about Emily Brontë (Emily Brontë. Her Life and Work, published in 1953 with Derek Stanford) appear. Vandalism in St Mary's churchyard (Scarborough), home to Anne Bronte's grave, is reported in Scarborough Evening News. Fortunately, Anne's tomb has not been affected, The Weekly Standard reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. DotGolf (in Italy) traces bizarre comparisons between Wuthering Heights and Tom Watson 1977 Open Championship victory.
Heute ist es eine bibliophile Kostbarkeit, zu bewundern in der Schau „My Life Dreams“ im Bilderbuchmuseum auf Burg Wissem - mit Zeichnungen und literarischen Zeugnissen von Anne, Charlotte und Emily. Direktorin Maria Linsmann konnte diese kleine Auswahl aus dem Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth ausleihen. Und musste dafür eine Pilgerreise nach Yorkshire antreten. Denn das Institut verleiht seine Schätze nur ungern, gilt es doch, die Aura des Brontë-Pfarrhauses zu hüten, die Fans aus aller Welt heilig ist.
Alles ist an seinem Platz: die Möbel, der Stickrahmen und auch die Peitsche, mit der die Kinder von ihrem Vater geschlagen worden sind. Landschaftsskizzen, eine Zeichnung des Haushundes, Manuskripte und Porträts der Geschwister gewähren einen intimen Einblick in das Drama der begabten Kinder, mit dem sich vor allem ein Name verbindet: „Wuthering Heights“, Emilys düsteres Werk um Liebe, Demütigung, Eifersucht und Rache.
In den Bann dieses viktorianischen Seelenromans ließ sich auch die Fotografin Annelies "trba (Jg. 1947) ziehen, die den größten Teil der Schau bestreitet. Ätherische Frauen- und vor allem Mädchenfiguren inszeniert sie in Landschaften von tranceartiger, surrealer Farbigkeit. Türkisblau wallt der Nebel einer Alice im Wunderland entgegen, die im weißen Rüschenkleid durch einen violetten Tannenwald wandelt. Doch oft liegen die Heldinnen mit geschlossenen Augen da, eingebettet ins Moos der nordenglischen Nebellandschaft oder wie Schneewittchen eingesargt in die Gletscher von Annelies "trbas Schweizer Heimat. Ihre eigenen Töchter und Enkelinnen haben vor der Kamera posiert. Durch Vergrößerung, malerische Unschärfe und handwerkliche Manipulation werden die Lichtbilder in eine Sphäre jenseits des Privaten gerückt, die zwischen bedrohtem Idyll und sanftem Horror changiert.
Mag zuweilen die Grenze zum arg Gefälligen gestreift werden, so fasziniert doch das Gespür Annelies "trbas für Stimmungsräume. Wie giftgelbe Fanale leuchten die Narzissen auf dem nächtlichen Friedhof von Haworth; und im geisterhaften Pfarrhaus stellen wir uns die Dichterin Emily Brontë vor: „sitzt allein an ihrem Fenster / wo der Abend sich verlor / böiger Winde böse Ahnung / flitzt durch grauen Wolkenflor“. (Annette Schroeder in Kölnische Rundschau) (Google translation)
She’s the title character in Jane Eyre, due out later this year, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and co-starring Michael Fassbender (Hunger). “There were certain moments on set where I’d go, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ ” Wasikowska said. “You can’t believe you’ve been trusted with a character like Jane Eyre, and you want to do her justice. In the novel, she’s 18, but she’s always been played by older actresses. It’s kind of fun to play her as a teenager, with these insane responsibilities. If she was living in our time, she’d really thrive.” (Johanna Schneller)The Irish Times asks several writers about good novel endings. Tishani Doshi says:
But what I really love are intoxicating endings; endings that leave you with an aftertaste, an essence of the book. Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez are all modern-day masters in this regard, but my favourite is probably Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights : “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” (Sinéad Gleeson)Art Daily announces that Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts series will be exhibited in Brooklyn in October:
Sam Taylor-Wood’s 2008 photographic exploration of the Yorkshire moors, Ghosts, is the latest exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. On view from October 30, 2010, through August 14, 2011, the series was inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic Victorian novel, Wuthering Heights, and its legendary atmospheric descriptions of the bleak, wild landscape.Curiously, the ending was something that 1 Million Words in a blog review didn't like.
For many years, Taylor-Wood kept a country house in the same West Yorkshire region where Emily Brontë and her famous literary and artistic family lived. Drawing inspiration from the Brontë sisters’ gothic romantic fiction, the artist followed the footpath from the stone parsonage where the Brontës lived and died up across the moors to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged setting of Wuthering Heights. In her photographs, she captures the stark and haunting character of the windswept moors and gray skies surrounding the area of Top Withens.
Surrounded by this sexually-charged atmosphere, Keith spends his summer reading classic novels about love, romance and (heavily-veiled) sex, from Richardson’s 18th-century classic PAMELA to the works of Austen, the Brontë sisters, Eliot and Dickens. In each one, he absorbs something of the message of the sexual politics of years past, even as he tries --- and often fails --- to interpret those of his own time. (Norah Piehl)The success of Marvel comics' adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the new release of Sense and Sensibility points to the possibility of a Marvel Jane Eyre according to Keri Luna in the LA Geek Culture Examiner:
When asked if we can expect to see Mr. Knightley gently scolding his Emma, or Jane Eyre falling for Mr. Rochester in a Marvel Illustrated comic anytime soon, Macchio admits they are waiting to see how the hardcover book of Sense and Sensibility will be received, but if there is an audience, he added, “Why not?”SecondAct lists several one-hit literary wonders. Including our Emily of course:
Emily Brontë, who died in 1848 of tuberculosis, a year after the publication of her only novel, the innovative Wuthering Heights. (Patrick J. Kiger)The Times talks about Sofi Oksanen who seems to think that the only remarkable female artists around are the Brontës:
She then became fascinated with art history and world history, and remembers trying to find out why there were so few great women artists. As for literature, “We can be happy about the Brontë sisters but that’s about it,” she says. She views herself as part of a strong female literary heritage in Finland, though (“Half of our successful authors are women, so you don’t feel on the margins”) and is strikingly matter-of-fact about the success of her novel.El Periódico de Aragón (Spain) is a strong contender to the blunder of the year:
Esa miss Bennet del título es una de las heroínas de Jane Eyre en Orgullo y prejuicio, la hermana que en la historia original había quedado un tanto oscurecida frente al protagonismo emocional de las dos Bennet más brillantes, Elisabeth y Jane. (Google translation) (Juan Bolea)Público (Spain) recommends Minae Mizumura's A Real Novel for this summer:
Y luego está ese libro de 700 páginas que no pesa en la maleta. Se trata de Una novela real, de la japonesa Minae Mizumura. "Una visión posmoderna de Cumbres Borrascosas", dice la argentina Gabriela Cabezón, autora de la excelente La Virgen cabeza. Amor, humor o sangre. El verbo es el mismo: disfrutar. (Paula Corroto) (Google translation)Our Twilight zone today comes from Italy:
Rispetto alle cronache di Vampiri di Anne Rice (l'autrice, per intendersi, del best seller Intervista con il vampiro), i non morti della Mayer non respirano l'atmosfera gotica e mortifera di una torrida Louisiana, ma si accontentano di un romanticismo d'accatto che profuma più di Federico Moccia che di Cime Tempestose, tanto per citare uno dei libri preferiti da Edward Cullen. (Lord Maxwell in MoviEye.it) (Google translation)More Moccia than Brontë seems approppriate for Twilight.
и: Какие книги вы сами читали в детстве?The Denver Post publishes an excerpt from The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman which contains a Wuthering Heights reference, Laura's Reviews completes (and summarises) the All About the Brontës Challenge with a review of Jane Eyre 1970. Mundo Cretino posts about Wuthering Heights 1939 (in Spanish). Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers also talks about Emily Brontë's novel. Breezy Originals shares her pictures of a trip to Brontë Country.
эндрюс: Мой отец был учителем литературы и формировал мои вкусы. Впервые в книжный магазин он привел меня, когда мне было около девяти лет. И книжка, которую мы в тот раз купили, навсегда осталась в моем сердце. Это сказочная повесть "Маленькие серые человечки" - о трех гномах, отправившихся на поиски своего пропавшего брата. И, безусловно, Чарльз Диккенс, Джейн Остин, сестры Бронте, словом, английская классическая литература. (Вита Рамм) (Google translation)
Julie Scheina at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has bought English professor April Lindner's debut YA novel Jane, for the Poppy imprint. The story is a contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre, in which a Sarah Lawrence dropout-turned-nanny falls in love with her employer, an iconic rock star on the brink of a comeback. Publication is set for fall 2010. Amy Williams of McCormick & Williams Literary Agency did the deal for world rights.Ruben Toledo's new covers for Penguin Classics, including Wuthering Heights, are discussed today in the New York Times:
Was Heathcliff — the wild child of Wuthering Heights — a 19th-century emo boy? (...) On Aug. 25, to coordinate with New York’s Fashion Week, Penguin Classics will unveil three paperback hits from youthquakes past, updated with stylish new covers by Ruben Toledo. (If you read DailyCandy.com, you’ll recognize Toledo’s playful watercolors of gamines and hipsters — angular of frame and tangy with Pixy Stix splashes of color.) (...)Flavorwire seems also very excited with these new designs.
Toledo’s covetable, contrasty covers look like Belle and Sebastian albums, or ads for Steve Madden shoes. The minx he’s drawn for the cover of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is dressed as dramatically as an Olsen twin and has feline eyes big as saucers, their murky blue irises mirrored in the moor behind her. Heathcliff lurks on the book’s back, brooding and thick-browed as the vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen. (...)
Will this sleek trio of high-concept literary accessories end up in the hands of hipsters on the L train, come August? And can their design turn screen-fed millennials who’ve only watched Austen, Brontë and Hawthorne at the movies into readers who appreciate them on the printed page, too? Let’s hope so. There’s nothing wrong with bringing novelty to publishing; the best works will always transcend any fashion statement; and the word “novel,” after all, derives from the Latin novus, for “new.” Besides, even a very old book is new to someone who’s never read it before. (Liesl Schillinger)
Massachusetts Museum Of Contemporary Art runs an exhibition named 'These Days: Elegies for Modern Times' through Feb 28, 2010, at Building 4, Second floor. (...)About.com reviews A Journey Into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg.
Selections from Taylor-Wood's photo-graphic series, Ghosts and After Dark, are also on view. In Ghosts Taylor-Wood takes on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights by photographing the moors in Yorkshire, England, in the harshness of winter to speak of Bronte's themes of thwarted love and suffering.
An insane wife hidden and locked away in the attic was the mystery at the heart of the classic Jane Eyre. As a plot device, the mentally ill Bertha served as the obstacle to Jane and Rochester’s happiness and would conveniently die by her own hand to insure they’d end up together in true love-story fashion.Discussing Nicholas Sarkozy's recent problems with jogging, the Telegraph can't help but appeal to the Heathcliffgate:
But who was Bertha?
What led to her being locked away?
What was her story? (Laura Sternberg)
That triviality is central to British politics is self-evident. Gordon Brown used to be credited – at least by the more fanciful of his admirers – with the brooding good looks of a Heathcliff. Now the Prime Minister just looks tired: grey of hair, slack of jaw, baggy of eye, a man starting to feel his age. (Max Davidson)Bookin' with Bingo interviews author Emilie Richards:
What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out?And The Book Butterfly interviews author Alyson Noël:
As a child I read everything I could get my hands on. I basically swept through our small public library and read indiscriminately. I loved Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind and other popular novels about strong women overcoming incredible obstacles. I think it’s clear that theme left an indelible impression on my work.
If you could dive into any novel and become one of the characters for the day, what novel would you choose?New posts on The Valve about Villette. The Portuguese blog Cuidadocomodalmata also posts about Charlotte Brontë's book. Among Books and Novel Reviewer recommend Jane Eyre, Livre du Jour discusses Agnes Grey. The Sims3 blog A Legendary Legacy includes Anne Brontë's Farewell in its latest installment.
I’d choose WUTHERING HEIGHTS so I could be Catherine and skip the whole “social advancement” stage, tell Heathcliff I love him, and alleviate a whole lot of suffering! But then it wouldn’t be WUTHERING HEIGHTS anymore would it? So maybe not.
A couple of Brontë-related gifts have recently crossed BrontëBlog's way. One of them, quite affordable and the other one... well, after all it is for a good cause.Nine Lives Red Cotton Canvas Tote Bag (14x14x5)
by Victoria Roberts
Pub. Date: July 2009
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
ISBN-13: 9780641999260
Giving comfortCategories: Weirdo
This cushion was designed by the artist Sam Taylor-Wood for the Rug Company to raise money for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. The pattern is from a photograph in Taylor-Wood’s Ghosts series, based on Wuthering Heights. The cushion costs £495, 50 per cent of which goes to the charity, from the Rug Company (020-7229 5148; therugcompany.info).
A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:Also on the Brontë Parsonage Blog.BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD LAUNCHES NEW SEASON OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS EVENTS AT THE BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM
The Brontë Parsonage Museum launches its new Contemporary Arts Programme this month, with an evening with internationally bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford on Saturday 19 September at 7.30pm at the Old Schoolroom, Haworth. The event will see Yorkshire-born Barbara Taylor Bradford return to the UK as part of a special tour celebrating 30 years since the publication of her landmark novel A Woman of Substance and her new book Breaking The Rules. Barbara Taylor Bradford will be discussing her books, career and love of the Brontës with arts critic and journalist Danuta Kean.
This special event is the first in a new season of contemporary arts events to take place at the Brontë Parsonage Museum between September 2009 and March 2010. Other high profile events will include readings by Sarah Waters (on the left) and Tracy Chevalier (on the right), and a talk by screenwriter Peter Bowker who recently adapted Wuthering Heights for ITV1.
As well as its usual mix of visual arts exhibitions, talks and workshops, the museum is currently receiving funding from Arts Council England to develop a season of events that showcase and celebrate women’s writing. Arts Officer Jenna Holmes says:“The Brontës were pioneering women writers and we are delighted that Arts Council England is supporting us to really explore and highlight theThe full details of the new programme are listed below:Brontës’ influence on contemporary women writers today. This special strand of programming includes visits by high-profile women writers such as Sarah Waters and Barbara Taylor Bradford, but it also enables us to appoint a writer-in-residence, Katrina Naomi, to explore the museum collections and work with community groups, as well as allowing us to support emerging women writers and introduce new creative writing projects and events for everyone who comes to the museum”.
Sam Taylor-Wood: Ghosts
Until Monday 2 November
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Landscape photographs of the moors around Haworth, inspired by Wuthering Heights, by major British artist Sam Taylor-Wood. Free on admission to the museum.
A Woman of Substance: An Evening with Barbara Taylor Bradford
Saturday 19 September
7.30pm, Old Schoolroom, Church St, Haworth
Internationally bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford will be visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of her landmark novel, A Woman of Substance, and the release of her new book, Breaking The Rules. She will be speaking about her work and the influence of the Brontës with journalist and arts critic Danuta Kean.
Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, and was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post at sixteen. By the age of twenty she had graduated to London's Fleet Street as both an editor and columnist. In 1979, she wrote her first novel, A Woman of Substance, and that enduring bestseller has been followed by 24 others. Her novels have sold more than 81 million copies worldwide in more than 90 countries and 40 languages. Barbara Taylor Bradford lives in New York City.
Tickets are £5 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
National Poetry Day – Writer in Residence
Saturday 10 October
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Poet Katrina Naomi is the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s first Writer in Residence, and over the coming months will be working in the collections, as well as facilitating a special community project. To mark National Poetry Day, Katrina Naomi will be engaging with museum visitors for the day, to produce new poems inspired by visitor responses.
Katrina Naomi is originally from Margate and now lives in London. Her first full collection The Girl with the Cactus Handshake will be published in October 2009. She won the 2008 Templar Poetry Competition and her pamphlet Lunch at the Elephant & Castle was published later that year. She has received an Arts Council England writer's award and a Hawthornden Fellowship, and has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths. Katrina is also a lecturer in creative writing for the Open University.
Free on admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Tracy Chevalier
Friday 16 October
7.30pm, West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Novelist Tracy Chevalier will be visiting Haworth to read from and discuss her new novel, Remarkable Creatures. The novel tells the story of Mary Anning, who in nineteenth-century Lyme Regis discovers the first pre-dinosaur fossils which will pave the way for Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Tracy Chevalier is the author of five previous novels, including the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), The Virgin Blue (1997), Falling Angels (2001), The Lady and the Unicorn (2003) and Burning Bright (2007). Born in Washington, DC, she now lives in London with her husband and son. She is Chairman of the Society of Authors.
Tickets are £5 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
Peter Bowker and Wuthering Heights
Saturday 24 October, 7pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
BAFTA winning screenwriter Peter Bowker will talk about his recent work adapting Wuthering Heights for television. Peter will be joined by director Coky Giedroyc and (filming schedules permitting) other key members of the production team to discuss the process of transferring the story from page to screen. The costumes from the ITV production are currently on display at the Parsonage.
Peter Bowker wrote Blackpool for the BBC, and adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2005) and Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale (2003) for television. His ITV movie Buried Treasure won the BAFTA Lew Grade Award for Most Popular Drama in 2001, and his television film, Flesh and Blood won the Prix Europa and two Royal Television Society awards in 2002. His three part drama, Occupation, about three British soldiers serving in Iraq was shown on BBC1 in 2009.
Tickets are £10 and must be booked in advance. Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
From Laptop to Bookshop: The Mslexia Roadshow
Saturday 28 November
Mslexia is a magazine dedicated to women writers. The Mslexia Roadshow offers a day of creative writing opportunities and to hear a successful author discuss her work. Each event can be booked onto individually or you can take part in the whole day.10am – 12pm, West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
- Mslexia Workshop 1: Writing a synopsis
Led by novelist and founder of Mslexia Debbie Taylor, this creative writing workshop is aimed at novelists. It will help you identify what your novel is really about, and communicate it to an agent or editor.
Tickets £10 and includes admission to the museum; women only; places are limited and must be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk1.30pm- 3.30pm, West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
- Mslexia Workshop 2: First Paragraph
Led by novelist and experienced creative writing tutor Jane Rogers, this workshop is aimed at novelists and short story writers and will help you create an arresting first paragraph.
Tickets £10 and includes admission to the museum; women only; places are limited and must be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
Sarah Waters in conversation
6pm, West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Sarah Waters will be in conversation with Mslexia founder Debbie Taylor about her writing career and her latest novel, The Little Stranger.
Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and has been an associate lecturer with the Open University. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2003, she was named Author of the Year three times and was also chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature and both Fingersmith and The Night Watch were shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith have all been adapted for television. The Night Watch is currently in development with the BBC. The Little Stranger has been long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2009.
Tickets are £8 and should be booked in advance; all welcome.
Bookings: 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
Mr Lockwood’s Confusing Christmas
Saturday 12 December
Brontë Parsonage Museum
It’s Christmas and characters from the Brontës’ novels have escaped the pages of their books and been let loose in the Parsonage, where mayhem unfolds. What would happen if Mr Rochester met Cathy under the mistletoe, or Jane Eyre came across Heathcliff in the graveyard with a shovel? And when will Nelly Dean sort out that strange laughter coming from the attic?
Event takes place throughout the day. Free on admission to the museum.
Jo Brown: The Sunbeam and the Storm
Friday 5 March – Monday 3 March
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Artist Jo Brown exhibits a series of abstract paintings inspired by descriptions of weather in Emily Brontë’s poems.
Jo Brown was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and studied in Yorkshire, at Bretton Hall College then Sheffield Hallam University, gaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 1995. She was artist in residence at Dean Clough, Halifax in 1995 and has since exhibited regularly in municipal and commercial galleries in England, Scotland and the USA. Free on admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum
Lisa Appignanesi: Mad, Bad and Sad
Wednesday 10 March, 2pm
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT HAS NOW BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL WEDNESDAY 28 APRIL 2010
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
“Charlotte Brontë’s portrait of Bertha Mason, the ‘mad, bad and embruted’ wife of Rochester in Jane Eyre has taken on iconic value. But by the time Brontë penned it, she was drawing on what were already old images of madness, probably garnered from the notorious Bedlam”. Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi will be talking about her latest book MAD, BAD and SAD: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800. Including writers such as Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, this is the history of the study of the female mind over the past two centuries. The book has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, the Warwick, the MIND and has won the Medical Journalist’s Award.
Lisa Appignanesi is a novelist, writer and broadcaster, she is former deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, chair of the Freud Museum and president of English PEN.
Admission is £3 and there is no need to book in advance
An Afternoon with Persephone Books
Wednesday 24 March, 2pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
Persephone Books reprints neglected novels, diaries, short stories and cookery books by women writers such as Dorothy Whipple and Katherine Mansfield. Founder Nicola Beauman talks about the origins of Persephone, how books are chosen and some of the authors.
Admission is £3 and there is no need to book in advance
BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM ANNOUNCES NEW CONTEMPORARY ARTS PROGRAMMEQuite a remarkable series of events, we think.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum has announced a new contemporary arts programme to run from April to September 2009. The new season will include Ghosts, an exhibition of landscape photographs of the moors around Haworth by major British artist Sam Taylor-Wood. A series of photographs of Writers’ rooms, serialised in The Guardian each Saturday by photographer Eamonn McCabe, will also be exhibited at the Parsonage.
The museum will also be developing its programme of literary readings and events, following recent funding from Arts Council England to develop literary events that showcase and celebrate women’s writing. Bestselling author Kate Atkinson will begin the new programme on Thursday 23 April, reading from her latest novel When Will There Be Good News? Writers Justine Picardie, Joanne Harris, Amanda Craig and Jude Morgan, along with Mills & Boon author Kate Walker will be taking part in literary events in June. Playwright and critic Bonnie Greer will be reading from her new novel at the Parsonage in September.
“The contemporary arts programme is going from strength to strength and continues to inspire artists and writers of the highest calibre to work with us. What is more, the Arts Council funding marks an exciting new stage for the arts programme. The Brontë sisters were pioneering women writers and this project will enable the museum to celebrate their legacy by working with both established and emerging women writers and supporting a new Writer in Residence scheme at the museum”.
Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer
As part of the literature project, the museum will also be launching a new monthly book group on Wednesday afternoons to discuss contemporary fiction and the work of visiting authors.
Brontë Parsonage Museum’s Contemporary Arts Programme April – September 2009, full programme details:
Kate Atkinson
Thursday 23 April, 7.30pm
The Old Schoolroom, Church St, Haworth
Kate Atkinson’s first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World (2002), and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet (1997), Emotionally Weird (2000), Case Histories (2004) and One Good Turn (2006). Case Histories introduced her readers to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster. Her latest novel, When Will There Be Good News, also features Jackson Brodie.
Tickets are £5 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188/ jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk
Writers’ Rooms
Friday 1 May until Monday 6 July
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Renowned photographer Eamonn McCabe publishes the series Writers’ Rooms, documenting the writing spaces of novelists, biographers and poets, in The Guardian each Saturday. This exhibition of prints from the series offers a fascinating glimpse into the desk spaces of some of the most important writers working today.
Eamonn McCabe made his name as a sports photographer for The Observer in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1988 he became Picture Editor of The Guardian and has been awarded Picture Editor of the Year six times. In 2001 he returned to full-time photography, specialising in portraiture. A selection of photographs from his series Artists and their Studios was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2008.
Free on admission to the museum
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
Friday 5 June, 3.30pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
To coincide with the museum’s new special exhibition focusing on Branwell Brontë, Juliet Barker and Justine Picardie discuss the life and creative legacy of the reprobate Brontë brother.
Juliet Barker was educated at Bradford Girls' Grammar School and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she obtained a doctorate in medieval history. From 1983 to 1989 she was the curator and librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Her books include The Brontës, which won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award and was short-listed for both the AT&T Non-Fiction Prize and the Marsh Biography Award, The Brontës: A Life in Letters, Wordsworth: A Life and, most recently, Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle and The Tournament in England 1100 – 1400. In 2001 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Justine Picardie is the author of Daphne (2007) which tells the story of Daphne du Maurier’s obsession with Branwell Brontë; If the Spirit Moves You (2001); Wish I May (2004) and My Mother’s Wedding Dress (2005). She has also written introductions to the Virago Modern Classics editions of Daphne du Maurier’s The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (2004) and The King’s General (2004). Formerly the features editor of British Vogue, she is a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine and writes for Harpers Bazaar.
Admission is £5.00 and advance booking is not required.
The Brontës and Romance
Saturday 6 June, 8pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
The Brontës’ novels are often described as being amongst the greatest love stories of English literature. This discussion, chaired by Justine Picardie, examines the influence of the Brontës’ works on the romance genre.
Amanda Craig is the author of six novels, including Love in Idleness (2003), a modern retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and most recently Hearts and Minds (2009). Amanda contributes regularly to The Independent on Sunday and The New Statesman and is a columnist for the Sunday Times. She has written and contributed to several articles on romantic fiction, describing it as one of the oldest and most distinguished genres in literature.
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley and has published eight novels including Chocolat (1999), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp; Holy Fools (2003), Gentlemen and Players (2005) and The Lollipop Shoes (2007). Her books are published in over 40 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. Her novel Five Quarters of the Orange (2001) was shortlisted for the 2002 Parker Romantic Novel of the Year award.
Jude Morgan studied on the University of East Anglia MA Course in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and has published five critically acclaimed historical novels, Symphony (2006); Passion (2005) and The King’s Touch (2002). His nineteenth-century romances, An Accomplished Woman (2007) and Indiscretion (2006), have been likened to the works of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. Jude Morgan’s most recent book, The Taste of Sorrow, is published in May 2009 and tells the extraordinary story of the Brontë family.
Kate Walker has written over fifty books for Mills & Boon. A huge admirer of the Brontës, she wrote her MA thesis on the work of Charlotte and Emily Brontë and one of her most recent novels, Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (2008) is loosely inspired by Wuthering Heights. Kate is also the author of The 12 Point Guide To Writing Romance which won a Cata Romance award and she lectures on romance writing.
Tickets are £10 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640195 / peter.morrison@bronte.org.uk
The Brontës in the World of the Arts
Friday 3 July, 7.30pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
The Brontës were passionate about the visual arts, but little critical attention has been paid to the influence of music, theatre and material culture on their lives and literature. This panel discussion, chaired by Patsy Stoneman, brings together the contributors of a newly published collection of essays The Brontës in the World of the Arts, which presents new research on the Brontës’ relationship to the arts more widely. Christine Alexander, Sandra Hagan, Meg Harris-Williams and Juliette Wells discuss the significance of the creative arts on the Brontës’ writings.
Admission is £5 and should be booked in advance.
Ghosts
Friday 17 July until Monday 2 November
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Sam Taylor-Wood’s landscape series, Ghosts, was shot on the moors around Haworth, where the fictional Wuthering Heights is set, and documents her own emotional response to that landscape and the novel’s brutal take on desire and suffering that she finds expressed within it. Ghosts was originally exhibited as part of Sam Taylor-Wood’s most recent exhibition Yes I No at the White Cube Gallery, London in October 2008 and the museum has worked with the artist to create new prints of the photographs for exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London in 1967 and has had numerous group and solo exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1997) and The Turner Prize (1998). Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zurich (1997), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2000), Hayward Gallery, London (2002), State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (2004), MCA, Moscow (2004), BALTIC, Gateshead (2006), MCA Sydney (2006) MoCA Cleveland (2007) and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2008).
Bonnie Greer
Wednesday 9 September, 2pm
The Old Schoolroom, Church St, Haworth
Bonnie Greer is a playwright, critic, broadcaster and novelist and she will be reading from and discussing her new novel, Entropy (2009), as well as the influence of the Brontës. Born in America, Bonnie Greer studied theatre in Chicago with David Mamet and in New York with Elia Kazan and wrote a number of plays for American theatres in Chicago and New York. She has won the Verity Bargate Award for best new play and has had numerous plays produced for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. Her previous novel is Hanging by Her Teeth (1994).
Admission is £3 and advance booking is not required.
Unless explicitly said
