An Inward Treasure

Mia Wasikowska continues receiving praise for her role as Jane Eyre, particularly now that she has landed a role as Emma Bovary:

Bright Young Hollywood thing turned Miu Miuse turned director, Mia Wasikowska, has already proven her corset drama acting chops delivering an outstanding and nuanced performance as the titular protagonist of Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre. . .  (Nick on Pedestrian TV)

Fresh off proving that she can totally rock a corset (plus, you know, poignantly bring to life one of literature’s most renowned characters) in last year’s Jane Eyre, young Aussie Mia Wasikowska is set to lead another adaptation of a 19th Century classic in the form of Madame Bovary.  (Matt Currie on Collider)

The Times announces the arrival of Jane Eyre 2011 to Sky Box Office:

The director Cary Fukunaga’s feature debut, Sin Nombre, was  an extraordinary, visceral tale of illegal immigrants and South American gang culture. That he can move so effortlessly from the vivid violence of the nameless refugees to the smouldering gothic threat of Charlotte Brönte’s [sic] Jane Eyre only serves to underline his remarkable skill and versatility. Mia Wasikowska is a thoughtful, self-contained Jane, and man of the moment, Michael Fassbender, is a smooth and sexual presence as Rochester, in this restrained artfully constructed adaptation. (David Chater)

And more film news, as Variety reports on the afterlife of Wuthering Heights 1939:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group has agreed with the Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. Family Trust on terms for the North American homevid release of 74 titles from the Goldwyn library, including "The Best Years of Our Lives," "Pride of the Yankees," "Wuthering Heights," "Hans Christian Andersen" and "Guys and Dolls."
Companies said the pact represents nearly every film produced by Samuel Goldwyn between 1925 and 1955, including some that have never before been available to the home entertainment market. Titles could be released on Blu-ray, DVD, electronic sell-through and VOD as early as the fourth quarter.
"The acquisition of the stellar Samuel Goldwyn library reaffirms WBHEG's commitment to the classics and ownership through physical and digital distribution to consumers," said Warner exec Jeff Baker. "Our library, already boasting such crown jewels as 'The Wizard of Oz,' 'Gone With the Wind,' 'Citizen Kane' and 'Casablanca,' to name just a few, will be strengthened even further with Goldwyn's fine titles from American film history." (Dave McNary)

And still on Variety, this is how they describe Great Expectations 2011:

In the mode of recent cinematic renditions of "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights," this is a grittier, earthier "Great Expectations," brimming with dark, portentous atmosphere and handsomely lensed by Florian Hoffmeister ("The Deep Blue Sea") with attention to natural light. (Geoff Berkshire)

Queerty mourns the death of poet Adrienne Rich and quotes her quoting from Jane Eyre:

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
—Celebrated lesbian poet Adrienne Rich, who died Tuesday at age 82, in c. (Dan Avery)

She was the author of an influential paper, one of the earliest feminist readings of Jane Eyre in "Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman," (1973) reprinted in her On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 (New York: Norton, 1979).

The Telegraph 'fictionalises' Anne Brontë's love for bluebells:

For its fleeting appearance is part of the bluebell’s magic. Like spring itself, it never lasts long. There is a sad joy about it which is, no doubt, why it so appealed to the Brontë sisters.
Anne — on her way to York to become a governess — was characteristically gloomy until she “looked upon a bank” and her “wandering glances fell upon a little trembling flower, a single sweet bluebell”. The sight cheered her up no end, which — bearing in mind Anne Brontë’s character — was a wonderful achievement in itself. (Roy Hattersley)

The Spanish press, magazines and blogosphere are literally flooding with Wuthering Heights 2011 informative articles:
Fotogramas, El Periódico de Catalunya, Ara (in Catalan), Noticine (including interviews with Andrea Arnold), Interfilms, La Crónica Virtual,  Gara, Cinemastic, Zinema, Berria (in Euskera)
or reviews:
Positive:
Fotogramas, Cinemanía, El Cultural, El Periódico de Catalunya, El País, El Mundo, La Vanguardia, NoTodo.com, Los 35 milímetros, Magnolia, Cinema Ad Hoc, CINeol, Radiocine, Butxaca (in Catalan), Número Cero, La Guía de tu Zona, Go-Mag, La Finestra Digital (in Catalan)
Lukewarm:
La Razón, The Cinéfagos, La Mirada de Ulises, La Butaca, La Casa de los Horrores, En Bandeja de Plata, El Cadillac Negro.
Negative:
La Script (Cadena Ser), Vanitatis, Cadena COPE, Ambos Mundos, El Imparcial, 20 Minutos, No Sólo Cine, Guía del Ocio Madrid, Individuo Kane, Fila Siete.

WP.pl announces that film will open in Poland next April 20. Also in Poland, an event took place yesterday, March 30 in Krakow, Poland. The poet Eryk Ostrowski presented a new poem devoted to Charlotte Brontë in a multidisciplicinar event:

Podgórska Scena Poezji przedstawia Eryk Ostrowski: Charlotta Brontë, przedstawienie nowego poematu E. Ostrowskiego w 157 rocznicę śmierci Charlotty Brontë, połączone z premierą wierszy zebranych E. Ostrowskiego „Daremne piękna 1994 – 2010”, 30 marca godz. 18.00
Recitation: Bozena Boba-Dyga, Marzena Niezgoda, Eric Ostrowski
Video art: Jacek Kabziński
Paintings: Anna Ostrowska-Paton
Talk by Prof. Wojciech Ligęza, moderated by Wlodarska-Ewa Lorek.

The Italian writer Bianca Pitzorno (author of La Bambinaia Francese (2004), a sequel of Jane Eyre) recalls her love for Jane Eyre in Il Corriere della Sera:

«Da ragazzina, con i primi soldi, mi sono comprata i romanzi di Jane Austen e delle sorelle Brönte (sic)». Bianca Pitzorno- 70 anni ad agosto, la più nota delle scrittici italiane per ragazzi - ricorda le sue prime letture «da grande»: «Frequentavo il classico, studiavo i greci e i latini, ma appena potevo mi buttavo Jane Eyre di Charlotte Brontë. Mi conquistò e mi sconvolse al punto che quando ho scritto L a bambinaia francese ce l' avevo ancora in profondità». (Translation)

7 Días (Dominican Republic) has an article about Jean Rhys and, particularly, Wide Sargasso Sea. The Province recalls that Charlotte Brontë died on a day like today in 1855. The Chicago Tribune features a book club who has recently read and enjoyed Jane Eyre. Ellinky features Jane Eyre-inspired objects. Heliosse II (in French) and Zvirzdins at large post about Jane Eyre 2011. Le Mange-Livres (in French) reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre; Larysa recenzuje writes in Polish about the recently translated Shirley. A Fashionable Frolick takes a look at Charlotte Brontë's wardrobe.

Read More

Charlotte's cause of death 157 years ago

We have been trying hard to remember - unsuccessfully - who it was that said something along the lines that in many cases - if not all - death tends to define the life of a person. That is far from being Charlotte Brontë's case. Her admirers will each find a key 'defining' thing about her life, but we will say that for most people it is her novel novels that define her life.

People with well-known and not-so-well-known illnesses battle for awareness of them. And thus we think that Charlotte Brontë, though to have died in the early stages of pregnancy due to hyperemesis gravidarum, wouldn't have minded the fact that her day that marks the anniversary of her death 157 years ago is now, at the instigation of the Ayden Rae Foundation, the first annual worldwide Hyperemesis Gravidarum Awareness Day.

From The Life of Charlotte Brontë, written by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell
”She was attacked by new sensations of perpetual nausea, and ever-recurring faintness. After this … had lasted for some time, she yielded to [her husband] Mr. Nicholls wish that a doctor should be sent for. He came, and assigned a natural cause for her miserable indisposition; a little patience, and all would go right. She who was ever patient in illness, tried hard to bear up and bear on. But the dreadful sickness increased and increased, till the very sight of food occasioned nausea …
Martha tenderly waited on her mistress, and from time to time tried to cheer her with the thought of the baby that was coming. “I dare say I shall be glad sometime,” she would say; “but I am so ill – so weary -” Then she took to her bed, too weak to sit up … Long days and longer nights went by; still the same relentless nausea and faintness … About the third week in March there was a change; a low wandering delirium came on; and in it she begged constantly for food … She swallowed eagerly now; but it was too late.”
Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband’s woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. “Oh!” she whispered forth, “I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.”
Early on Saturday morning, March 31st, the solemn tolling of Haworth church-bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate and alone in the old grey house.
Charlotte Brontë is thought to have died of Hyperemesis Gravidarum on March 31st1855
In honor of Charlotte Brontë the Ayden Rae Foundation is designating March 31, 2012 as Hyperemesis Gravidarum Awareness Day.   We will be hosting an HG Awareness Walk through the community of Barstow, CA and invite you to participate.

Take a moment today to read her life's work. Take a moment today to spread the word about her (probable) cause of death.

Read More

The Brontës' green fingers (or lack thereof)

El País (Spain) In English section mentions briefly that Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights opens today in Spain.

After making her name with Red Road and Fish Tank, two superb dramas of modern British life, director Andrea Arnold takes on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights with unknowns Kaya Scodelario as Cathy and — the first black actor to play the role — James Howson as Heathcliff. (Nick Funnell)

Kaya Scodelario was not an unknown, though.

CNN reviews, and quotes from, E L James's Fifty Shades of Grey (calling it 'mommy porn').

When "Fifty Shades" begins, the heroine's favorite pastime is to curl up with a good book, not a whip. After the hero asks her to sign a contract defining her role as his submissive, she tells the reader, "[Austen's] Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, [Brontë's] Jane Eyre too frightened and [Hardy's] Tess would succumb, just as I have."
Insistent references like this remind us that "Fifty Shades" is recycling the classic novel plot about a vulnerable young woman and a brooding older man. The hero has the lion's share of socioeconomic power; the heroine has only her magnetic strength and intelligence. (April Alliston and Susan Celia Greenfield)

The New York Daily News Pageviews discusses 'how we are raising a generation of illiterates':

Not only that, but some openly celebrate the demise of serious literature. “I don’t like Shakespeare,” writes novelist Dan Gutman in the report’s [What Kids Are Reading] confounding foreword, confessing to never having finished “Madame Bovary,” “Don Quixote,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Ulysses.” With the ease of a supermarket shopper choosing between detergents, he calls “The Great Gatsby” dull. (Alexander Nazaryan)

The York Press and the Yorkshire Post report that,

It was also confirmed that this year’s Chelsea Flower Show would play host to a Brontës’ Yorkshire Garden. (Mark Casci)

The Chelsea Flower Show takes place from May 22nd to May 26th and the Brontës' Yorkshire Garden should be interesting to see, given the lack of green fingers the Brontë girls had.

A group of deaf students from Indianapolis are giving a presentation on Wuthering Heights, as mentioned by StateImpact. Andrea Arnold's adaptation is reviewed in Spanish by Zinema. My 5 Monkeys and For What It's Worth post about Jane Eyre. The Punk Writes mentions a novella in progress' called Jane Eyre is not Dead, explaining the title. Reading for Pleasure reviews Eve Marie Mont's A Breath of Eyre.

Read More

Luddite & Shirley talks and a Hartshead Fundraiser

From Imelda Marsden, new and interesting events:

200th - Anniversary of the Luddites attacks on the 12th of April 1812
On Saturday the 14th April 2012 at 2.15pm, two talks at Holly Bank (formerly Roe Head) school Mirfield where the Brontë sisters attended.
The first talk is about the Luddite attack on William Cartwright's mill at Rawfolds. The other one is about Charlotte Brontë novel Shirley and the Luddites.

Tickets £6.00 with refreshments from Mrs Marsden Tel 01924 519370 and from Holly Bank school Nicki 01924 490833, disabled access.

And an alert for tomorrow, March 31

Christa Ackroyd, Brontë Society member and presenter on BBC TV Look North, is to give a talk about the Brontës at Hartshead Church on Saturday 31 March starting at 7.30pm. For tickets £7.50 with refreshments contact John Ferret - Ecrb@Live.co.uk & 01924 403602. This is raise funds for the church.

Read More

"I really like the atmosphere"

Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights finds a fan in singer Alison Goldfrapp, interviewed by Rolling Stone's Thread Count:

What films have you enjoyed recently?
I really liked Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights – and that there was no music used in the film at all. I thought it was really bold; it really made you appreciate small sounds much more. The wind, the branch of a tree batting against the window... I really like the atmosphere it created. (Colleen Nika)

Entertainment Focus and Close-Up are giving away copies of the DVD while Den of Geek! lists 'unlikely DVDs that have become surprisingly valuable', one of which is

Heathcliff
Original release date: October 1999
New copy now worth: £199.99
Cliff Richard went all furry in the 1990s, when he headlined a musical take of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Said musical was then filmed, and put out in a pretty unspectacular 4:3 framed release back in 1999. Long out of print, the cheapest second hand copy we could find at Amazon UK is now worth ten times the original asking price. (Simon Brew)

It is surprisingly expensive, but we wonder whether there are any buyers?

Inquirer Entertainment mentions yet another take on Wuthering Heights (the 2007 Philippine film The Promise) in an article featuring actor Richard Gutierrez:

In the movies, Richard got good reviews for his work in “The Promise” (inspired by “Wuthering Heights”) opposite Angel Locsin. (Ernie Pecho)

In These Times reviews Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? recalling a well-known (though always priceless) anecdote:

At home, Winterson was not allowed to read fiction because “the trouble with a book … is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late,” Mrs. Winterson would say. (She did read Jane Eyre to her daughter but changed the ending so Jane becomes a missionary.) (Sanhita Sinharoy)

Author Turf interviews Joanna Slan, author of the upcoming Death of a Schoolgirl (The Jane Eyre Chronicles) series:

Describe your writing journey, from aspiring writer to published author.
I grew up in a dysfunctional home with an alcoholic father, so I learned early that books were a great way to escape. In particular, I thought of Jane Eyre as a roadmap to a better life, because Jane’s education allows her to make her way in the world and eventually meet a man who respects her. (Brittney Breakey)

Jessica Spotswood, YA Book Reads, The Musings of Almybnenr and Preternatura interview Eve Marie Mont's, author of A Breath of Eyre (who also publishes guest posts on Cari's Book Blog and Chick Lit is Not Dead); Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Stiletto Storytime, No More Grumpy Bookseller, Safari Poet, New York Journal of Books and What the Cat Read review the book. The author will sign her book this Saturday in Doylestown, PA.

Eve Marie Mont Book Release Signing
Doylestown Bookshop, 16S. Main St. Doylestown

3:00pm – 5:00pm
Eve Marie Mont ventures into the YA scene with her newest release A Breath of Eyre, in which a young girl LITERALLY escapes into the world of Jane Eyre’s novels. She’ll be at the Doylestown Bookshop to sign copies of her new book.

Further book signings can be found here.

The New Yorker's Book Bench is fascinated by the Classics Illustrated covers including #39: Jane Eyre (1968); in3ssant (in Swedish) post about Wuthering Heights 2011; Cinema Classe A (in Portuguese) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; Sharon Garden's of Good Reviews compares Jane Eyre 2011 and Jane Eyre 1944; Bright Young Thing reviews April Lindner's Jane; STBen has ambivalent feelings after reading Wuthering Heights; The Royal Reviews also posts about the novel. Poderosas e Girlies reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily in Portuguese. Finally, Illuminara is making a country version of Jane Eyre and publishes the lyrics of one of the songs.

Read More

The Brontës Walking in York

An alert for today, March 29, from the York Literature Festival:

York Walk - A Guided Stroll Through Literary York 
March 29, 10:30 AM
A fascinating look at authors and books inspired by York from Anglo Saxon Alcuin to the Brontës, Dickens and Robinson Crusoe; and, from more modern times, Kate Atkinson. The tour includes a visit to the birthplace of W H Auden. A fascinating glimpse into York’s literary past and present.
Venue: Meet at Museum Garden Gates, Museum Street £5.50 adults, £5 Yorkcard, students and disabled. Tickets available from Visit York, Museum Street, York 01904 550099

Read More

The stuff of traditional female fantasy

IndieWire's Shadow and Act reports that Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights will be part of the forthcoming San Francisco International Film Festival. The Festival's website says that the screenings will take place on May 2nd and May 3rd.

Forbes lists several 'Unforgettable Lady Characters By Female Authors':

Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre:
Jane Eyre quietly fights against her circumstance from the get-go. Whether it’s a horrific boarding school or her fiancé’s insane wife, she manages to come out unscathed. I read Jane Eyre when I was 14 and just beginning to realize what kind of person I wanted to be as an adult. While Jane is not particularly pretty or outwardly impressive, she proves that with determination and hope you can go a long way.
—Preeti, Book Box Daily blogger (Caroline Howard)

And this MilfordPatch columnist makes a statement:

I have to be honest. I’m sort of a book snob. I prefer Charlotte Brontë over Jodi Picoult. I’d rather read about great characters than ramble around a ridiculously stitched plot. I like Shakespeare. I have NO interest in Twilight. (Deanna Runeman)

This is how the Buffalo News describes two of the main male characters of Mad Men:

The two leading men on the show — played by Jon Hamm and John Slattery — are impossibly slim and handsome. They look like models. (That they can act, too, is the necessary bonus.) The men on the show are portrayed as being juvenile, self-absorbed, loutish or mysterious — and beyond everyday female comprehension. They are the stuff of traditional female fantasy— a combination of Mr. Rochester from “Jane Eyre,” Ralph Kramden on “The Honeymooners” and Gregory Peck in his perfectly tailored gray flannel suit. (Jeff Simon)

Small Review reviews  Eve Marie Mont's A Breath of Eyre and Cari's Book Blog has a guest post by the author. YA Book Reads interviews her:

As a writer, who are your main influences?As you might have guessed, Charlotte Brontë is a huge influence, but my faves as a kid were Frances Hodgson Burnett and C. S. Lewis. As a teenager, I devoured Daphne DuMaurier, Mary Stewart, and Lois Duncan! [...]
Can you tell us a bit about what you are working on just now?I am currently hard at work on the sequel to A Breath of Eyre, which continues the literary adventures of Emma Townsend as she travels yet again into a book: this time, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Shame, secrets, and sin, oh my! 

In Great Leaps posts about Wuthering Heights and Close-Up Film reviews Andrea Arnold's adaptation. Royal Reviews writes about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. World Literature posts about Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.

Read More

Walking with the Brontës

A couple of books have been published recently with routes and walks directly related to the Brontës:

Walking with the Brontës in West Yorkshire
By Norman Buckley and June Buckley
Fraces Lincoln
Paperback, 144 pages
15 maps and 30 colour photographs 
ISBN: 978071123254
Published: 22nd March 2012

Explore one of England's great landscapes in the company of the great writers with whom it is indelibly associated. In the style of Walking with Beatrix Potter and Walking with Wordsworth, Walking with the Brontës is a pocket-sized book containing fifteen walking routes, predominantly in West Yorkshire.

Each walk is to somewhere associated with one or more of the Brontë family, either in real life or with important characters or places in their novels: for instance the house on which Emily based Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights, or the countryside around Cowan Bridge School which, with its harsh regime, caused the Brontë girls much suffering and became Lowood School in Charlotte's Jane Eyre.

The walks are generally short and fairly easy, contrasting semi-urban areas with the wild moorland above their home at the Parsonage Haworth. Each route is fully described, aided by sketch plans, and illustrated by new colour photographs. In each case, a separate text explains the Brontë associations, with extracts from their writing.

Short Scenic Walks - Haworth & Brontë Country 
Paul Hannon
Publisher: Hillside Publications
Publication date: 19/03/2012
ISBN-13: 9781907626081

This is Book 20 in the exciting new series of full-colour "Pocket Walks", being small, practical sized guidebooks aimed at the less serious rambler. Full colour photographs and colourful sketch maps accompany each of the well described walks, with the bonus of making it an attractive souvenir of the area. Principal feature is that all walks are less than five miles in length (though averaging 4 miles each, they are all very definitely worthwhile outings), making them ideal for families, leisure walkers, and others constrained by either time or other limitations. Concise route descriptions are complemented by background information. This title deals with the area around the Brontë shrine of Haworth and the Worth Valley in the absorbing countryside of the South Pennines. Twenty super walks use starting points such as Oxenhope and Stanbury, and of course Haworth itself. Places visited include Top Withins, Harden Moor, Ponden and Goit Stock. "Haworth & Brontë Country" is published simultaneously with Book 21 covering neighbouring area Hebden Bridge & the Calder Valley, and also slots neatly alongside previously published titles "Aire Valley" and "Around Pendle".

Read More

One madwoman in the attic

Cine-Vue gives 4 stars out of 5 to Wuthering Heights 2011 on DVD:

Arnold plays loose and fast with the original text, preferring to capture its tone and atmosphere rather than covering every minor narrative event or plot device. For those less enamoured with Brönte's [sic] text, Arnold's highly cinematic re-imagining feels fresh and vital, a lean creature highly attuned to the moor's [sic] ecosystem, red in tooth and claw. [...]
Whilst Arnold's revisionist approach to Brönte’s magnum opus may not be to everyone's taste, for those with the time and patience to invest in its trimmed cast and sublime imagery, Wuthering Heights delivers a truly unique, highly cinematic experience. (Daniel Green)

And they are also giving away three Blu-ray copies.

The Guardian publishes the obituary of Robert Fuest, another Wuthering Heights director.

In 1970, he made a commercially successful literary adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with Timothy Dalton as a pin-up Heathcliff. . . (Kim Newman)

This Riverfront Times blog reviews E L James Fifty Shades of Grey and comments on Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre in passing:

The plot of Fifty Shades of Grey seems to us a bit reminiscent of Jane Eyre, only with way more sex, so it's interesting to note that the number ten bestseller on the kids' list this week is a board book edition of Jane Eyre. The book is also said to be a counting primer. We can't quite imagine it: One is the number of crazy wives in Mr. Rochester's attic? (Aimee Levitt)

Salon discusses 'the new girl power' and mentions Fifty Shades of Grey too:

In each story, our hero has to choose between two cookie-cutter male leads — the wild, dark, poor childhood friend and the rich, upstanding, handsome stranger – although Katniss has to fit romantic intrigue around fighting a full-time revolutionary war. Versions of this love triangle are nothing new: it’s Rose, Jack and Cal Hockley in “Titanic.” It’s Cathy, Heathcliff and Edmund [sic] in “Wuthering Heights.” It’s Jane, Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers in “Jane Eyre.” It’s a choice that’s only partly about the men involved, who really represent aspects of the heroine, the inner struggle between duty and desire, familiarity and adventure, between the different kinds of lives that girls want to lead. That these different lives somehow have to be embodied by different men is its own feminist bugbear, but the formula is still refreshing: However creepy and controlling Edward Cullen is as a character, he is still essentially a sex object.
Like the Brontë novels, “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games” are fairly oozing with repressed eroticism. One can no more write about extramarital sex in a book aimed at modern teenage girls than one could in a Victorian novel, but the implication drips from every page, which possibly explains the enormous volume of smutty fan-fiction on the Internet making the implicit explicit. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” meanwhile, was originally written as “Twilight” fan-fiction, and part of the reason that it is less interesting as a social phenomenon is that its apparatus of censorship does not work in the same way that it does in the teen novels, where the frantic tension of suggestion and repression drives the plot, and readers are encouraged to fill in the gaps with their own feverish imaginings — which they do, in graphic detail, on the Internet. (Laurie Penny)

Shared Experience's current production is Mary Shelley. The Good Review interviews Kristin Atherton, who plays the title role:

This is your second time playing a leading female literary figure why do you think your cast in these parts? Luck? Simple answer obviously, but it’s pretty much true. I think it’s more to do with being cast by Shared Experience in the first place – they’re very loyal to their actors, and once you’ve been immersed in a Shared Experience rehearsal process it’s such an easy thing to slip back into it, so they tend to ask you back for other projects. They’re a company with an incredible emphasis on strong women and the struggles they go through. The lives of many female authors often seem to highlight and hone in on these particular struggles – the right to compete in a man’s arena (in the case of Charlotte Brontë) or the right to live out a life with as much freedom as a man (in the case of Mary Shelley), and so Shared Experience tend to focus on telling these stories. I’m tempted to say that I also have the look and manner of someone who really doesn’t go out much and has nothing better to do then wade through a long reading list, so maybe that helps… (Kieran James)

And TheaterJones, reviewing a Dallas production of Anne of Green Gables, states the obvious:

So many classic tales are centered around orphans, like Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden. One of the reasons is that healthcare wasn't so great in the "olden days." (Cathy O'Neal)

The Montclair Times finds a new Brontëite:

In her early teens, "Jane Eyre" was the favorite story of author Maryrose Wood.
So it was no accident that in her ongoing book series, "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place," the heroine is "plucky" 16-year-old Miss Penelope Lumley, governess of the three spirited Incorrigible children, who are under her civilized tutelage after having been raised by wolves.
"The idea of writing a story whose hero was a young lady of no great advantages, who does end up being a governess, is kind of an homage to my favorite novel," said Wood, a New York University graduate who resides in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. . . (T.D. Shoudy)

The Atlantic quotes from 'literary greats' on how to take advice.

5. Charlotte Brontë
An essential part of advice is, in fact, knowing when to ignore it. The excellent Advice to Writers recounts the story of Charlotte Brontë, who in 1845 wrote to the British poet Robert Southey to ask whether to be a successful writer. He replied with "cool admonition":

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are, you will be less eager for celebrity.

Brontë, of course, chose to ignore his advice and, along with her sisters Emily and Anne, produced a wealth of poetry under male pseudonyms before publishing Jane Eyre the following year. (Maria Popova)

Hollywood Today begins an article on the fall fashion 2012 by quoting Emily Brontë. Sarah Walden has managed to obtain a report card from the time when the Brontës were pupils at the Pensionnat Heger. Flickr user Mírzam Ex Solsetur pays a tribute to Jane Eyre while Cinestonia posts in Spanish about the 1944 adaptation of the novel. Ivy's Closet posts about Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy and Bless Their Hearts Mom writes about Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre. Chicago Cinema Circuit reviews Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights. And Removing the Static and Crispin's Eclipse discuss Wide Sargasso Sea.

Read More

Group Reading in London

An alert from the London & South East branch of the Brontë Society:

Tuesday 27th March - Group Reading Day at the CAA
On this occasion we have chosen Elizabeth Gaskell's “The Life of Charlotte Brontë”, which will no doubt provoke some lively discussion! Jenny Dunn, leading the group, hopes we have time to study the biography beforehand & to bring our copies with us. Our room is booked between 11am & 4pm with break for lunch on the premises. Room hire charge is £50 + vat to be shared by all on the day.
Meet 10.45am at the Concert Artistes' Association, 20 Bedford Street (off the Strand) London WC2 9HP. From Charing Cross Station turn right onto the Strand. Bedford Street is second on the left. No. 20 is at the top of Bedford Street on the left hand side.

The rest of alerts for the Spring/Summer season can be found here.

Read More

Jane Eyre's horoscope

Pittsburgh Indie Movie Examiner writes briefly about the release of Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights on DVD:

"Wuthering Heights"- Female director Andrea Arnold, known for her handheld camera-style and kitchen-sink aestethics, takes on a grim adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel of star-crossed adolescents Catherine and Heathcliff. Arnold's drab picture of victorian England drips with atmosphere, similar to the characters' clothing with all the rainy weather depicted in this tepid version that tries to shock with a racial backstory, muddy exteriors and an anti-climatic ending. (Sam Ippolito)

And now for something we do't think we have seen before: 'quoting' from Jane Eyre in the horoscopes section! From The Coloradoan:

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). "You are loved. There's an invisible world all around you. A kingdom of spirits commissioned to guard you, do you not see it?" From "Jane Eyre," by your sign mate Charlotte Brontë, and most applicable.

Too bad the quote has been turned into horoscopes lingo, as the actual quote is as follows:

"Hush, Jane!  you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits:  that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be:  as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness -- to glory?" (ch. VIII)

We may be biased here, but the actual quote is so, so much better.

The Brontë Sisters posted a reminder that yesterday marked the anniversary of the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Chalotte Brontë in 1857. Live and Learn-Toss and Turn reports on a book club's discussion of Jane Eyre and Love for Books writes in Hungarian about the novel too. The Free Folk is working on a Jane Eyre doll together with a suitcase. Le Mange-Livres writes in French about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre. Bandeja de plata posts in Spanish about Wuthering Heights 1939.

Read More

Jane, Guest Actress

Today, March 26, a staged reading of the latest play by the Comic author-performer Dee Ryan:

DeeConstruction

By Dee Ryan

Merrimack Repertory Theatre (Lowell, Massachusetts)
3/26/2012

7.00 PM

 

DeeConstruction will be presented as a staged reading featuring playright Dee Ryan. Advance tickets are $5, and Pay What You Can tickets will be available at the door starting at 4:30pm on March 26.

Dee, an overwhelmed wife, mother of two, and cat owner, is addicted to home repair. Her previous electrical re-wires, plumbing re-pipes, French door upgrades, and landscaping makeovers haven’t satisfied her insatiable cravings for change. What begins as a simple room addition and kitchen remodel becomes a complete two-story renovation.

Is Dee the Grand Lady of the House, or the Madwoman in the Attic? Comic author and performer Dee Ryan chronicles her Homeric odyssey across the turbulent waters of piratical contractors, siren architects, monster neighbors, ghostly painters, and clueless husbands. In her moments of greatest stress and delusion, fictional characters Jane Eyre, Scarlett O’Hara and Emma Bovary stop by for game night.

Dee’s journey takes on personal resonance as she discovers the roots of her house obsession, the twisted strength of family, and the importance of coming home. Her addiction is cured forever… or is it?

More information in The Andover Townsman.

Read More

Raw Naturalism

The Independent publishes a (not very good) review of the Wuthering Heights 2011 DVD:

Andrea Arnold's bleak interpretation of Wuthering Heights is certainly a bold one. It cuts off the story halfway through the book, and it shows everything from Heathcliff's point of view: if he overhears a snatch of conversation, then a snatch of it is all we hear, too. It's less of a stand-alone film than an intriguing, Emily Brontë-inspired video art installation that will mean very little unless you've read the novel. (Nicholas Barber)

The DVD is also reviewed - much more favourably - by the Guardian:

Owing more to Andrew Kotting's This Filthy Earth than to any previous screen adaptations of Emily Brontë's sacred text, Andrea Arnold's earthy reinvention of Wuthering Heights (2011, Artificial Eye, 15) has the ambience of a long, muddy walk over a wet and windy moor. At its best when dealing with the rough and raggedy edges of tormented young love (rather than its adult aftermath), this builds upon the promise of Fish Tank, as the director coaxes painfully believable performances from her adolescent leads, who exude a raw naturalism and spontaneity. The location of Heathcliff's roots amid the legacy of the slave trade (an interpretation long suggested by literary critics) is both radical and reasonable, and true to the source material. (Mark Kermode)

And The Mirror reports that the Jane Eyre 2011 DVD is the third on the UK Top 10.

This columnist from the Daily Kos tells about her high school reading ambitions:

After the initial thrill of discovery, I was determined to find more works by women, especially one who had lived unconventional lives. it wasn't as if my high school library didn't have plenty of fiction and poetry by women, but with the exception of classics like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, a handful of books by Andre Norton and Madeline L'Engle and some historical fiction with strong female characters, most of the selections were distressingly ordinary. (Ellid)

This obituary published in The Prescott Daily Courier includes a Brontë-related anecdote. Arclight Archives reviews Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights and Don Darms Blog writes about the original novel. Chroniques d'une lectrice writes in French about Jane Eyre and Musings from a Modern Bluestocking and Cinemaniac post about the 2011 adaptation. Never without a book writes about watching the Brontë Sisters Night on TCM. Sarah Walden shares on Flickr an image of her recently-acquired silhouette of Joseph Branwell (distant cousin and uncle to the Brontë siblings) and compares it to Branwell's silhouette.

Read More

The Tenant in Polish

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been translating for the first time to Polish:

Lokatorka Wildfell Hall
Anne Brontë
MG Wydawca
ISBN: 9788377790687

Losy kobiety walczącej o niezależność w świecie, w którym w oczach społeczeństwa i w świetle prawa żona jest jedynie własnością swojego męża.  
Pojawienie się we dworze Wildfell Hall pięknej i tajemniczej wdowy wywołuje wielkie poruszenie i huragan plotek wśród okolicznych mieszkańców. Jednym z nich jest coraz bardziej nią zaintrygowany Gilbert Markham. Czy młoda kobieta skrywa jakiś mroczny sekret? Kiedy żyjąca pod przybranym nazwiskiem „Helen Graham” pozwala dżentelmenowi na lekturę swojego dziennika, na jaw wychodzą wstrząsające szczegóły jej nieszczęśliwego małżeństwa i dramatycznej decyzji o porzuceniu męża. Wydaje się jednak, że nikt nie może uciec przed przeszłością…

Several Polish media talk about the new publication: PolskaLokalna,  dziennik, wprost24...

Read More

Brontë Spirit working

Very good news for the future of the Old School Room in Haworth. Keighley News reports:

An initiative to restore a historic Haworth building has received a £2,500 boost.
Worth Valley ward councillors have allocated the money from the ward investment fund to support Brontë Spirit, which is campaigning to ensure the long-term future of the Old School Room.
The Church Street building, which requires major repairs and renovations, was built by the Reverend Patrick Brontë.
The money was made available by councillors Glen Miller, Rebecca Poulsen and Russell Brown.
Coun Miller said: “We were keen to support this project as it still has a long way to go. We’ve given it some start-up costs.”
Averil Kenyon, chairman of Brontë Spirit, said she and her colleagues were delighted with this financial backing. We are overwhelmed, it was just so timely,” she said.
She added that the money would help with the costs of drawing up a business plan, needed as part of an application for further funding.
Her group has staged a pair of open days to give local business people and community leaders a chance to see what potential the property has as a venue.

The Morning Star reviews the latest novel by Joolz Denby, Wild Thing:

This carefully plotted structure is matched by well-crafted prose that revels in unusual language, "tatterdemalion" being a favoured noun and Denby is equally at home in referencing James Blunt as she is Wuthering Heights and Thomas Gray.  (Susan Darlington)

The Guardian reviews the first novels by Shiva Naipaul:

Writing is not, generally speaking, a family profession. Law, engineering, even dentistry, are known to be taken up by siblings. But writing and the artistic temperament constitute a turn in the family's fortunes, as Thomas Mann so vividly showed us in Buddenbrooks. Yet there are instances of siblings producing serious additions to the realm of letters. Those families must have been quite odd in their intensities, you think; the Brontës come to mind. (...)
To these pairings and constellations must be added VS Naipaul and his short-lived but immensely gifted brother Shiva, born in a country remote enough for the Brontës to have daydreamed of. (Amit Chaudhury)

The Guardian also reviews the new book by Louise Rennison (author of Withering Tights): A Midsummer Tights Dream:

Tallulah Casey is an ebullient, chaotic Irish girl and she's fizzing with excitement because she's returning to the perfect school – Dother Hall performing arts college, a crumbling mansion in Brontë country, where the teachers are engagingly barmy and there are endless opportunities to snog the boys at the school next door.  (Kate Saunders)

The Financial Times goes on the The Dark Peak route in Derbyshire in the company of the writer Marina Lewycka:

We leave on a sandy track to begin one of her favourite walks: from the moorland of Stanage Edge to the valley village of Hathersage, taking in an 18th-century packhorse trail, North Lees Hall (Charlotte Brontë’s inspiration for the Thornfield Hall of Jane Eyre), the grave of Little John, he of Robin Hood’s Merry Men, and afternoon tea.  (...)

The trail leads us down the valley. Hedges replace drystone walls; grass replaces heather. North Lees Hall, built in the grey millstone grit of the Edge, emerges square from trees, a blunt tower on top. It was built in the late 16th century by Catholic landowners, the Jessops; later tenants were the Eyre family. We approach the heavy wooden door of the Hall, now a holiday let. “If you wanted to be brave you could stand on a chair and peer through a window,” she whispers. Wobbling on a garden chair, I see comfy fittings – no Jane, Rochester or mad first wife. Lewycka contemplates the tower, and Brontë’s mind. “Imagine seeing that and thinking, ‘Ahh – mad woman, locked up, sets the whole place on fire.’ (...) 
Heading for tea and talking religion, we pass the vicarage where Charlotte Brontë stayed (between inspiring walks). (Julian Flanagan)

The Post-Crescent talks about book clubs:

In addition, they mix it up by doing special activities such as watching a movie related to a book they have read or holding a tea party after reading "Jane Eyre."  (Linda Dums)

ABC (Spain) compares Emilia Pardo Bazán with the Brontës:

[L]o que nos interesa es que la Pardo Bazán, como las Brontë, fue precoz, precocísima, y ya a los trece años escribía su primera novela, «Aficiones peligrosas», que ahora se publica íntegramente por primera vez.  (Manuel De La Fuente) (Translation)

El Mundo (Spain) quotes the Argentinian writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara praising Minae Muzumura's A Real Novel:

Para Cabezón Cámara, "'Una novela real' es una magnífica reescritura de Cumbres Borrascosas", otra historia sobre una familia disfuncional.  (Rebeca Yanke) (Translation)

The same newspaper interviews Andrew Stanton, director of John Carter who says something quite... unexpected:

Asegura Stanton que la película oscila entre el aire mítico de las películas de romanos y el trasfondo romántico y trágico de 'Cumbres borrascosas'... (Carlos Fresneda) (Translation)

The film directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are interviewed in La Nación (Argentina) and Vittorio says something also unexpected:

Mientras sostiene su inseparable gorra con la mano, Vittorio dice que se siente Laurence Olivier en Cumbres borrascosas.  (Néstor Tirri) (Translation)

Telérama (France) interviews Augustin Trapenard, host of France Culture's Le Carnet d'Or and Brontë scholar; Novinky (Czech Republic) reviews April Lindner's Jane; ХайВей (in Russian) gives a happy ending to Villette; Интерфакс-Запад (Belarus) and Новые Известия (Russia) review Wuthering Heights 2011; The Dover-New Philadelphia Times Reporter recommends the Brontë night on TCM;  inklings press, movfreak (in Indonesian), Inkwell Inspirations and By Star Filmes (in Portuguese) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; Bridge to my mind discusses natural imagery on Jane Eyre; LadyLavinia 1932's Blog reviews Jane Eyre 1983; Reading Extensively reviews The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

We have to add one more competition to the list we published a couple of days ago: Cine-Vue (DVD of Wuthering Heights 2011, closes March 29). And finally, a hilarious parody video by La Shea Delaney and Annabelle Quezada where they remix Jay-Z & Kanye West's Niggas in Paris: Bitches in Bookshops. If you listen carefully you will catch the Brontë reference.

Read More

Robert Fuest. In Memoriam

Sadly, we report the death of the director, screenwriter and production designer Robert Fuest (1927-2012). Although he is mostly remembered by his cult horror movies featuring the unforgettable Dr. Phibes character (The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and  Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)), we would like to pay tribute also to the director of  the unconventional Wuthering Heights 1970 which as the obituary published on Variety says "has some ardent fans" (not the least important, Kate Bush who composed her Wuthering Heights song inspired by the last ten minutes of Robert Fuest's version). Regrettably the film was a box office failure and the critics were not very supportive:

The shape of the film is similarly straightforward, a chronicle spanning 10 or 12 years, although the effect of the chronicle is more than a little confusing because the characters all seem to grow up at different rates of speed, and seldom does a child actor have much physical relation to the adult actor who takes on his character later in the film.
This would be nit-picking in a movie that was otherwise touched with any kind of cinematic grace or intelligence, both totally absent from the decisions made by Fuest and Tilley. (Vincent Canby, The New York Times. February 19, 1971)

The director himself remembered how complicated the shooting of the film in Yorkshire was:

It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have to match up scenes," says director Robert Fuest. "We've had a wonderful crew, and an heroic cast, but no one anywhere could hope to cope with sleet and snow that won't even fall straight down, but comes down horizontally. It's unbelievable. We've shot some footage just to prove to ourselves that it really happens." To cope, director Fuest has had to work with 'a labyrinth of lighting'. It's meant extra work for all concerned but he claims, "It is adding to the atmosphere." (American International Pictures Press Information for Wuthering Heights (Source))

EDIT: Obituaries published in The Telegraph and The Times.

Read More

Identifying with Jane

Harwich Oracle features Margot Livesey and her Jane Eyre retelling The Flight of Gemma Hardy:

One of the most delightful things about literary novels is that they not only tell an alluring story, but their authors often engage in a conversation with literary figures of the past.
That is certainly the case with author Margot Livesey’s eighth novel, “The Flight of Gemma Hardy.” The Cambridge author reaches out to Charlotte Brontë with a re-imagined version of “Jane Eyre” set in Scotland in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  The germ of the idea for the novel came to Livesey after a book club discussion about the classic novel at Newtonville Books.
“The room was filled with readers and despite having very little obviously in common with Charlotte Brontë’s heroine, they all identified with ‘Jane Eyre,’ she says. “The key thing that emerged in the discussion with how most people when they first read the novel think that the reason Jane doesn’t get married to Rochester the first time is because Bertha’s brother breaks up the wedding.
But I think most older readers come to realize that the reason Jane doesn’t get married to Rochester the first time is because she really has to come into her own.  She has to be more his equal before they can get married and that made me think about the central question of the novel, which is how can a woman with no family and no money make her way in the world. And I thought that is still a piercing question.
A few weeks after that discussion, Livesey put her copy of “Jane Eyre” on the highest shelf in her writing room and began writing her own version of the story, which has some elements that Brontë fans will immediately recognize and others that are completely original.[...]
Livesey not only drew on the novel “Jane Eyre,” but also on her own childhood in Scotland. She was inspired by the landscapes of her homeland as well as more personal and autobiographical elements.  She had a very severe stepmother who was the model for Gemma’s aunt, although greatly exaggerated. Like Gemma, Livesey attended a boarding school in the Scottish Highlands that she found to be very difficult, which became the model for Claypoole in the novel.
“Those details helped to inform the novel,” she says.  “And I think in a different way the feelings I had the first summer I came to America (at the age of 19) informed the novel. I was all alone in this foreign country and a lot of the times I was getting around by hitchhiking. No one knew where I was and no one knew who I was, so I had some of that sense of being really solitary that Gemma often has.”
Livesey very deliberately set the novel in the time period before feminism broke out in Great Britain and America because the feminist revolution and invention of birth control radically changed women’s lives.
“Growing up in 1960s Scotland, for middle class women there were really three jobs – nurse, teacher or wife – and once you had the third job you really pretty much didn’t do the first two,” she says.  “So I thought it would be very felicitous to set the novel right before that period, so the reader would know these possibilities were opening up and coming even if the characters didn’t necessarily know them.”
What: Reading and book signing with Margot Livesey
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28
Where: Wellfleet Public Library, 55 West Main St.
Info: 508-349-0310 or www.wellfleetlibrary.org (Laurie Higgins)

The Independent asks presenter and novelist Fern Britton about her current read:

What are you currently reading? 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' [by Anne Brontë]. 

Alison Flood looks back on her school texts marginalia in the Guardian Books Blog:

Looking back at old copies of my set school texts recently, I was shamed to see, amid copious yellow highlighting, some of the notes I'd made in the margins. "Romantic", I'd written, idiotically, in Romeo and Juliet by the balcony scene. "Adumbration", I'd scrawled, obviously pleased with myself at this new word, in Phèdre. "Passion", as Heathcliff dashed his head madly against a trunk in Wuthering Heights. And, rather plaintively, "comedy?" by one of the Fool's scenes in King Lear. I obviously wasn't too sure about that one.

A Good Story is Hard to Find has a podcast on Jane Eyre. Book Babble and Gross Knowledge review Wuthering Heights while Bad Reviews of Good Books shares some 'reviews' of the novel.

Read More

The Brontë Sisters on TCM and a Retelling Panel in Virginia

Today, March 23, TCM (United States) devotes its primetime to the Brontës (a pity/shame they forgot the umlaut in the promo picture):

TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: The Brontë Sisters

8:00 PM -- Wuthering Heights (1939)
A married noblewoman fights her lifelong attraction to a charismatic gypsy.
Dir: William Wyler
Cast: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven
104 min, TV-PG, CC

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Gregg Toland

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Laurence Olivier, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Geraldine Fitzgerald, Best Art Direction -- James Basevi, Best Director -- William Wyler, Best Music, Original Score -- Alfred Newman, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and Best Picture

10:00 PM -- Jane Eyre (1944)
A governess at a remote estate falls in love with her brooding employer.
Dir: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien
96 min, TV-PG, CC

12:00 AM -- Devotion (1946)
The Brontë sisters and their brother fight personal demons to realize their artistic ambitions.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Olivia de Havilland
107 min, TV-G, CC

At the Virginia Festival of the Book (Charlottesville, VA):

DetailFiction: Retelling the Tales
March 23rd, 2012 - 4:00 PM

Margot Livesey (The Flight of Gemma Hardy), Sharyn McCrumb (The Ballad of Tom Dooley; Ghost Riders), and Hillary Jordan (When She Woke) use classic stories as a jumping off point for their new novels. Hosted by WriterHouse.
Location: Central JMRL Library

The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a retelling of Jane Eyre and The Ballad of Tom Dooley is loosely connected with Wuthering Heights.

Read More

Make your choice: Growing Up Brontë or Jane Eyre Among the Ewoks

SheKnows Book Lounge announces the upcoming release of Eve Marie Mont's A Breath of Eyre:

Eve Mont made a splash in the literary world with her debut novel, Free to A Good Home. Now she's back with A Breath of Eyre (out March 27), the first book in a three-part YA series. A novel about a teen transported to the world of Jane Eyre, A Breath of Eyre is a refreshing, richly satisfying read.
A Breath of Eyre transports Eve Mont's modern-day heroine, Emma Townsend, into the life of Jane Eyre to create a mesmerizing story of love, longing and finding one's place in the world. Its sequels will continue the literary adventures of Emma Townsend as she travels into Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.
Emma Townsend has always believed in stories — the ones she reads voraciously, and the ones she creates in her head. Perhaps it's because she feels like an outsider at her exclusive prep school, or because her stepmother doesn't come close to filling the void left by her mother's death. And her only romantic prospect (apart from a crush on her English teacher) is Gray Newman — a long-time friend who just adds to Emma's confusion. But escape soon arrives in an old leather-bound copy of Jane Eyre.
Reading of Jane's isolation sparks a deep sense of kinship. Then fate takes things a leap further when a lighting storm catapults Emma right into Jane's body and her 19th-century world. As governess of Thornfield, Emma has a sense of belonging like she's never known — and an attraction to the brooding Mr. Rochester. Now, moving between her two realities and uncovering secrets in both, Emma must decide whether her destiny lies in the pages of Jane's story, or in the unwritten chapters of her own...

Writing from the Tub interviews the author:

The YA book market is a competitive place. What do you think sets A Breath of Eyre apart from the pack?
Instead of a straight literary retelling, my book has the protagonist actually enter the world of Jane Eyre, causing a struggle over whether to change the outcome of the book and the outcome of her life. She’s also able to travel back and forth between Jane’s world and her own, which makes for some interesting dilemmas. I’m hoping what sets my book apart is the mash-up of genres: historical, retelling, contemporary, and a dash of magical realism. (...)
What did you hope to accomplish by writing A Breath of Eyre? Do you think you have accomplished what you set out to do?
Really, I wrote the book for me. I’ve always wanted to live in the world of Jane Eyre, so I created a character who could. I wasn’t setting out with any agenda, but now that the book is finished, I hope readers see it as a respectful and worthy tribute to a beloved novel. I also hope readers enjoy a few hours of fun, escapism, and romance. If it makes them want to read Jane Eyre, so much the better! (Interview by CarlyB)

A reality show with famous authors? Flavorwire suggests some options:

Are you more interested in the Brontës than the Kardashians? (...)
Growing up Brontë
Announcer: “Tune in this season as DISASTER STRIKES. Can the remaining Brontës COPE with the LOSS?”
Video: Charlotte cries while Emily comforts her. Anne stands forgotten in the background.
Series highlights: Charlotte makes advances on her married ex-headmaster, Constantin Héger (sic). Their brother, Branwell, seduces the wife of Anne’s boss. Anne confronts Branwell, but the illicit love continues. Anne is eventually forced to quit.  (Kim Parker)

Not the only interesting Brontë-related suggestion. The New Bern South Journal talks about an upcoming production of the local company Athens of the South:

The local theater production group Athens of the South has attained its non-profit status and to celebrate, the first new show is “Murder in 3-D,” which gives Hollywood a roasting. (...)
Hand provided this synopsis of the “Murder in 3-D” plot line:
“The famous directing brothers, Roger and Braxton Boomer, believe they finally have a new hit on their hands — a 3-D romance that is suspiciously similar to a Nicholas Sparks novel (but don’t tell them that). Roger, the outgoing Boomer brother, has invited a famous producer, a billionaire known for his Hollywood support, and an A-List actress on hard times after her involvement with the movie disaster, ‘Jane Eyre Among the Ewoks.’ These, and a party-crashing videographer, all hope to get in on the Boomers’ money-making magic.”

The Fresno Bee reviews the CSU production of Polly Teale's Brontë:

While the production, directed with care and insight by Ruth Griffin, has some flaws, it deserves high commendation for tackling such an intellectually rigorous subject with such theatrical finesse. (It continues through Saturday at the Woods Theatre.) (...)
"Brontë" has a fire in its soul, thanks to innovative staging and Elizabeth R. Payne's fine period costumes, but Teale's earnest script can feel too clinical (and even obvious) at times, particularly when illuminating the parallels between biography and literature. Jeff Hunter's set, which tries for a fractured, expressionistic view of the interior of the Brontë home, is too rigid, with the stark parallel vertical elements reading as cold, clinical and psychologically uninteresting. And for a play this stylized and theatrical, I was expecting a little more intensity from Izzy Einsidler's lighting design.
The biggest flaw: I think there's more that Griffin could have done in terms of directing her actors aside from her stellar movement work. McGee and Schiltz are strong in their supporting roles, but the three sisters have some weaknesses. (...)
Despite these flaws, however, this "Brontë" emerges as a worthy theatrical experience that digs deep. (Donald Munro)

Lohud.com (Lower Hudson Valley) talks about reading lists and mentions the memoir of Louis L'Amour Educacion of a Wandering Man in which he wrote about "about the value of reading books":

L’Amour kept lists of the books and plays he read. In 1931, he listed 120 titles — from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” to “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë.  (Phil Reisman)

The Small Business Newswire remembers that Penzance's claim to fame is not only Gordon & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance:

It’s interesting to note also, that Penzance was the birthplace of Maria Branwell – the mother of the famous Brontë sisters.

Salon analyses The Hunger Games phenomenon:

Like the Brontë novels, “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games” are fairly oozing with repressed eroticism. One can no more write about extramarital sex in a book aimed at modern teenage girls than one could in a Victorian novel, but the implication drips from every page, which possibly explains the enormous volume of smutty fan-fiction on the Internet making the implicit explicit.  (Laurie Penny)

Female First interviews Juliet Greenwood, author of Eden's Garden:

If your dream career was to write, why didn’t you pursue this earlier in life?
I think, like everyone, I got caught up in making a living, buying a house and doing all the grownup things you’re supposed to do. I did try to become a writer in my early twenties, when I was living in London. I sent off articles and short stories and entered playwriting competitions. I didn’t get anywhere, so I put the dream to one side and took up a ‘sensible’ career instead. What I didn’t realise was that I had nothing to write about. I’d been at school or university all my life. I was stuffed full of lofty ideas and the novels of Charlotte Bronteëand Dickens, but I hadn’t done any living on my own account. There was no inner fire driving me: just a love of books and writing. (Interview by Lucy Walton)

The Buffalo News covers a recent talk by the author Zadie Smith where she was asked about the "the five essential British novels":

She took a stab at it -- offering, with some hesitation, "Clarissa," "Pride and Prejudice," "Jane Eyre," "The Quiet American," and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" -- before laughingly suggesting that the student just google it. "Give me a break!  (Margaret Sullivan)

Moving Landscapes reviews (in Swedish) Wuthering Heights 2011; Meditative Meanderings posts about Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë; chloesnelling posts a fashion design project inspired by Wuthering Heights (particularly by Kaya Scodelario's Cathy in Wuthering Heights 2011); Sparks Fly Up reviews Emily Brontë's original novel; The Ana Mum Diary posts about Jane Eyre; Danielle Sloan uploads a set of Wuthering Heights-inspired pictures on Flickr and Nickcoates74 posts a picture of Wycoller Hall; Rebecca Chesney is making a colour wheel for her Brontë Weather Project. 

And finally some competitions around to win the Wuthering Heights 2011 DVD or Blu-Ray:
Film-News.co.uk (DVD, closes April 18),  Magic FM  (DVD, closes March 26), Reviewed Online (Blue-Ray), Kaya Scodelario Web (closes March 28). And Jane Eyre 2011: Cosmopolitan (closes April 2), Good to Know (closes April 12), Look (closes April 12), Stylist (closes March 27 and offers "a break for up to four people in one of a choice of five fabulous cottages in the spectacular Peak District, close to the magnificent Haddon Hall where Jane Eyre was filmed"), Superdrug (closes May 9), MyBliss (closes March 27), Wedding Magazine (closes April 1).

Read More