Trending Topic Tonight?

Yesterday night, on Radio 4, Sheila Hancock talked about her Perspectives programme devoted to the Brontës (to be broadcast tonight on ITV1, 10.00 PM) in Loose Ends. You can listen to it here online.

In RadioTimes, Sheila Hancock insists on the links between Wuthering Heights and her own relationship with her late husband:

When the young Sheila Hancock fell in love with Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff, the backdrop was the Regal cinema in Bexleyheath rather than the Yorkshire moors, and the Heathcliff who stole her heart, little though she knew it, was a pale shadow of the man Emily Brontë had invented a century earlier.
That was Laurence Olivier in a Hollywoodised, 1939 version of the book. “Much later in life I realised that it was a total distortion,” says Hancock. “I’d thought it was a great love story, with Heathcliff as this hugely romantic figure. But the cruelty and the savagery were completely cut out of the film. In fact it’s an appalling story, about a psychopath.”
Still, the Olivier-Merle Oberon version at least kindled her appreciation of the Brontës as storytellers, which has grown and grown until now, at 80, she is able to relate their tempestuous stories directly to her own experiences of life.
“Emily writes extraordinarily about the depth of Cathy and Heathcliff’s desperation, with him actually grabbing her body as she’s dying to try to stop her going, as it were. Well, anyone who’s watched somebody die, that’s just what you want to do. I did. ‘Don’t go, don’t you dare go!’ She puts into words something I totally understand.”
Hancock is referring to the death, in February 2002, of her husband John Thaw. But Wuthering Heights, she feels, also evokes their life together. “If you have ever known that obsessive love, which sometimes makes it difficult to be together but impossible to be apart, you can identify with the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff.
“I read sometimes that long marriages are hard to sustain, that they become sexually boring, that one or both inevitably stray. It just was never like that with John and me. Once you’ve found that person you can’t imagine being with anyone else, and even though she marries another man, that’s what Cathy and Heathcliff have. There are certain people you’re meant to be with, and you feel as though life is not possible without them.”
And yet, I venture, she has found that it is. “Yes. You pick yourself up. Heathcliff doesn’t. He wreaks vengeance on everyone who’s kept them apart. But if you’re sensible, you do.”
Hancock’s fascination with the Brontës has culminated in a film for ITV’s Perspectives, in which she learns how three sisters, living most of their lives in a remote parsonage, could have produced such enduring novels of love and loss.
“There’s this perception of three maiden ladies leading sheltered lives in a vicarage in Haworth, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was the Industrial Revolution, and their father was a vicar in a parish where people were dying like flies from typhoid. They had to cope with an alcoholic brother, Branwell. Charlotte went to Brussels, and fell passionately in love with her tutor there. They were highly educated women having extraordinary lives.
“They all write amazingly about poverty and all sorts of things that Jane Austen doesn’t write about, dare I say.” Hancock smiles, aware that this is tantamount to heresy. “I’ve always been snotty about Jane Austen,” she admits. (...)
He would plainly have made a memorable Heathcliff, and so, says Hancock, would Thaw. “Oh, John would have been a wonderful Heathcliff when he was young. While making this I kept thinking that John would have understood that part so well. All that passion, the sexiness. He’d have been stunning.” (Brian Viner)

The Telegraph & Argus also talks about the programme:

Actress Sheila Hancock travelled to Haworth to make a new documentary about the Brontë sisters, and made an “important new discovery” among the love letters written by Charlotte to her married tutor.
The discovery will be revealed in Perspectives: Sheila Hancock – The Brilliant Brontë Sisters, to be screened on Easter Sunday.
Miss Hancock, the widow of actor John Thaw, said she was passionate about the Brontes’ work.
“I have been a fan of the Brontës since I was a child,” she said. “I think all three sisters are brilliant and I don’t have a favourite.
“All reading their work does is put me off writing my own novel. Their work is wonderful and one couldn’t hope to aspire to be as good as that. (Emma Clayton)

And what about this initiative by @HaworthCalendar?

Do you reckon we can get #Haworth or #Brontes trending (---) (to)night when Sheila Hancock's prog about them is on? #Schedulesometweetstime!

The Oxford University Press Blog carries an article about Charlotte Brontë's death by Brontë scholar Janet Gezari:

 Her actual death followed a debilitating illness and occurred almost exactly nine months after her marriage to her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. The death certificate states its cause as “Phthisis” or acute tuberculosis, the same disease that killed Emily and Anne. We know that Charlotte could eat or drink almost nothing until a few weeks before her death and that she was rapidly losing weight. Lyndall Gordon suggests she had a bacterial infection like typhoid, noting that Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontës’ servant, had died from a digestive infection six weeks earlier and could have communicated it to Charlotte. During Charlotte’s and Tabby’s lifetimes, contaminated water and inadequate sewerage made Haworth one of the unhealthiest places to live in England. Charlotte may have been pregnant (in a letter, she suggests that she was), even though her death certificate omits this information. One conjecture is that she was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness that affects no more than 2% of women in the early stages of their pregnancy and is rarely fatal.  (...)
Since only her father, her husband, and two former servants were at her bedside when she died, we lack an account of her death to match her fiercely truthful accounts of the deaths of Anne and Emily. There was no one watching Charlotte Brontë die who could register the awfulness and the ordinariness of her dying.

Deseret News presents the new Brontë BabyLit book

“Wuthering Heights: A Weather Primer” plays off the “wuthering” description and has simple descriptions of about a dozen different types of weather from sunny to snowy. Artist Alison Oliver shows a view of the house in each different time with the characters outside — with an umbrella in “Rainy” and with laundry out in “Sunny.” (Christine Rappleye)
Jennifer Adams book signing
When: Thursday, April 4, 6-8 p.m.
Where: The King's English, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City

afamily (Vietnam) talks about Jane Eyre 2011:

Và cũng giống như trong nguyên tác, hình ảnh Jane Eyre kiên cường (vai của Mia Wasikowska) để lại ấn tượng sâu sắc cho khán giả về một cô gái nhỏ bé nhưng cá tính, có nghị lực sắt đá và khát vọng sống mãnh liệt. Đã có tới 18 phim điện ảnh và hàng chục phim truyền hình được chuyển thể từ tiểu thuyết của nhà văn Charlotte Brontë, nhưng nhiều nhà phê bình cho rằng vai của Mia Wasikowska là sự thể hiện nhân vật Jane Eyre hay nhất từ trước đến nay, với sự biểu lộ tuyệt vời tâm hồn dễ bị tổn thương cũng như sự thông thái của Jane. (Thanh Thúy) (Translation)

SugarScope talks about (and puts a soundtrack to) Alex Wenmouth's Addicted To You:

Roxana King lives on Leather Lane and everyone knows what goes on there; well, everyone except Frankie. Enigmatic and fun, she's unlike anyone Frankie has ever known. Then there’s Marcus Ford, the gorgeous, brooding older boy who fuels Frankie's daydreams about meeting her very own Heathcliff on the wild Yorkshire Moors. There’s an instant attraction and Frankie falls hard and fast. (Linds Fole)

The Ashbourne News Telegraph announces the Buxton performances of the Hull Truck Theatre Jane Eyre tour; Keighley News talks about the Tour de France impact on the district's economy (illustrated with pictures of the Brontës cycling); Don't Read That Read This - Roz's Reading Challenge reviews Agnes Grey; Literatura Universal (in Spanish) posts about Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre. The Times interviews Sorcha Cusack, Jane Eyre in the 1973 BBC version.

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158 years ago

March 31st marks the anniversary of Charlotte's death and it's always a date to pause and reflect on her works, her life, her afterlife.

She wrote about returning to Haworth Parsonage many times, the house that became her home in 1821. Her mother died there that same year and was followed by Charlotte's elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth in 1825. It wouldn't be until 1848 that the family would see another death there. Branwell, closely followed by Emily and then Anne. Charlotte herself died in 1855 and her father in 1861. By the time Charlotte's widower left for Ireland in that same year the house where Charlotte had grown up, where she had performed thousands of small household tasks and where she had penned some of the best novels in English literature, saw a lot of changes just like it saw a lot of life.

We wonder what she would make of her former home's new look, which is as similar as possible to the house she knew, particularly the house she decorated herself in the 1850s. Thanks to the meticulous work carried out recently, visiting Charlotte's room at the Brontë Parsonage Museum brings us as close as possible to the woman she was. Her books bring us nearer the author, her house brings us nearer the person. The lovely blue walls lend a dreamy, unreal atmosphere and visitors can't help but try and flesh out her delicate going-away dress on display (more info on it here). Many pieces are there (her newly-acquired parasol, the toy tea cup and saucer, the toy lion (both in the new Heaven is a Home exhibition), her fragile wedding bonnet, her gloves) and she provided readers with the necessary doses of imagination in her novels. Go and see her, find her home.

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You can't put Jane Eyre on your feet, lad

RadioTimes announces the broadcast tomorrow, March 31st 10.00 PM, on ITV (one hour later on ITV+1) of the Perspectives episode about the Brontës:

Series 3-3. Perspectives: Sheila Hancock - The Brilliant Brontë Sisters

As a young girl, like many others, Sheila Hancock adored the romance of the Hollywood film Wuthering Heights. But years later she realised that Emily Brontë’s original story was a much darker affair exploring “the wild extremes of human obsession”.
Keen to learn more about the three spinsters who wrote books that she describes as “shocking, erotic and moving”, Hancock briskly dispels the myth that Emily, Charlotte and Anne never experienced the emotions they expressed so powerfully in their novels. These were not isolated, uneducated country girls who imagined love in order to write about it, she argues, and their writing was the only way for their voices to be heard.
But what touches her especially is learning how, after Emily and Anne died, a grief-stricken Charlotte continued their tradition of circling their dining table reading their work out loud to each other – but now she did it all on her own.

The actress explores the work of the 19th-century literary family, setting out to discover what inspired them to write such epic novels seemingly worlds apart from their own lives. On a journey that begins in the West Yorkshire village of Haworth, where the trio created most of their famous stories, Sheila makes a discovery among Charlotte's love letters to her married tutor Constantin Heger. She also heads to London's National Portrait Gallery to view the only surviving painting of the sisters all together, and visits the final resting place of Anne. (Jane Rackham)

Director ... Gareth Williams
Executive Producer ... Sarah Murch

The Guardian talks about the moderate success of the TV series Call the Midwife in the US:

Set in 1950s east London, Call the Midwife has a distinctly different kind of British sensibility that is more loose and gritty than the escapist Downton. The comical images of midwives administering nitrous oxide to women in labor are something of a shock to US viewers schooled in images of a prim, Brontë-influenced British countryside. (Amanda Holpuch)

The Yorkshire Evening Post interviews the new director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, James Brining:

“When I was doing my A-levels I read all the time: poetry, Jane Eyre,” he says, “and I remember my nan said to me: ‘What are those books for? You can’t put books on your feet, lad.’
“In other words, get a proper job!” he laughs. Then he imitates a thick Leeds brogue: “She’d then say something like: ‘Get a job int’ bank. Mrs Rooks’s grandson’s got a job int’ bank at Halton Moor. You need to do that, lad!” That was her careers advice.” (Rod McPhee)

Financial Times takes a walk (literally) with Tara Fitzgerald:

Tara Fitzgerald arrives for our walk wearing a black woollen coat she later tells me she bought in Chelsea Girl 25 years ago. The sleeves are now six inches too short and her only other protection from what turns out to be unremitting rain is a long burgundy scarf. The star of Brassed Off, Sirens and the television series Waking the Dead is, however, perfectly dressed to audition for a windswept moor scene in Wuthering Heights. (Only later do I learn that the actress’s great-aunt, Geraldine Fitzgerald, appeared alongside Laurence Olivier in the famed 1939 film version.) (Jeremy Taylor)

Not the only Brontë connection of Tara Fitzgerald's as she starred in the 1996 BBC adaptation of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and was Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre 2006.

The Times 'recommends' Jane Eyrotica by Karena Rose:

"Whenever you feel like criticising any one," Nick Carraway's father famously told him, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." Advice that we should bear in mind before giving The Great Gatsby Unbound a drubbing? No, let's not. The book in question, by "F. Scott Fitzgerand and Karena Rose" is, heaven help us, an erotic retelling of the classic novel; if you missed those references to "cushioned lips" and "swelling breasts" in the original, you're in luck. Don't miss Jane Eyrotica by Rose (in collaboration with Charlotte Brontë, of course). Oy vey.

The Wall Street Journal devotes an article to the curious case of Mary MacLane:

Mary MacLane was a genius. Or so she is swift to tell the reader in her 1902 memoir, "I Await the Devil's Coming." "You may gaze at and admire the picture in the front of this book," MacLane writes. "It is the picture of a genius—a genius with a good strong young woman's-body." MacLane compares herself to literary powerhouses like Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and the once well-known diarist Marie Bashkirtseff. "They are all geniuses. And so, then, I am a genius—a genius in my own right." This grandiosity may border on farce, but many of her contemporary readers might have been inclined to agree. (Rachel Hurn)

The Australian reviews The Railwayman's Wife by Ashley Hay:

Ani is offered a job by the Railways in meagre recompense for her loss, and she accepts, even though it is at Central Station in one of a network of lending libraries, hard by those machines that took the life of her spouse. There she reconnects with the novels and poems - from Jane Eyre, a work whose moralism and focus on the interior development of a young woman echoes this antecedent work, to the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon - that first drew her to the railwayman. (Geordie Williamson)

Shang-Ting Peng writes in Leeds-The City Talking about things she found weird after living in Leeds for several years:

I came to Leeds almost four years ago, this is the land of mysteries for me because I had never even been to the UK previously, the only image I had of this place is the foggy and windy scenery I imagine after reading Wuthering Heights at a young age.

Feministing remembers Adrienne Rich:

My re-reading of Rich’s work brought me to this quote I wish to share with you:

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.” (Syreeta)

El Cultural (Spain) reviews Great Expectations 2012:

El arranque, embaucador, es apenas un espejismo. Cámara en mano, con determinación “realista”, pareciera que Newell buscara el pulso de Andrea Arnold cuando filmó sus Cumbres borrascosas (2011). Es decir, conjugar en presente indicativo un relato decimonónico como si se escenificara por primera vez. (Carlos Reviriego) (Translation)

Good Choice Reading interviews the writer Nicole Grotepas:

Who is your literary hero?
Tie between Jane Eyre and Ender Wiggin! They both have a strong moral code and
they honor it. Jane wavers, but she never gives in, and would rather be homeless than
compromise her integrity.

Coffee, books and lipgloss talks to another writer, Amy Harmon:

Books I Love? I'm pretty old school, I confess. Growing up, I loved Jane Eyre. I still do. It had everything - the brooding, sexy, leading man, the brave heroine, the forbidden love, and most of all, a happy ending. That's why I don't love Wuthering Heights. It doesn't have a happy ending. Life is full of bitter, tragic endings, so books need happily-ever-afters.

Lynn News remembers the performance of The Full Brontë by the Scary Little Girls in the Breckland Book Festival (Swafham Library, 7:30pm); Edmund Prestwich posts about the poem Wuthering Heights by Sylvia Plath; Dilettante Artiste reviews Wuthering Heights. Finally, Hathaways of Haworth posts some pictures of still snowy Brontë country but with budding spring:

Visitors to Haworth will find the cobbles have been relaid and though work continues around it the Brontë Parsonage is also open. A lady dressed in Victorian clothing will be around on Mainstreet to give directions to the Parsonage.

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Easter at the Parsonage

Easter activities at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Inspired by the Brontës
Exhibition of new poems by Ilkley and Calderdale Young Writers
29/03/2013 - 07/05/2013

In February 2013, sixteen writers from Ilkley Young Writers and Calderdale Young Writers spent a week at the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank as part of a collaborative project between Arvon and the Brontë Society. The young writers visited Haworth Parsonage and responded to items in the collection, and the resulting work is displayed as a series of text installations at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, alongside the objects that inspired them.
Exhibition is free with admission to the Museum.

'Horrible-Histories'-style Babbage Walks
Discover the gruesome secrets of Haworth's past
April 02nd 2013 11:00am - April 11th 2013 03:00pm

Fun short walks will entice the most gruesome family members with hideous details of insanitary Haworth as it was in olden days, when Mr Brontë called in the reformer Benjamin Babbage to help clean up.
Eight separate walks are to be conducted over Easter: choose from 11am and 2pm on April 2, 4, 9 and 11.
Meet outside the shop, or inside if it’s raining
Free to visitors paying to enter the Museum

Family drop-in spring diorama craft workshop
We supply the boxes and craft supplies – you supply the imagination
April 03rd 2013 11:00am - 04:00pm

Take part in our family drop in workshop to create a mini springtime scene - from recycled video cases! Make your scene to fit the empty video case and you also have an art box for easy transportation and display!
Free to visitors paying to enter the Museum; in the Museum foyer next to the shop

Children's churchyard challenge
Scratch the surface to find a new world of plants and minibeasts
April 10th 2013 11:00am - 04:00pm

Even graveyards come to life in spring. Borrow our special bags with all manner of things to help you discover more about life and death in Haworth churchyard. We’ve even got special mini bug catchers – so see what you can find!
Free to visitors paying to enter the Museum

And --- Children's Easter trail throughout the holidays - follow the trail and solve the mystery worksheet to win a prize.
Brontë dressing-up box is back. Pose, admire yourself in the mirror, and feel free to take pictures.

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Haworth: International Shop Window for Yorkshire

The Telegraph & Argus vibrates with the endless prosperity to be brought by the Tour de France stage in Yorkshire and connects it to the minor restoration works at the Old Schoolroom and Main Street in Haworth:

Work to restore parts of picturesque Haworth to their original glory has been completed – and the village is now hoping for a tourism boost from the upcoming Tour De France cycle race next year.
Easter visitors to Haworth will be able to see the results of recent work to restore key parts of the historic village.
English Heritage and Bradford Council have joined forces to invest in four restoration projects.
The work, combined with the fact the village is on the route of the Tour De France next year, could act as a double boost in terms of attracting visitors to the scenic Worth Valley.
The Old School Room, designed and built by Patrick Brontë in 1832, has had new windows installed to match the original Georgian Gothic design.
Two businesses in Main Street have also had original features such as windows and shop fronts restored.
The improvements are designed to bring the village closer to how the Brontes knew it, and to ensure it continues to thrive as a tourist destination.
A spokesman for English Heritage said the enhancements complement the Bradford Council-funded repair of the setts in Main Street and Church Street, as well as Heritage Lottery Fund support for repairs to Haworth Parish Church.
Trevor Mitchell, English Heritage planning and conservation director for Yorkshire, said: “Haworth is an international shop window for Yorkshire’s heritage and its tourism industry and we want people to see it at its best.
“These small-scale works show that normal maintenance and repair projects can make a big difference to the quality of the village when they are well detailed.”
A grant of £42,000 has been given from English Heritage and £11,000 from the district council to reinstate original features and shop fronts on Main Street, at numbers 125 and 127, close to the parsonage and church.
The Old School Room is a Grade II listed building, and a grant of £9,000 each from English Heritage and Bradford Council has allowed the five main windows on its south side to be replaced with small-paned sash windows.
Councillor Val Slater, the Council’s executive member for housing, planning and transport, said: “Haworth is a fantastic place for people to visit and these improvements will add to that attraction.”
Averil Kenyon, chairman of Brontë Spirit – the committee tasked with saving the Old School Room – said: “We’re delighted with the new windows, and they will make a big difference to the look of the building and allow much more light to the inside.
“When we have the doors and the other windows painted to match, the Church Street side of this building will be more pleasant to the eye.”

The Telegraph highlights ITV's Perspectives this Sunday:

Perspectives: Sheila Hancock – the Brilliant Brontë Sisters
ITV, 10.00pm
The history of the three novelist sisters is a well worn one, but in the latest episode of this documentary strand, actress Shelia Hancock shows such a visceral response to their work that she makes you appreciate them afresh. Her relationship to Wuthering Heights is particularly passionate. “I have felt all the feelings that are in that book – particularly the sense of loss and desperation and luckily for me great love,” she says. (Telegraph TV Desk)

And on Channel 4, the programme Walking Through History (March 29, 8:00 pm) will feature Haddon Hall tonight:

Tomorrow, the Peak District is the uncredited star of BBC1’s new period drama The Village. Tonight, it’s the backdrop for the first of a new series where Tony Robinson rambles through historic landscapes to soak up stories from Britain’s past. Robinson is usually excellent at this sort of thing and the series promises to reveal hidden stories that ordinary walkers might easily miss.  (...)
 1/4. Tony Robinson embarks on expeditions through some of Britain's most historic landscapes in search of the richest stories from the nation's past. He begins with a 40-mile walk along the Derwent Valley in the Peak District, where the world's industrial revolution was born. En route he visits the sleepy village of Cromford to find out about the work of entrepreneur Richard Arkwright, and stops off at a 900-year-old stately home that has been used as the location for three Jane Eyre films. (Radio Times)

Dave Astor writes in The Huffington Post about bad fictional marriages:

Then there's the wonderful Jane Eyre novel I often mention. In the back story of Charlotte Bronte's book, a young Rochester is sort of tricked into marrying Bertha despite hardly knowing her and being unaware of her hereditary tendency to go mad. Lesson: Google the person you might wed, even if you live long before the Internet was invented.

Courier Life's Brooklyn Daily talks about a lit-focused singles night in Brooklyn:

High school nerds, take heart — grow up, move to Brooklyn, and you will no longer be forever alone.
That’s the ethos behind Geek Love, a singles mixer and trivia night for brainy literary types hosted by gleefully geeky writers Emma Straub and Teddy Wayne.
Conversations about favorite Brontë sisters are likely to abound. (Jaime Lutz)

A fan of Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices book series writes on Hypable about her own story with reading:

For awhile, the girl found her way on her own. Harry Potter introduced her to the world of classical literature, and her awareness grew. As did her burden. She found friends in Austen, Brontë, Carroll, Shakespeare and more. High School introduced her to Dickens, Wilde, Spencer, Wordsworth, Shelley, Pope, and her beloved Augustine. But they came after. (SnatcherGirl)

Keighley News tells the story of local painter Graham Foster:

An Oakworth man who temporarily lost the sight in one eye has taken up painting again following surgery.
Graham Foster is currently exhibiting his pictures of Yorkshire landscapes at Haworth Tourist Information Centre [until April 6]. (...)
He particularly likes to paint dry stone walls, reflecting the many years he spent building them across the north.
He said: “They’re not strictly speaking photographic images, they’re more impressions of the Brontë landscapes.
“We think it’s wonderful natural landscape but it’s not – the fields are there for cultivation, the moors are there because people cut down trees.”

Mania reviews The Host, both film and novel:

Stephenie Meyer is worse than a bad writer. She’s an anti-writer. At least bad writing features things like conflict and rising action: hackneyed, silly or poorly rendered perhaps, but by God things happen in bad writing. Meyer’s writing, on the other hand, is specifically designed to remove all of that. In my mind’s eye, I imagine her strapping good concepts down to a mad scientist’s table, and draining them of their dramatic potential as they shriek in agony. What if she gets a hold of the classics?! Can you fathom Lady Macbeth mooning about who loves her the most for five unbearable acts, or a blank-faced Heathcliff mumbling Hallmark platitudes to Catherine for hour after agonizing hour? That’s anti-writing: a black hole pulling everything beautiful and decent about the creative process into its ravenous maw. (Rob Vaux)

The Dayton Daily News publishes about the Ohio Poetry Out Loud competition:

Taribo Osuobeni, a senior at Westerville Central High School in Westerville, has won the top award and will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the national finals in Washington, D.C., from April 28-30. He also won a $300 prize and $500 for his school. Osuobeni won with his recitation of “On Quitting” by Edgar Ellen Guest; “No Coward Soul is Mine” by Emily Bronteë and “The Craftsman” by Marcus B. Christian. (Meredith Moss)

WDR3 (Germany) reviews the Ilka Saal and Gerhard Wolf Wuthering Heights radio adaptation recently released in CD:

Schon dutzende Male ist die Geschichte seit Stummfilmzeiten ins Kino gekommen, jetzt gibt es auch eine Hörspielfassung aus dem Hörverlag, mit den Stimmen namhafter Schauspieler wie Bibiana Beglau, Alexander Fehling und Jule Böwe.Entstanden ist ein sehr atmosphärisches Stimmungsbild mit Musik und der Rezitation von Gedichten von Emily Brontë im englischen Original. (Ulrike Gondorf) (Translation)

Booking in Heels reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; TrekEarth publishes a picture of the path leading to Wycoller Hall; Celebrations of a Writer posts about Wuthering Heights; Library of Clean Reads reviews Jude Morgan's Charlotte & Emily (aka The Taste of Sorrow); Somewhere Only We Know... posts about Jane Eyre; Daisy Doll continues posting about her Jane Eyre project, now Rochester's shirt; My New Plaid Pants reviews Wuthering Heights 2011.

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Jane Eyre in Estonia

A new Jane Eyre musical has just opened in Tallinn, Estonia:

Jane Eyre

Music and Book - Kaari Sillamaa
Director, choreographer and set designer - Katre Jaani
Costume Designer - Kristel Viksi
Arrangements and Musical Director - Janika Sillamaa

"Jane Eyre"´i peetakse veel praegugi üheks maailma suurimaks armastuslooks - see on olnud lemmikromaan väga paljudele igas vanuses lugejaile, samuti aga ka filmirežissööridele, millest annab tunnistust suur hulk samanimelisi linateoseid, mis filmiajaloos vändatud.
Sest ei saa ju külmaks jääda vaesest perest neiu ja šarmantse aadlimehe, kes endas sünget saladust peidab, vahelistele tunnetele ....

Cast:

Jane Eyre ... Keidi Vatter
Edward Rochester ... Erik Meremaa
Bertha Mason ... Janika Sillamaa
Mrs Reed ... Silvi Vrait
Alice Fairfax ... Merle Talvik
Grace Poole ... Reet Paavel

Rest of the cast and crew, here.

Salme Kultuurikeskuses
Salme 12 Tallin (Põhja-Tallinna linnaosas)

March 27,28 at 19.00 h
April 3, 4, 11, 12, 13 at 19.00 h

Apparently Erik Meremaa is quite a star in Estonia as he is also the vocalist of the local hard rock band House of Games. Hence this article in Publik.

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Bertha's Ghost

Both The Daily NonPareil and KVNO News announce the reprisal for a limited time of Jill Anderson as Charlotte Brontë in William Luce's Brontë in Omaha, NE:

The Bluebarn Theatre, 614 S. 11th St., Omaha, presents a limited four-night run of “Brontë” by William Luce April 4-7. This 2011 sell-out drama was featured in Joslyn Castle’s popular literary festival “Romance at the Castle: The Brontës.”
This one-woman play is about the life of famous English authoress, Charlotte Brontë, writer of “Jane Eyre.” In the drama, Brontë returns home from the funeral of her last remaining sibling and begins life alone with her father in their remote North England parsonage. She reflects on the remarkable incidents, triumphs, tragedies and relationships that have brought her to the present moment and looks toward the future with hope and courage.

“It’s really kind of an exploration of the lives of the famous literary Brontë family. That would be Charlotte Brontë, who wrote Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights, and their sister Anne and brother Branwell, who wrote lesser works but were also notable literary figures.” (...)
“Charlotte was the sister that appealed to me the most because her mind and her literature have such a refinement, an unsentimental quality to the writing. All of her literary output, whether it be poetry, novels, journal and diary entries… her mind was incredibly unique. She a biting sense of humor, a great sardonic wit. She was atypical for women of her area, she was way before her time.
While the play’s words might be the same at the 2011 production, Anderson says that the change of location from Music Room of the Joslyn Castle to the more intimate space of the Blue Barn Theatre will have a unique effect on the show.
“Every space has it’s own essence. When you enter the confines of that space, it tells you what it needs and wants in terms of your performance. This is a theatre, so it’s very enclosed. It has a tightness to it, more of a cramped feeling, which in a lot of ways works psychologically well with this story because she’s coming home to a cramped situation in her life.” (Bill Grennan)

More details about Sheila Hancock's Perspectives documentary on the Brontës in The Huddersfield Examiner:

Veteran actress Sheila Hancock spent time in Mirfield filming a documentary about the Brontë sisters.
The programme will be screened by ITV on Sunday and includes ‘an encounter with a ghost’.
The TV star visited Hollybank Trust’s Roe Head building in Mirfield and the Red House Museum, Gomersal, where the sisters, especially Charlotte, spent some of their formative years.
The Shakespearean actress is narrating the documentary and visited key locations from their life stories to film pieces to camera for the programme.
The oldest building at Roe Head, at Far Common Road, Mirfield, was a boarding school for girls in the 1830s. (...)
Marketing officer Rosey James pointed out mysterious aspects of Roe Head.
She said: “I pointed out the small attic door behind which the ghost of Roe Head is reputed to live. It’s at the top of a steep flight of steps which the story says is where a servant fell to her death.
“Sheila became very excited and insisted on going into the attic to see for herself.”
Sheila was shown round the attic rooms which used to be the servants’ quarters and part of the attic which is unused.
Through a gap in the wall, it is possible to see an antiquated, very dusty prayer kneeler covered in cobwebs.
Rosey added: “I pointed out the kneeler and told her that nobody would go near it now – apparently whenever it has been moved or even disturbed, there has been a terrible commotion from the attic, with loud noises and banging. This goes on until the kneeler is put back in its place.
“Sheila was convinced that there was a connection between this ghostly presence and Charlotte Brontë’s ‘mad woman in the attic’ Bertha in Jane Eyre. Both Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey refer to the ghost in their letters and these spooky stories could have inspired her when writing her great novel.”
The film crew also worked at Red House Museum, a house Charlotte visited regularly during the 1830s.

The Foster's Daily Democrat announces a book club read of Agnes Grey:

RiverRun Bookstore will hold its monthly Classics Book Group on Monday, April 15 at 7 p.m. This month’s book will be Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. Classics Book Group meets the third Monday of each month.
Agnes Grey is undoubtedly a deeply personal novel, in which Anne Brontë views on the ‘contemporary’ issue of the treatment of governesses, as well as her passionate religious sympathies, find very deliberate expression; but she also touches on issues of moral behavior, moral responsibility, and individual integrity and its survival. Nobody reads Anne Brontë, so let’s do it!

Nobody reads Anne Brontë? Ok, not a vast majority, but Anne Brontë is not really in the forgotten writers category.

The people behind the interactive online adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries announce a new adaptation for this summer. In The Daily Beast:

As for new content, Pemberly Digital will unveil Welcome to Sanditon, a short interactive series based on Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, this May. This summer a new novel will receive a full YouTube adaptation. The book hasn’t been announced yet, but Su hinted that it will be like Pride and Prejudice in the “Austen-Charlotte Brontë female-driven genre.” (Molly Taylor)

Der Tagesspiegel (Germany) reviews the Wuthering Heights 2011 DVD:

Gesprochen wird nicht viel: Arnold zeigt die Emotionen hinter den Bildern, verdichtet die Atmosphäre, durch Geräusche, Details. Gräser im Wind, Wolken, Schlamm am Rocksaum, Augen, Blicke, Gesten: Aus alldem komponiert sie das, was man gerne Seelenlandschaft nennt. Leider erlebte Arnolds Brontë-Verfilmung nur eine spärliche Kinoauswertung und ist auf der großen Leinwand doch besonders beeindruckend. (Karl Hafner) (Translation)

Big Gay Picture Show was not so happy with the film:

A motion picture in which little actually seems to be happening can be delivered in such a masterful and powerful way that you cannot help but dive head-first into the characters and their world. Every silence is a story, every expression is a Shakespearean monologue: you just need to be brave and read into it.
Eytan Fox’s Yossi succeeded to some extent. Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights tried and failed. (Adrian Naik)

Innovation Excellence describes the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) like this:

Massive Open Online Course are an innovation suited for technical courses, learning Java or php, electronics or mapping, less so for essays on Jane Eyre or colonialism in Africa.

An alert from Concord, NH:

Author Sabin Willett will discuss his new book Abide With Me tonight at Gibson’s Bookstore. The novel is a modern-day take on Wuthering Heights, set in Afghanistan at the non-wuthering height of the Taliban insurgency. Willett’s experiences at Guantanamo Bay as pro bono legal aid for prisoners served as inspiration and experience for Abide With Me.
The discussion and book signing starts at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore. For more information, visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562. (Ben Conant and Keith Testa in The Concord Monitor)

The novel is reviewed by Open Letters Monthly.

Las Vegas Cityville announces a new production of The Mystery of Irma Vep at Las Vegas Little Theater:

Vampires, mummies, ghosts, an Egyptian princess brought back to life and a werewolf, with quick cross-dressing — this is comedy skewering the dark side. Two actors portray all eight roles in this Gothic spoof, which references to classic horror movies; Joyce, Wilde, Poe and Ibsen; Wuthering Heights and Gaslight and Rebecca.

Consultant-News has a most mysterious Wuthering Heights reference in an article about the UK budget:

So what George [Osborne] used his elbow room for was a series of nudges and I wonder if I don’t discern the fingerprints of the Government’s actual “nudge department” (aka the Behavioural Insights Team). This shadowy unit is drawing on cutting-edge thinking to deploy little psychological prompts to create major shifts in behaviour, such as paying taxes and fines. One day they will leave a copy of Wuthering Heights with a £10 note inside it on a park bench in Acton and the economy will roar back into action. (Mick James)

The Telegraph has an article about the hortillonnages of Amiens:

I read Graham Swift’s Waterland, a tale of people and places that captured the spirit of the incessantly flat Fens as comprehensively as Wuthering Heights claimed the moors. It released the watery levels from what my brain had condemned as a monotonous, featureless, absence of elevation and I saw it for the complex coexistence of water and land that it is. (Mark Diacono)

Now Toronto reviews the film Womb:

A plausible science fiction idea gets near-Gothic treatment, with echoes of Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, to create a slow-burning mood piece fraught with sexual tension. (Andrew Dowler)

The Telegraph & Argus mentions the publication of a couple of books charting the Yorkshire Water Way. One of the stages happens in Brontë country:

Next stage is a six-hour 12-miler between Haworth and Hebden Bridge past the Lower Laithe and Walshaw Dean reservoirs, with the Bronte Bridge, Wuthering Heights and Gibson’s Mill at Hardcastle Crags as highlights. (Mike Priestley)

Cinema Italiano announces a screening of Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión at the Alphaville Cineclub in Rome (April 5, 21.00 h); Nascent Emissions, In the Forest Clearing... and DulcineaWilson review Jane Eyre; Addicted to Jane Austen has read and hated I.J. Miller's Wuthering Nights; LadyLavinia's 1932 Blog reviews Jane Eyre 1996; Ex Libris reviews Catherine by April Lindner.

Finally, Julie Akhurst, the dynamic Brontë Parsonage Communications Officer reports that the first monthly BS/BPM newsletter is out:

The first ever edition of our emailable newsletter - for March - has just gone out, but it's not too late to get a copy if you'd like one. Just send me your name and email and I'll make sure you're added to our list.

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DoeDeMee Jane

Several weeks ago we already talked about the DoeDeMee initiative to fight against illiteracy:

Belgian graphic design studio beshart was able to unite 100 artists from 28 countries in a unique co-creation project.
Together we (re)designed the covers for "The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time" (The Observer, 2003). Our mission: raise awareness for the problem of illiteracy.
The result is not only a unique cross section of contemporary trends in design and illustration, it is also a wonderful collection of posters that has you contemplating on those great reading moments we as literate people often take for granted.
The collection was officially released in Antwerp City Hall on International Literacy Day (September 8, 2012) and can be found in our online gallery. We received some pretty awesome cover art from all over the world, so make sure to check them out!

Now,  the new covers are being exhibited all around Maastrich (Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium) and Schwäbisch Hall (Germany), including Jane Eyre of course:

Expo 100 Boeken Re-covered

15 maart t/m 13 april

Maastricht verrast de bezoekers in de binnenstad met bijzondere (etalage)presentaties. Het spraakmakende project DoeDeMee van het Antwerpse grafische studio Beshart, dat 100 kunstenaars uit 28 landen verenigt en waarbij alle boeken uit de top 100 aller tijden een nieuwe cover krijgen aangemeten in de strijd tegen analfabetisme, heeft nu ook zijn weg gevonden naar Maastricht.Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen heeft ervoor gezorgd dat Maastricht de eerste Nederlandse stad is die de bijzondere posters gratis presenteert!

Maastrich Díchtbij publishes a picture of the poster and more information on the exhibition.

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Heathcliff as Loki, the Brontës cycling...

The Brontë Parsonage informs about a new temporary addition to its brand new Heaven is a Home exhibition. No less than the Young Men's little book that was auctioned last year and is on display at the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris:

We are delighted to welcome to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, on loan to the Museum from the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris, the world-famous Charlotte Brontë ‘Little Book’, which was sold at Sotheby’s in December 2011.
The ‘Little Book’ - on display in the Museum’s Bonnell Room from today until the end of August – is one of a series of six Young Mens Magazines written by Charlotte Brontë. Dated August 19, 1830, it is lavishly bound in leather by a later collector, and includes the story of a murderer setting light to his bed, prefiguring the scene in Jane Eyre where Mr Rochester’s insane wife Bertha sets fire to her husband’s bed-hangings. Until it was sold 15 months ago its contents were completely unknown, making it highly likely that it will now be the focus of much scholarly research. Visitors will be able to read a couple of pages of this tantalising treasure, which has never before been published or transcribed.
Four of the second series of six Young Mens Magazines are already held by the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The whereabouts of this fifth magazine was completely unknown until it came up for auction, and we still do not know the identity of its seller. The last book of the series disappeared in the 1930s when its owner Sir Alfred Law died, and has been missing ever since. (...)
Brontë Society Executive Director Professor Ann Sumner said today: ‘From the moment the Little Book was purchased and went to Paris we entered into negotiations with La Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits to borrow it so that visitors to Haworth might benefit from seeing this treasure close up. We are delighted and proud to announce that it is now to go on display for the first time ever in the United Kingdom.’
‘We thank La Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits unreservedly for their generosity in lending us this precious object, and making it available for exhibition. We are delighted that Brontë enthusiasts will now be able to see it at the place where it was written, and in context with other exhibits reflecting on the domestic and creative life of the Brontës.’

ITV News also reports it.

Still in Haworth, the Yorkshire Post reports that some minor restoration works are being done in the Old Schoolroom and several shops and buildings of Main Street:

Visitors to Haworth are being invited to take a close look at restoration projects designed to bring the village closer to how the Brontës would have known it.
The Old School Room, designed and built by Patrick Brontë, has had new windows installed which match the original Georgian design.
And Mrs Beighton’s Sweet Shop and a holiday cottage on Main Street have had original features including windows restored.
English Heritage, which part-funded the conservation work, said the works were “intended to reverse the slowly-declining state of the conservation area which is putting it at risk”.
Trevor Mitchell, English Heritage planning and conservation director for Yorkshire, said: “These small-scale works show that normal maintenance and repair projects can make a big difference to the quality of the village when they are well detailed.
“We hope that other owners will follow our example so that, over time, the whole village will become as beautiful and well preserved as the newly-redecorated Parsonage Museum.”
English Heritage gave £42,000 and Bradford Council £11,000 towards shop front improvements.

Source: Novinky

Deník (Czech Republic) reports that the actor Tomáš Dastlík (pictured) has been awarded with a Czech Theatre Award  for his role as Heathcliff in the Ostrava production of Wuthering Heights premiered last year.

Rory Morgan in Exeposé doesn't think that Jane Eyre is very relevant today. We strongly disagree with the article, of course, but we found the following assertion particularly wrong:

She is so prim and proper that it’s hard to really get excited with her and enjoy the narration. The sad truth is that Jane is plain in every sense of the word. She doesn’t seem to hold any particularly strong aspirations or controversial views (even for her time) and her personality is so moral and squeaky clean that she comes off as a little dull. 

We wonder if we have read the same novel at all. Sophie Beckett in the same student newspaper is more in line with our views:

The voice of Jane herself is the perfect lens through which to view all of these characters. Jane is the antithesis of the ideal Victorian woman. She is poor and plain and this alone is enough to make her an unusual heroine. But, more than this, she is outspoken and holds strong views- characteristics which were strongly disapproved of in women.

Author Jim Crace will not be able to contribute to the discussion as he hasn't read the novel. In The Atlantic:

"I've got a degree in English literature," Crace told me, "but I spent the time drinking, to tell you the truth. I'm not that well-versed in literary theory—I don't know what it is. I come from a working-class background where I was much more likely to read socialist books and leaflets than Bronte or Dickens—neither of whom I've yet read." (Joe Fassler)

The Guardian Express discovers the wheel when it says:

What is it that has made authors such as Austen, Brontë, Du Maurier, Wilde, Dickens and Tolstoy, retain their popularity throughout the ages? What specific tool did they use to give their characters everlasting life and appeal?The ‘classics’ are aptly named because they are, in fact, classic. (DymphnaPower)

Anglotopia recommends a visit to Haworth:

Hopeless romantics be sure to pay a visit to Haworth. This small historic town is located in the Pennines and said to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights. The memory of the Brontës is still rife throughout the town with roads, bridges and even waterfalls named after the literary sisters.

DVD.nl reviews Wuthering Heights 2011:

De productie is zware kost en erg donker. De acteurs doen het goed en de sfeer van de film ligt dicht bij die uit het boek. De beeldkwaliteit is goed, maar is soms wel erg donker. Ook het geluid is goed. Opvallend hierbij is dat de film tot de aftiteling geen muziek bevat. Deze verfilming van Wuthering Heights is erg verdeeld ontvangen. (Laurens Van Der Molen) (Translation)

AARP is ironic about the release of I.J. Miller's Wuthering Nights:

Too bad Wuthering Nights, due out from Grand Central Publishing next month, didn’t come with its own souvenir item. Subtitled An Erotic Retelling of Wuthering Heights, this pastiche — in which Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff graphically unleash their suppressed desires — would lend itself perfectly to a T-shirt emblazoned with the cover’s scarlet silk wrist restraints. (Bethanne Patrick)

ScienceFiction lists several S/F rivalries and talking about Marvel's Thor vs Loki:

The saga of Thor is like Wuthering Heights with Loki being its Heathcliff who destroys familial relationships as a result of his jealousy of Odin’s real son. (Becky Feldman)

The Daily Record has some toilet humour for you:

 Take last week, for example, when I was looking for some suitable book titles following a report that eight out of 10 Scots like to read on the loo.(...)
Ann Biggerstaff plumped for The Grapes Of Wrath (ouch), The Prime Of Miss Jean Bidet and Jane Eyre Freshener. (Tam Cowan)

BookAddict (in Portuguese) reviews Wuthering Heights; Sophie Littlefield interviews the author Barbara Taylor Sissel:

SWL: What turned you into a writer - and when?
BTS: The love of reading. Growing up books were my refuge, one of the few constants in my life. We moved a lot, but wherever we landed there was always a library within walking distance or a bus ride. I remember being around eleven, or so, reading Wuthering Heights, and so immersed in the story, just taken out of my world, and at one point, I looked up and thought, I want to do this.

Finally, Hathaways of Haworth posts some pictures of the Brontës cycling around the snowy Brontë country, preparing for the Tour, we suppose:

I don’t think Charlotte and the sisters would have  considered it very ladylike to cycle across the moor but I am sure the Brontës would applaud their  determination despite the cold to promote Haworth and the areas part in the Tour de France and improve tourism.

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Jane Eyre in Paradise

Starting tomorrow, March 28, a new Jane Eyre production opens in Paradise, California:

Jane Eyre
Adapted by Amber Miller from the novel by Charlotte Brontë
Directed by Amber Miller

An original adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's haunting tale of unlikely love, this is a story most of us know, told in a way none of us has seen before….the story of Jane ~ small, plain, pale, penniless Jane; Jane the orphan; Jane the governess; Jane the unlikely obsession of the vicious, moody and rich Master of Thornfield Manor. But deep within the halls of Thornfield lives a dark and twisted mystery that will test Jane in a way she could never imagine. It is a tale of love and passion, God and religion, atonement and forgiveness, social class and gender relations. It is a lot to pack into two hours and Jane's journey from obscurity to eternal love will leave you breathless. Bring tissues - you've been warned.

Performances at the Theatre on the Ridge
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays
March 28 - April 20
7:30 p.m. Curtain
Sunday Matinees
April 7, 14, & 21
2:00p.m.curtain

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Dinner with Gaskell

Sheila Hancock tells in The Telegraph and Radio Times about her inner connection with Emily Brontë before the airing of the Perspectives episode devoted to the Brontës which she conducts:

She compared their connection to that between the lead characters in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, who could not bear to be apart, and said she could empathise with Heathcliff’s pain as he watched Cathy die.
“Emily writes extraordinarily about the depth of Cathy and Heathcliff’s desperation, with him actually grabbing her body as she’s dying to try to stop her going, as it were,” she told Radio Times.
“Well, anyone who’s watched somebody die, that’s just what you want to do. I did. ‘Don’t go, don’t you dare go!’ She puts into words something I totally understand.”
Hancock, 80, said she believed there were certain people you were meant to be with and that once you had found that person, it was impossible to imagine life without them.
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“If you have ever known that obsessive love, which sometimes makes it difficult to be together but impossible to be apart, you can identify with the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff,” she added.
Thaw, the actor famed for his roles in Inspector Morse and The Sweeney, died of oesophageal cancer in February 2002, aged 60.
Hancock admitted that after years of pain, she had gradually learned to live without him.
It was her fascination with Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, and their acclaimed writing, that prompted the actress to make a film about their lives for ITV’s Perspectives.
She suggested that all three sisters covered subjects that Jane Austen never broached, but admitted that she had always been “snotty” about Austen. (Victoria Ward)

The Lancashire Evening Post talks about the ambitious plans for Elizabeth Gaskell's house (but please, someone has to tell the writer that Emily was never a visitor to Gaskell's house, it was Charlotte):

Fancy dining like Dickens or having brunch like a Brontë?
Visitors to Manchester novelist Elizabeth Gaskell’s home will soon be able to dine in Victorian splendour – in the same room where she entertained some of the country’s most famous writers.
The rooms of the Ardwick mansion are set to be turned back to how they looked when Gaskell, author of classics Mary Barton and Cranford, lived there in Victorian times.
Once complete visitors will be able to sit where the author wrote her books or hire the house to eat in the dining room where Gaskell and her husband William entertained.
At that time, Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë were both regular visitors, along with Guardian newspaper founder CP Scott and orchestra founder Charles Hallé.
A bookshop and cafe will also be opened in the lower ground floor for visitors, with offices and meeting rooms on the top floor.
Expected to be complete by summer 2014, the £1.3m project is the final phase in a 15-year battle to save the Plymouth Grove house from decay and demolition.
Two years ago the outside of the house, once used as student halls of residences, was completely restored after years of fundraising.
Josselin Hill, vice chair of the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, said: “Some historical houses can feel quite stale and unlived-in with signs saying ‘don’t touch’ or areas roped off.
“We very much want the house to feel as if the Gaskells have just gone out, with people able to walk around and explore.
“We’ll be having events in the dining room with people able to rent it out.
“The Gaskells were extremely sociable people, who regularly entertained, and I think they would be delighted to see the house back in use and full of visitors.”
Volunteers have been working with heritage experts at the Whitworth Art Gallery to find the right wallpaper and paint colours used in the house at the time.
Furniture from the period Elizabeth Gaskell lived there, 1850 – 1865, will also be used.
A specialist heritage firm has also been called in to restore the ornate plasterwork and carpentry still left in the house.
Armitage Construction, a family firm founded in 1874, will be using traditional lime plaster and woodworking techniques from the period.
Chief executive Daniel Armitage said: “It’s great to be involved in working on such an important Manchester building.
“We’ll be creating the modern offices upstairs but downstairs it’s about trying to retain as much of the house’s original features as possible.”

Gillian Orr in The Independent is not happy that fictional women are picked as inspirational

But apparently some of those polled struggled to come up with any real-life women who inspired them and were forced to turn to fiction. How encouraging. So we have Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice (11), Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara (14), Bridget Jones (15) and Jane Eyre (20) included in the top 20. It’s something that none of the character’s creators, such as Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, managed to do, despite perhaps being worthier picks.

The Daily Campus reviews Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy:

As an avid reader, I was very intrigued by the involvement of rabies in literature. Enlightened by “Rabid,” I realized that many works I had read in high school involved characters infected by rabies. “Rabid” suggests that Emily Brontë alluded to rabies affecting Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights.”  (Alyssa McDonagh)

The New York Daily News talks about the Warner sisters (Susan and Anna):

 One spot that didn’t rate — and is sinking slowly and quietly into oblivion — is the home that belonged to the Warner sisters, America’s answer to the Brontë sisters. The Warner House sits on a deserted island in the Hudson River off West Point, New York. (Rebecca Rego Barry)

Policymic seems to confuse good literature with a bad dinner in a Chinese restaurant:

The genre of the novel is full of famous examples of young adults in moments of doubt, conflict, distress, and anguish. Jane Eyre is 19 when she meets Mr. Rochester; so is Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch.  (...)
 And Jane Eyre seems a recurrently popular choice for a certain kind of sermon about the self: Be kind, be honest, be independent; but don't change yourself for anyone else, and be true to your feelings and ethics. We don't need Charlotte Brontë for that, however. We could glean as much from a few good fortune cookies. (And the Austen of Emma would disagree fiercely with Brontë about the "don't change for anyone" bit.) (Spencer Lenfield)

 Female First interviews the writer Kate Mosse::

What is your favourite novel?
Too many to list - but, it probably won't surprise you to know, that Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is among them. Published in 1847, only a year or so before she died, It has everything - huge landscapes, an epic adventure story at the heart of it, two different time periods, strong female and male characters, overwhelming emotion - revenge, love, fear, tenderness. An extraordinary achievement.

BBC News uses Jane Eyre to visualize a growing social problem in the UK:

 Proposing the motion, Richard Salter, from Somerset, said students at further education (FE) and sixth-form colleges were being discriminated against.
"The student in an FE college is treated differently, not by their peers, not by their teachers, but by their government," he said.
Clare Kellett, a teacher from Somerset, told the conference about a 17-year-old pupil, Jess, who was living on her own because of difficulties at home and was struggling to feed herself.
"My colleague gave Jess what can only be described as a food parcel - that's the level of poverty we're dealing with.
"That is school life for some today - real Hard Times - not To Serve Them All My Days - or even Jane Eyre. (Katherine Sellgren)

Was Wuthering Heights 2011 rejected by Cannes or merely not yet finished? HitFix thinks it is the first option:

Others are more provisional: for the sake of our impatience, we hope "Twelve Years a Slave" will be there, but it could as easily be in Venice. And the Cannes selection committee can often throw our (not to mentiopn producers') hopes off-course: "Brokeback Mountain," "Vera Drake" and "Wuthering Heights" are examples of films that would have premiered at Cannes... had they not been been rejected by the festival. (Guy Lodge)

The Guardian celebrates but warns also about Hebden Bridge:

  I've heard all the jokes about in-breeding and I'd like to make it clear that they are offensive and we've moved on since the days of Wuthering Heights where the only opportunity for love was hooking up with your step brother on the next farm. (Rachel Pickering)

Persinsala (Italy) reviews the theatre play Comici Fatti di Sangue by Alessandro Benvenuti:

  E ci auguriamo che Benvenuti sia tanto bravo quanto lo fu Jean Rhys quando diede la versione dei fatti della prima signora Rochester, riscattandola dal ritratto – non a caso di parte – di Charlotte Brontë. (Luciano Ugge and Maria Frigerio) (Translation)

In Florence (Italy), the Cineteca di Firenze will screen Abismos de Pasión 1951 (today, 20.00 h); CineMaverick reviews Jane Eyre 2011; The Haunted Books Grave posts about A Breath of Eyre; Silly Eagle Books has loved Baby Lit's Wuthering Heights. A Weather Primer; Bookmarked reviews Jane Eyre's Daughter by Elizabeth Newark. Finally, Hathaways of Haworth publishes several pictures of Brontë country roads still covered with snow.

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Just a book, but what a book

Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is not the only Wuthering Heights-inspired song which is usually covered.

Hewitt Huntwork's I Will Crumble from Wuthering Heights 2003 has recently been covered by Mark Seibert and Roberta Valentini in Live in Concert (2012).

And in a very (very, very) different register we found the hardcore band A Vast Hope. In the What If album (2011), a song with the name Wuthering Heights is just a book is included.

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Inspiring Jane

Soiurce: BrontëBlog

The Daily Mail and The Daily Express publish the results of a survey of 4,000 women commissioned by Baileys to find out the most inspiring and spirited women (real or fictional) of all time. Jane Eyre has made it onto the top twenty:

Fictional characters which inspire women include Elizabeth Bennett from Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice (11th); Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind (14th); Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones’ Diary (15th); Jane Eyre (20th) and Clarice Starling, Silence of the Lambs (39th). (Sarah Harris)

The Jane Eyre reference in Bates Motel seems to have been pretty successful as it is mentioned again in The Michigan Daily:

Teenage Norman is a deadly cocktail of hormones and budding psychosis beneath an innocuous baby face. Quoting “Jane Eyre” and stealing glimpses at a creepily salacious book of drawings, the younger Bates is true North for every female in town — the well-meaning guidance counselor, the popular clique, loner Emma and, of course, the center of his world: his mother. (Kelly Etz)

Bleacher Report describes the Mourinho-Abramovich relationship in Brontë terms:

 There has always seemed to be a sense of destiny around Mourinho and Abramovich, as though the two characters are intertwined in a way that makes Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw look like a joyous union. (Ian Rodgers)

Deutschlandfunk (DKR) reviews Jeannette Winterson Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? It's difficult to write about Winterson and not mention the Brontës somehow:

Die Bücher werden für Winterson als Kind zur Fluchtmöglichkeit in die Fantasie, fort aus einem lieblosen Haushalt, in dem außer der Bibel und den Romanen von Charlotte Brontë alle Literatur verboten ist. (Antje Rávic Strubel) (Translation)

Apparently at the Druid Hill Park (in North Baltimore) someone loved the Brontës. According to North Baltimore Patch:

There were ponds named after the Brontë sisters where seals would play. (Joe Stewart)

Teen Ink has included an article about the social status in Wuthering Heights on their database;  the Amelia Bloomer Project includes Catherine Reef's The Brontë Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne in their annual selection of feminist books; M's Bookshelf reviews Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë; Ravencrafts Romance Realm presents I.J. Miller's Wuthering Nights; Daisy Dolls posts about her project of making Rochester's shirt as seen in Jane Eyre 1983 which, by the way, is reviewed by Becky's Book Reviews.

On the Brontë Parsonage Facebook/Twitter new pictures of the aftermath of the snowstorm: the entrance to the Parsonage, Ponden Hall, Main Street, looking at the Black Bull.

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Knitting and the Brontës

The latest issue of Knitting Traditions (Spring 2013) contains an intriguing article: Penelope Hemingway's Knitting and the Brontës. On Knitting Daily we have some more information:

One story that caused me to stop for a careful read-through was about knitting and the Brontë sisters. (...)
there is credible speculation that the Brontë sisters on at least one occasion took a short trip to a nearby town that had a yarn shop. A yarn shop! Did they shop there? Well, you’ll just have to read about it yourself.

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Brontë Fix

The Sunday Times lists Leeds as one of the best places to live in Britain (in the Culture section). One of the reasons:

A little further afield, there's the National Media Museum, in nearby Bradford, and Haworth, for a yomp and a Brontë fix.

Also in The Times, Melanie Reid tells about her fight to recover from a serious accident but not without humour:

This time, the family refuses to cut it off. A friend uses most of a tub of detangler on it and tames it into a small, severe ponytail at the nape of my neck. Very Jane Eyre it is, too. With dreams of a Mr Rochester long gone. I'm glad there are no mirrors here.

Michael Robbins talks in the Chicago Tribune about books that he hasn't read:

I haven't read "To the Lighthouse." I haven't read "Jane Eyre." I haven't read Byron's "Don Juan," not the whole thing anyway. (...)
Everyone has a list of books they've been meaning to read. Here's a sampling of Michael Robbins'. .
→To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
→Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
→Don Juan by George Gordon, Lord Byron
→War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Copenhagen Post doesn't seem to know who wrote what:

 I am using a MAN’S PEN! Surely I would find it so much easier to write about feminism if I had a pink or purple gender-designed BIC FOR HER?    
I pictured the three Brontë sisters at their house in Yorkshire writing their novels.
Suddenly Charlotte throws down her pen in exasperation:  “Oh dash it! I can’t seem to write ‘Wuthering Heights’ today. There is something wrong with Heathcliff. What about you, Emily dear?
“I have the same dilemma, dear sister − Jane Eyre seems to be so one dimensional. And you, Anne?”
“It is true, my sisters. I cannot seem to write. Perhaps what we need is a pen made especially for women!  If only someone would invent such a pen − preferably in a pastel shade, like pink or lavender − which would fit comfortably in our tiny lady-like hands, and then perchance we might become the most famous writing sisters in English literary history.”
They all sigh. “It will never happen in our lifetime so we must soldier on using a man’s pen and hope for the best.”
Perhaps this is a trivial matter compared to violence against women, but we should also not forget how products like these (and pink Lego for girls) create markets for things that women don’t need. (Vivienne McKee)

Les Lectures de Lilas (in French) reviews Agnes Grey; Between the Pages posts about Eve Marie Mont's A Breath of Eyre.

Picture source

Let's end looking at the weather conditions yesterday in Haworth. The snow unfortunately caused the Parsonage to close, as reported on their Facebook page:

I've never had to say this before but, but THE PARSONAGE IS CLOSED TODAY [23rd March], DUE TO SNOW. Sorry, but we just can't get enough staff there to open up. Personally, I have a five-foot drift across my back door. How are the rest of you doing?

A tweet from Ponden Hall also comments on the snow and its consequences:

Snowed in at Ponden for the 1st time in years, the unfortunate coincidence being that we are completely out of wine! 

And some food for thought from Haworth Calendar:

So, this time last yr we were in t-shirts but remember what the summer was like! In 76 it snowed in April! Remember that summer! #Justsaying

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