The earnest Brontës from Yorkshire

The Telegraph and Argus looks at the area's visitors figures from last year and while the Tour de France seems to have generally helped,

The Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth said its figures were still being finalised, but that there had been a slight fall in visitors. (Alistair Shand)

Coincidentally, the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page wonders when its followers first visited the Parsonage and points in the direction of this 1977 documentary of Joan Bakewell visiting the museum. Also, it's the closed period over at the museum, but look at this gorgeous picture of how the Parsonage was looking yesterday.

Still in Yorkshire, Ilkley Gazette reviews the book Yorkshire Wisdom, which is

filled with inspiring and insightful quotations from the likes of Alan Bennett, the Brontës, Jarvis Cocker and Dame Judi Dench — as well as “Gary from Leeds”, “Ian the plumber” and “database administrator Bob”. They include “You must plan to be spontaneous”, from Bradford-born David Hockney; and this from Isla, a full-time mum from North Yorkshire: “There’s something heartwarming about an old couple still in love, living as one and appreci
ating every last moment together – heartwarming and heartbreaking”.

Alibi has enjoyed reading Mallory Ortberg's Texts from Jane Eyre.

Recently I had the pleasure of reading the new book Texts from Jane Eyre—and, by doing so, of getting to spend some time with the mind of its brilliant, hilarious author, Mallory Ortberg. The book’s premise is simple: Literary characters and authors from throughout history had access to cellphones and text messaging—and here are their insanely funny texts. [...]
There's Mr. Rochester texting with Jane Eyre (“I KNEW IT / DID YOU LEAVE BECAUSE OF MY ATTIC WIFE / IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT” / “yes / Absolutely”). (Mike Smith)

Flavorwire features the book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors by Sarah Stodola. One of the 18 authors mentioned in the book is Margaret Atwood:

During the first decade or so of her writing career, certain authors had a clear influence on Atwood’s own work. George Orwell helped inspire her taste for dystopias, along with Brave New World and Darkness at Noon. She read 1984 as an adolescent, a few years after it came out in 1949, around the same time she discovered Edgar Allan Poe, E. Nesbit, and Andrew Lang’s folktales. Sweeping English novels like George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights also had an early impact. (Elisabeth Donnelly)

The novel seems to have made an impact in this columnist from The Daily Star who was

just plain disturbed by Wuthering Heights. (Sarah Anjum Bari)

Actualitté (France) shares a wonderful infographic which shows how old certain authors were when they published their first book (and the rest of their books as well). Charlotte Brontë is there.

Rien d'illogique à ce qu'un auteur ait besoin de quelques années pour affûter sa plume – avec des contre-exemples fameux comme Charlotte Brontë, que Jane Eyre envoie dans les sphères à 32 ans, ou JK Rowling qui publie Harry Potter à 33 ans. Même scénario d'ailleurs pour Stephenie Meyer, qui à 33 ans sort Twilight, avec le succès que l'on connaît. (Clément Solym) (Translation)

The New Yorker has an article on the 'King of Weird Fiction', Jeff VanderMeer and his work.

The books, in other words, touch on all sorts of interesting subjects, and evoke many modern problems. Even so, topical resonance alone can’t account for their appeal. There are reasons to read novels beyond what they’re “about.” Just as only “Wuthering Heights” has the certain, special mood of “Wuthering Heights,” so these books show you scenes that you won’t find elsewhere. (Joshua Rothman)

Shirley Williams, daughter of Vera Brittain whose book Testament of Youth has just been adapted for the big screen, speaks about the adaptation and her mother in Spectator.

[Alicia] Vikander certainly captures the earnestness. By Williams’s admission her mother was no bundle of laughs. ‘I don’t know if I’ve got a great sense of humour. My mother had virtually none. The white crosses were so planted in her mind it was almost impossible for her to see the world as funny. You just couldn’t be a distinguished writer without being pretty earnest. Look at the Brontës.’ As the film enjoys showing us, Brittain channelled all her frivolity into fashion. She was quite the clothes-horse. ‘Don’t look at me as an example,’ says her daughter, decked out in a frills-free tweed twinset. (Jasper Rees)

The Monthly (Australia) reckons that

The lazy word for music like [Tim] Hecker’s is apocalyptic – what he reaches for, more particularly, is the sublime. Listening tonight, as low frequencies judder through the floorboards and skittering patterns of distortion mimic a strong wind, I picture the moors of Yorkshire, where I recently walked: the remote eeriness of the landscape, its slippage between somewhere inhabited and somewhere haunted, where noises manifest on the air that sound like human voices but are not. The Brontës would have understood music like Hecker’s – they would have loved it. (Anwen Crawford)

GrubStreet posts about Wuthering Heights.