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Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Telegraph & Argus talks about the BBC adaptation of An Inspector Calls, filmed in Saltaire. The BBC England Director, Peter Salmon, says that the Sally Wainwright Brontë drama To Walk Invisible will be filmed around Bradford, 'soon':
"Since BBC North was created four years ago, and we moved major departments north to Salford, we’ve had a great track record of success," said Mr Salmon. “We’ve been really busy in this part of Yorkshire. As well as An Inspector Calls, we’re currently planning a new drama about the lives of the Brontë sisters, which will be filming around Bradford soon. It’s being written by Yorkshire writer Sally Wainwright, whose work for us also includes Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley." (Emma Clayton)
The New York Times Style Magazine asks Erica Jong about her favourite books:
Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Brontë
A younger woman comes to serve as governess in an English country manor — and falls for the mysterious owner of the house. There is so much about this book that was revolutionary. You have a heroine who is plain, but she’s clever. Also, Jane is a woman who speaks her mind — she doesn’t lie to please the establishment, or to please men.
Another author and Brontëite is Marilyn Bishop, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Who are some of your favorite writers?
“I am definitely a Jane Austen fan. My favorite book of all time is Pride and Prejudice. My second favorite is To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee). My third favorite is Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë).”
The Heritage Lottery Fund has an article about the Graham family of Norton Conyers archive:
The house is said to have inspired Charlotte Brontë in her creation of Thornfield Hall and the insane Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre. Anyone interested in exploring records to reveal hidden treasures is being offered the chance to take part in the cataloguing and conservation of a huge North Yorkshire family archive that is now in the possession of North Yorkshire County Record Office. (...)
The author visited the house while working as a governess. There she heard a legend of a mad woman in the attic, which she returned to when writing Jane Eyre years later.
The Huffington Post has one of those articles that appear periodically. One-novel-only authors, like Emily Brontë:
The middle sister of the three surviving Brontë sisters, Emily Brontë published her debut novel Wuthering Heights under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell" in 1847. At the time, the novel divided Victorian critics who were left scandalized by its brazen, passionate characters and its pervasively dark themes, but it has since come to be seen as one of the greatest of all nineteenth century novels - and perhaps the greatest of all the Brontë Sisters' literary works. Tragically, however, just one year after its publication, Emily caught a terrible cold while attending the funeral of her brother Bramwell (sic) in 1848. The cold eventer on 19 December.< A letter tually gave way to tuberculosis, and Emily, aged only 30, died just weeks lafrom Emily's publisher reputedly confirms that she had begun working on a second novel at the time of her death, but no notes, drafts, or record of the novel - if one indeed existed - has ever been found; it has ultimately been suggested that whatever work Emily had completed on it was destroyed by her family after her death. As a result, she remains the only one of the three Brontë sisters to have published only one book in her lifetime. (Paul Anthony Jones)
The Sacramento Bee makes a bold statement that is true in the case of Charlotte Brontë (particularly Villette) but not of the Brontë sisters in general:
Romantics writers like the Brontë sisters and Nathaniel Hawthorne were attracted to the aesthetics of Catholicism if not to its theology. Their novels summon young readers into the “moral wilderness” of unorthodoxy where thickets and swamps await them as well as the occasional mountaintop. (Marilyn McEntyre)
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article34396851.html#storylink=cpy
The London Free Press reviews Kate Beaton's new book Step Aside, Pops:
If you like offbeat humour that draws on Austen, Brontë and The X-Files, this will be right up your alley. The strips are accompanied by insights from Beaton into her creative process, the graphic-novel equivalent of a DVD commentary track printed below each strip. (Dan Brown)
The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz is reviewed on The Spectrum:
How could you not, when this novel is led by a sassy, independent character reminiscent of every classic literary heroine you’ve ever loved? Yes, that’s what author Laura Amy Schlitz brings to these pages in the form of a young girl’s diary and vivid settings that will remind you of Brontë and Dickinson works. (Terri Schlichenmeyer)
The not-Asian bumblebee poem controversy is again discussed today in The Daily Dot:
Our name often carries a hint as to our race and gender—which makes it difficult to have a truly color-blind or objective application process. From the Brontë sisters and George Eliot to J.K. Rowling, we continue to see women writers publish under male or “genderless” pen names. As Charlotte Brontë—who published Jane Eyre under the name Currer Bell—explained in 1850, “We did not like to declare ourselves women because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.”
Brontë recognized that we are dealing with something as subjective as art, there’s no such thing as objectivity. Hudson’s stunt obscures the real issue here, which is one of access: being a marginalized person comes with more disadvantages than advantages. If Hudson were actually the Asian-American poet Sherman Alexie thought he was, his story would be very different.  (Janani Balasubramanian and Suey Park)
2015 films in Los Angeles Daily News, Crimson Peak is described like
Gothic romance certainly feels like a classic Brontë story. (Bob Strauss)
Howard Jacobson in The Independent is critical with lad culture:
There is an abstractedness in learning – when we learn because learning itself absorbs us, not because we have an eye on a good job in the City or the media – that is a million miles away from the self-pleasing, time-consuming roguery of laddishness. In the case of those of us who studied literature, the books we read turned us inward and kept us civil. It would have been hard to go from reading Jane Eyre to inveigling totty back to our rooms and doing violence on them. I don’t say an MA in gangsta rap or business studies will necessarily make you a rapist, but there’s less mental distance to travel before you get there. And yes, I do know there were SS men who wept listening to Schubert. All that goes to show is that barbarism, left unchecked, can knock out humanity, which is all the more reason to check barbarism.
RVA News wants books donations for the local library but not at any price:
Keep your mom’s high school copy of Jane Eyre because it delights you to remember that she also loved Brontë as an impressionable teen (thanks, Mom!), but donate the other ones to a good cause. (Susan Howson)
Virgula (Brazil) discusses the fascination with Wuthering Heights in all its forms and adaptations; ¿Dónde está mi lápiz? (in Spanish) posts about the Brontës; Hard Book Habit has a suggestion that we found strangely appealing, a Muppet Wuthering Heights adaptation. The Brontë Parsonage publishes his August in the Parsonage garden monthly article.

And, of course, we cannot ignore totally, though we tried really hard, the Vox article about this couple of Victorian wannabes. But we love far better the reply post of, for instance, Jezebel listing several other things you can do if you truly are a committed Victorian:
If you’ve read Jane Eyre, you’ll know that being sent away to school is always a real treat. Lowood forever, bitches! (Stassa Edwards & Rachel Vorona Cote) 

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