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Friday, January 30, 2015

The Yorkshire Post reports that the Brontë table is now back at the Parsonage.
The dining table where the Brontë sisters sat to write some of their greatest works has returned to its Yorkshire home to stay.
Staff at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth were on hand yesterday (Thurs) to welcome the artefact which arrived unscathed and on time - despite the extreme weather conditions sweeping the north of England.
Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage, who has been at the museum for 26 years, said: “It was one of the most significant occasions during all my time at the parsonage.”
The table left the parsonage in the sale that took place when Patrick Brontë died in 1861 and returned on loan in 1997 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Jayne Eyre.
Thanks to a £580,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), the table where classics such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights were written, has been secured by the Brontë Society for future generations to enjoy in its original setting.
Visitors can see the mahogany drop-leaf table from Sunday when the museum reopens.
Brontë Society & Brontë Parsonage Museum spokeswoman, Rebecca Yorke, said: “It arrived amid much excitement and anticipation. Because of the weather we were worried there might be hold ups on its journey. In 2016 we start celebrating the bicentenaries of the birth of the Brontë siblings. This is a really great start to the bicentenary celebrations.”
You can actually see the table arriving in the Parsonage in this picture shared by the Brontë Parsonage Museum Facebook page. It's oddly exciting!

The return of the table won't be the only new thing at the Parsonage when it reopens on Sunday. As The Telegraph and Argus reports,
An exhibition of poetry and photographs will be on display at Haworth's Brontë Parsonage Museum from the beginning of next month.
The exhibition, which is called Heathcliff Adrift, will run from February 1 to June 8.
A spokesman for the parsonage (pictured) said: "Heathcliff Adrift is a poetry collection by award-winning writer Benjamin Myers that follows the missing three years of Emily Brontë's enduring hero from Wuthering Heights.
"The poetry is accompanied by stunning landscape photography by Nick Small."
BBC Look North featured the Parsonage last night too.

Still locally, The York Press takes a walk along the Yorkshire coast and recalls that,
One famous person who visited Hornsea to take the waters was Charlotte Brontë, who resided there in 1853 for several weeks. (Brian Beadle)
EDIT: As alert reader Anne says in the comments section,  Charlotte Brontë resided in Hornsea in early October 1853 but for 'a happy and a pleasant week' (to Mary Wooler, 18 October 1853)

Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair is one of Dagens Nyheter's (Sweden) 100 best novels. Too bad that the blurb includes quite a blunder:
Jasper Fforde
Var är Jane Eyre?
(”The Eyre affair”)
Övers. Ia Lind
Leopard 2006
Halsbrytande humor för den som gillar en oväntad kombination av fantasi, brott och böcker. Den litterära detektiven Torsdag Nästa (Thursday Next på engelska) arbetar med brott som begås i litteraturen, och blir inkopplad på fallet med Emily Brontës (!) klassiker ”Jane Eyre”, där hjältinnan har blivit kidnappad. Den litterära världen går nämligen att ta sig in i, så Torsdag beger sig till bokens Thornfield Hall för att ta reda på vad som har hänt. Litterär och språklig humor (och en bedårande husdjursdront). Ia Linds översättning är lysande – men originalet är förstås ännu bättre. (Lotta Olsson) (Translation)
Voir (Canada) considers that,
Donna Tartt est plus Brontë que Dickens, si l’on veut. Si l’on veut s’en souvenir. (Marie D. Martel) (Translation)
Onto the stage now, as the Bristol Post looks back on the success of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre, which will be staged at the National Theatre in London later this year.
It was one of the biggest successes on the Bristol drama scene last year and it is now being exported to London. The Bristol Old Vic's award-winning and acclaimed staging of Jane Eyre is to be staged at the National Theatre later this year.
The Old Vic has long had a reputation for staging ground-breaking and exciting work.
And its version of the Charlotte Brontë novel was seen as one of the highlights of last year.
The retelling of the classic story was directed by Sally Cookson, pictured, who has been working at the Old Vic for the last 15 years.
The announcement comes at the same time as the theatre revealed a record-breaking autumn season with nearly 60,000 visitors.
The theatre is gearing up for its 250th anniversary celebrations and is halfway through a revamp which will enhance the oldest and one of the most beautiful playhouses in the country.
Jane Eyre ran for eight weeks last spring and was watched by 13,500 people and received five-star reviews.
Sally Cookson also worked on Peter Pan, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Treasure Island. She co-founded Bristol Old Vic's Young Company and has also worked with Travelling Light and Tobacco Factory Theatres.
She said: "Tom Morris and everyone at Bristol Old Vic took an enormous risk by agreeing to produce Jane Eyre, they supported and guided me with total commitment and belief in the project.
"We had no idea when we were making the show whether it would work or not – we felt so totally up against it in terms of time and it was an enormous challenge in every possible way.
"But the blood, sweat and tears provided by the actors, the creative and technical teams paid off – and the show that emerged is something that we're all very proud of.
"The fact it has been invited to the National Theatre is not only a validation of the devising process but an affirmation that regional theatre is making exciting, risk-taking work.
"We're all tremendously excited about taking the show to London – but I think we're just as excited to be bringing it back to Bristol where it began its epic journey." (Michael Ribbeck)
Broadway World describes the play You on the Moors Now as
a grand theatrical examination of four well-known literary heroines of the 19th-century and their shocking rejection of the men who so ardently loved them. Gleaned from the pages of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Little Women, You On The Moors Now takes everything you've ever learned about love and puts it somewhere in the tall grasses, hidden from view, where only the truly brave will ever traverse to earn it. (Marina Kennedy)
Excelsior (Mexico) opts for the stereotypical view of Branwell:
La historia de las hermanas habla por ellas. Madres y padres preocupados porque ellas no destaquen y opaquen a su vástago, aunque éste sea un desastre ¿recuerdan a las hermanas Brontë y al pobre alcohólico que nunca “levantó cabeza”? (Clara Scherer) (Translation)
Books & Paradise (in Spanish) reviews Jane Eyre.

2 comments:

  1. Thank goodness the table got there in 2015, and will have this year to its self as 2016 will be about Charlotte... the two at the same time would have been too much! lol. THE table in THE room...wow ...such time machine magic and happy endings is rare

    What would Charlotte, who only received 500 pounds for each of her books say, if she knew the table where two of them were written fetched £580,000 ? I think after the shock wore off, she would be pleased

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  2. One famous person who visited Hornsea to take the waters was Charlotte Brontë, who resided there in 1853 for several weeks

    I believe CB was alone at Filey for a month or so in 1852...Hornsea is where she visited with Miss Wooler in 1853 for one week

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