Sonic Landscape

The Yorkshire Post interviews Diane Howse, the artist behind the current contemporary exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, The Silent Wild:

“I think we sometimes forget how beautiful Brontë country is,” says Diane on a warm summer’s day, looking across from Penistone Hill. “The world may be very different today from the time of the Brontës, but that beauty and the power they felt on the moors is still very much here.”
That was part of the reason why she wanted to stage an exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Bringing together a group of fellow creative spirits, the Silent Wild explores the sonic landscape conjured by the words of the Brontë sisters. (...)
The main focus of the project is a new 11-minute film that plays on an iPad in the dining room of the parsonage. For the film, an exact replica of the dining room’s floor plan was reconstructed in the roof space at Salts Mill, which is housing a second exhibition. Working with filmmaker Adam Baroukh, choreographer Carolyn Choa, cinematographer Daniel Fazio, dancer Daniel Hay Gordon and architect and sound artist Lemma Redda, the idea was to explore the different threads of the Brontës’ work and lives.
“We were interested in the building, the spaces they inhabited, the sounds they heard around them and their own voices,” she says. “It’s about exploring the nature of the place that housed this extraordinary imagination, but we also wanted to set the parsonage in the context of the 19th century industrialisation of Yorkshire.
“There is also a very specific connection between these two places which is sometimes overlooked. In 1928 Sir James Roberts, the then owner of Salts Mill, and Lady Roberts purchased the Haworth Parsonage and gifted it to the nation, in the keeping of the Brontë Society, as a memorial to the Brontë family. Without Sir James, who grew up near Haworth, and this philanthropic gift the parsonage might not be the public museum that it is today.”
The soundtrack, which can be heard simultaneously in both venues between September 16 and 20 is made up of sounds sampled from the parsonage overlaid with voices reading a passage from Wuthering Heights recorded in 12 different languages. Elsewhere Scottish poet Thomas A Clark has produced five new works for the exhibition, including a laser-etched perspex panel “not a fluttering lark or linnet” which carries words taken from a letter written by Charlotte following the death of her sisters. There are also a number of works by Diane herself, including a simple column of hand-typeset words taken from Wuthering Heights which describes sounds made by the human voice arranged from loud to quiet. (...)
“One of the pieces, Four Scrolls, is by a young Chinese calligrapher called Gigi Leung. They feature words again extracted from the works of the Brontës, which have been translated into Chinese. Produced in Hong Kong, there is a sense of how the sisters’ work, having travelled around the world, has returned home to the place where they were written.”

Emory News explains how at the Emory's Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library there are:

Rare first editions include Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." (Kimber Williams)

Deutschlandfunk talks about Jean Rhys:

1927 publizierte Jean Rhys erste Kurzgeschichten, ein Jahr später den Roman "Quartett". Bis 1939 erschienen drei weitere Romane, danach verschwand sie aus der literarischen Öffentlichkeit. Sie lebte zurückgezogen in Südengland und meldete sich erst 1966 zurück - mit ihrem Meisterwerk. Der Roman "Wide Sargasso-Sea" bescherte ihr mehrere Preise und einen späten Ruhm.
Wie in einem Alptraum prallen darin die unvereinbaren Welten der Karibik und des alten Englands aufeinander "Die weite Sargassosee" spielt auf Jamaika um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Antoinette, Tochter aus einer zerrütteten britischen Familie, wird mit einem Mitgiftjäger aus England verheiratet, der aber mit ihr und der tropischen Welt nicht zurechtkommt. (...)
Als Antoinette psychisch erkrankt, bringt er sie nach England und sperrt sie auf dem Dachboden seines Hauses ein. Damit erzählt Jean Rhys die Vorgeschichte von Mrs. Rochester aus "Jane Eyre". Charlotte Brontë hatte diese Frau, die ebenfalls aus der Karibik stammt, wie eine wilde Bestie dargestellt. Rhys rehabilitiert sie, indem sie ein lebensfrohes, sensibles Mädchens zeichnet, das die Ablehnung des Mannes nicht verkraftet. (Eva Pfister) (Translation)

Nick Holland on Anne Brontë talks about the London visit to Smith, Elder & Co in 1848 of Charlotte and Anne; La Sezione Italian dela Brontë Society posts a couple of photos of a visit to Maria Branwell's house in Penzance. Tiff Stevenson retells her Wuthering Heights lap dancing experience in The Times.