Something's in the attic

The New Haven Register reviews the performances of The Moors by Jen Silverman:

Playwright Jen Silverman has lived all over the world — moving in and out of Asia, Europe and the U.S. with her physicist parents. It’s interesting then that her new play, “The Moors,” is set, as one might guess by its title, in the 1840s Moorland region of England, just like Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
The play, which started performances Friday in its world premiere production at Yale Repertory Theatre, is no period piece, despite the Victorian costumes and hairdos. (...)
As one may also have guessed, Silverman has read her share of the Brontë sisters’ various works and some of it has obviously seeped into “The Moors.” Two main characters, the resolutely alone Agatha (Kelly McAndrew) and the desperately lonely Huldey (Birgit Huppuch), are spinster sisters who live with their older, never-seen brother Branwell and his equally elusive offspring. Then there is the newly hired governess, Emilie (Miriam Silverman), who is probably very good with children. Last, but not least of the human characters, is Marjory (Hannah Cabell), the scullery maid who, when under the cover of a different hat, doubles as the parlor maid. (E. Kyle Minor)

The Lawrence Journal-World talks about the local writer Kate Russell:

Growing up outside a tiny hamlet near Bangor, Maine, Kate Russell lived quietly. Her existence there was rural and isolated — the family home located “literally,” she says, in the middle of the woods — but even secluded from the noise of town, her mind was buzzing with activity.
There were no neighbors. No kids her age to play with. So she wrote, fueled by the literary tradition of her native New England, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, and the sweeping drama of Broadway musicals such as “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Misérables." (Joanna Hlavacek)

The Toronto Sun lists several recent Victorian monster mash-ups:

Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin (2010) – Yes, Jane’s still a governess. And yes, she’s been hired by Mr. Rochester. And yes, something’s in the attic.
Wuthering Bites by Sarah Gray (2010) – Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights, conflicted over the legacy of his vampire-hunting mom and vampire dad. (Jim Slotek)

This journalist of The Irish Independent is Kondo-nizing her house. We don't really get it (BrontëBlog's quarters are certainly the most unKondo thing you can imagine) but anyway:

My mother read around her. Political biographies, family sagas, legal thrillers, Jane Austen, the Brontës - her tastes were wide and varied. By the time she retired, she said that she had read everything that the local library had to offer and permitted herself the indulgence of purchasing the books that she wanted. But as soon as she had finished one, she would walk down to the bookshop in Dalkey and trade it in against another. (Katy McGuinness)

Bild (in German) announces the release of the German translation of Jolien Janzing's De Meester: Die geheime Liebe der Charlotte Brontë,

Ihren berühmten Roman „Jane Eyre“ kennen viele, nicht zuletzt wegen der Verfilmung mit Michael Fassbender. Aber wer war die Schriftstellerin Charlotte Brontë, die vor 200 Jahren in England lebte? Ein Roman erzählt nun von entscheidenden Jahren der irischen Pfarrerstochter: Wie sie nach Brüssel kam, um sich als Gouvernante ausbilden zu lassen, und sich unglücklich in ihren verheirateten Professor verliebte. (Julia Meyer-Hermann) (Translation)

The Sunday Times lists Yuki Chan in Brontë Country in its fiction at a glance section; The Little Professor argues the case for Mr Brocklehurst being inconsistent; ......Sharp Elves Society ...... Jane Austen's Shadow Stories finds connections between John Wilcot's A Ramble in St. James's Park and Jane Eyre. Writer's Block posts about The Madwoman in the Attic as a post-colonial reading of Jane Eyre. The Random Review reviews Jane Eyre 2011. The Book Experience posts about the original novel.

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Deducting Agnes

The Science of Deduction is a Seattle post-punk synth-pop (verbatim) band fronted by Cathy Sorbo. They have an album Blue Ocean Rising, Red Blood Running that contains a song inspired by Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey.

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With Added Grit

The Yorkshire Post interviews Sally Wainwright, who has penned the script of (and who will also direct) the upcoming BBC series To Walk Invisible:

The life of the Brontës is perfect fodder for Sunday evening television.
There’s the windswept moors, there’s the broken hearts and there’s the winding cobbled streets of Haworth. Except when Sally Wainwright’s retelling of the lives of three literary sisters and their wayward brother comes to the small screen don’t expect bustles and bonnets. This will be period drama with added grit.
“I’m not interested in chocolate box representations, “ says the Halifax-born screenwriter behind Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax. “I want it to be authentic. It’s very easy for these kind of historic dramas to slip into easy cliche, but right from the start I was determined to get past the Brontë myth which has inevitably romanticised and overshadowed the lives and careers of Emily, Charlotte and Ann. I wanted to immerse myself in what life was really like for these three women living in the north of England.”
Wainwright, who describes herself as a lifelong fan of the Brontës, did what she always does when it comes to research and buried her head in books. Lots of books. With just two hours to tell her story, she knew that it would be impossible to tell the full Brontë biopic. Nor did she want to, preferring instead to focus on one particular story arc. In the end she settled on the three years from 1845 to 1848, which for the Brontës were packed with more drama and tragedy than most families see in a lifetime.
“I think there is a perception that the Brontës spent all their lives at the parsonage, living in quiet isolation, but that’s simply not true. Charlotte and Emily went off to Brussels for a while, Ann was a tutor and Branwell had a number of disastrous attempts to forge his own way in life. However, in 1845 they were together again when for various reasons they were all either drawn or forced back to the family home.”
Central to To Walk Invisible, which will hit TV screens later this year, is the sisters’ relationship with Branwell whose life spectacularly unravelled when he returned to the parsonage. A failed portrait painter and writer, the second eldest of the surviving Bront children was a serial under-achiever. Dismissed from a job on the railways for accounting irregularities, he ended up becoming a tutor, but again it was a career which did not last long. (...)
“I think Emily’s writing speaks to me the most and I think Ann’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an incredible achievement. In the past it’s probably fair to say that out of the three, Ann has been the most overlooked, but I think more recently she seems to be finally getting the recognition she deserves.”
Routinely praised for the quality of her dialogue - Happy Valley won the Best Drama Bafta earlier this year - Wainwright honed her scriptwriting skills with early spells on The Archers and Coronation Street. While she now lives with her husband and two children in rural Oxfordshire much of her work is inspired by her native Yorkshire and it is likely To Walk Invisible, which Wainwright will also direct, will be filmed on location in the county.
“I know what I want the drama to look like and how I want it to feel, so I was keen to direct, “ she says. “Sadly we can’t film in the parsonage itself as it is far too delicate, but we are hopeful of being able to film with Brontë county as a backdrop.
“The next step is casting and we have been tossing a few names around. The key is getting four actors who are believable as siblings and that’s not easy. I have watched so many dramas and thought, Who are they trying to kid? They don’t come across as a family’. It comes down to that indescribable chemistry which you only know you have when you actually get the actors in a room together.” 

The LipService comedy duo is shooting at the Parsonage their particular comical version of the Brontë story to be screened at the next Brontë Society AGM. Keighley News reports:

Comedy duo LipService have dropped into the Brontë Parsonage Museum to prepare their latest production.
The two women are due to present Charlotte-The Movie! in Haworth during the summer as part of the Charlotte Brontë bicentennial celebrations.
The film will be a comic version of the life story of the writer of classic novel Jane Eyre, at West Lane Baptist Centre on June 10.
“Lights! Cameras! Action!” declared excited museum staff in a tweet to followers today (January 29) after the women toured the house where Charlotte wrote the novels.
LipService, based in Manchester, are no strangers to the Brontë sisters after creating hit spoof Withering Looks in the 1980s.
Now they are returning to the windswept moors with a production specially written to tie in with the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth.
LipService veterans Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding will perform as Audrey and Olivia of the National Institute for Bringing History to Life Society.
These two characters will in turn reform as Charlotte and Emily, while their sister Anne has just popped out for a cup of sugar.
A LipService spokesman said: “Audrey and Olivia have been given exclusive access to the parsonage to make one of the most revelatory films about Charlotte Brontë ever produced.
“In this insightful drama documentary, they reveal that Charlotte liked nothing better than to knock through and brighten up a drab corner with some choice chintz, that Emily had an insatiable penchant for mint humbugs and that Anne was the inspiration behind many of Alan Ayckbourn’s successful stage farces.” (David Knights)

More announcements. The Stage presents a shortlist of the participants at the upcoming Beam festival at the Park Theatre in London (March 2016):

A rock musical about the Brontë family will be showcased as part of a two-day event in March.
Wasted, a rock musical about the Brontës written by Christopher Ash and Carl Miller. (Matthew Hemley)

Apparently it will be a 50-minute presentation which each include two 20-25 minute presentations of excerpts of the musical in development.

Samantha Ellis reviews The Woman Who Ran by Sam Baker in The Guardian:

An enigmatic woman rents a wreck of a house on the edge of a Yorkshire village, sending the local gossips into a frenzy. If this sounds familiar, it is because Sam Baker’s thriller plays with Anne Brontë’s criminally underrated second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Her heroine, Helen (or is it Hélène? Baker keeps you guessing), is an artist, like Brontë’s, but instead of painting landscapes, she is a fearless war photographer, with a reputation for getting the shot. Baker finds many clever updates on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall but you don’t have to have read it to enjoy this arresting novel, because what she really takes from the youngest Brontë sister is her fierce, uncompromising feminism. The clue is in the title: amid a flurry of thrillers about “girls”, on trains and elsewhere, this heroine is very definitely a woman. (...)
It would be a shame if this novel were bundled in with the new wave of domestic thrillers or “chick noir”. Like many of those books, its plot is driven by a toxic marriage, but while other authors have explored the intimate treachery of marriages that seem perfect on the outside, Baker is writing about a relationship in which Helen’s malevolent, resentful husband makes her feel as though she has been “put in a box. (...)
This disquieting, thought-provoking 21st‑century take on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall keeps twisting and turning as it hurtles towards a hair-raising climax.

Also in The Guardian, Richrad Lea asks several writers about her scariest moment in literature:

For Hilary Mantel, it’s the moment in Jane Eyre when Rochester pauses outside a locked door in the dark, low corridor of Thornfield Hall’s fateful third storey and asks: “You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?” He leaves Jane locked into an attic room – complete with antique tapestry and a cabinet decorated with the 12 apostles, “an ebon Crucifix and a dying Christ” – where she must tend to a wounded man, dipping her hand again and again into a basin that gradually becomes a mixture of blood and water. As a 10-year-old reader, Mantel says she “didn’t know that if your name is in the title, you can’t die part way through the book. I doubted Jane would make it to see ‘streaks of grey light edging the window curtains’. But dawn comes – and we still don’t know who or what is beyond the wall.”

The Darlington & Stockton Times talks about the donation of the artist Sonia Lawson to the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate of her painting, Teatime at Haworth with the Brontës:

Her donation of Teatime at Haworth with the Brontës, painted in 1981, is apt in the bicentenary year of Charlotte Bronte's birth. The picture is one of three in the exhibition inspired by the Brontës and a visit she made to the parsonage at Haworth where they lived.
The high colour reflects her feelings reading Bronte novels and her own childhood recollections of gatherings of artists, poets and academics at her parents' cottage.
Jane Sellars, director, said: “This is a hugely important painting for the Mercer collection. Sonia Lawson is a major Yorkshire artist and also we have a policy of collecting work by outstanding women artists.
“For me personally, the Brontë theme is very special, both for the Yorkshire association and the achievements of women writers. I was for seven years the director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth and I wrote a great deal about the art made by the Brontës themselves.”

The Globe and Mail reviews Samantha Hunt's Mr. Splitfoot:

The back jacket of Samantha Hunt’s third novel includes, among de rigueur PR bumps from figures such as Kelly Link and the ubiquitous Gary Shteyngart, a blurb from Charlotte Brontë, “speaking through a medium.” This metafictional joke operates on a number of levels. First, Brontë’s brand of storm-tossed Gothicism serves as a template for Hunt’s approach in Mr. Splitfoot, which transplants Jane Eyre’s 19th-century England setting to modern-day upstate New York, but retains many of the thematic and narrative trappings of the earlier work. Second, the notion of “speaking through a medium” addresses one of the key concerns of Hunt’s novel, which, among other things, involves an investigation into the intricacies of consorting with the dead. And last, the Brontë blurb is, appropriately for the story it putatively promotes, a brazen con job. (Steven W. Beattie)

The Yorkshire Evening Post relates the terrible story of Katy Morgan-Davis who has, nevertheless, a tiny sign of hope through the Brontës:

She also came to develop a mental picture of Yorkshire from The Secret Garden and the works of the Brontë sisters.
“The Secret Garden was one of the books I was allowed to read. It mentioned the Yorkshire accent and I liked that idea.
“I wish my accent sounds like that. I want to sound like a good Yorkshire person. I read the Brontë books, because Bala’s wife liked them and they were wonderful.” (Sam Casey)

National Right to Live misquotes Charlotte Brontë:

Charlotte Brontë, the British novelist, addressed perinatal loss, a common occurrence 175 years ago with chilling intensity:
“There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms.” (Priscilla K. Coleman)

The problem with this quote is that it is not by Charlotte Brontë. It is by Constance Savery who in 1982 wrote a continuation of the unfinished Emma with the pseudonym of Another Lady.

Ara (in Catalan) interviews the writer Víctor García Tur about his novel, Els Ocells:

Hi ha, també, un joc amb les novel·les del Romanticisme. Les autores més conegudes de la zona són les germanes i germà Brugués, basades en la família Brontë, un dels cims de la novel·la anglesa romàntica de la primera meitat del segle XIX.El moment que hi ha consumació sexual, els personatges reelaboren aquesta manera de fer de les novel·les romàntiques en què era molt important saber “quants sous valia”, és a dir, l'herència que havia rebut. El diàleg contrasta amb el funcionament de la història d'amor de la Dafne i en Vador, que serà diferent. (...)
Hi ha el joc entre les Brugués i les Brontë. L'escena està construïda en dos plans. Hi ha els mobles de mentida. La conversa de mentida. Però alhora passarà una cosa de veritat.Sí. Des del primer moment que es coneixen, la Dafne i en Vador mai no s'han parlat seriosament, han estat jugant. Mai no acaben de dir les coses com són ni com pensen.
I ara què? Haurem d'esperar set anys pel proper llibre?(...) Els Brugués, com les Brontë, tenien com a diversió principal voltar per la zona on vivien i escriure històries. Tenen molt de material inèdit... (Jordi Nopca) (Translation)

La Stampa (in Italian) and the wonders of fog:

E cioè, a Milano e in tutta la Pianura Padana, e ovunque, nella brughiera di Cime tempestose, nei non luoghi di Albert Camus, nella Transilvania del principe Vlad, la nebbia c’è anche se non si vede. La nebbia non è fuori, è dentro, è uno stato dell’anima, un sesto senso, una protezione uterina - come scrisse Umberto Eco - e infatti la nebbia c’è in tutti i quadri di Giorgio De Chirico, anche se il sole proietta sulla tela le ombre delle colonne. (Mattia Feltri) (Translation)

Sleaford Standard presents the performances of Publick Transport's We Are Brontë at Harmston Memorial Hall in Harmston. Bookish Whimsy reviews the very hard to see Jane Eyre 1961. Scatterbook posts about Katherine Reay's The Brontë Plot.

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Jacques Rivette. In Memoriam

"He was the more lucid , the most inventive , the most free of the Nouvelle Vague director". (Gilles Jacob,  film critic and ex-president of the Cannes Film Festival)

The French cinema in particular, and the world cinema in general, mourn the loss of the film director Jacques Rivette (1928-2016). He truly one of the most idiosyncratic figures born in the Nouvelle Vague and his career contains memorable titles like Paris Nous Appartient (1961), La Religieuse  (1966), Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974), La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Jeanne La Pucelle (1994), Haut, Bas, Fragil (1995), Va Savoir (2001)... and of course, Hurlevent in 1985. It was a very particular adaptation of the first chapters of the Emily Brontë novel transposed to the South of France (les Cévennes) and heavily influenced by the Georges Bataille's reading of Wuthering Heights in La littérature et le mal (1957).

In 2003, Senses of Cinema interviewed Jacques Rivette who had plenty to say about his vision of the Wuthering Heights story:

Valérie Hazette: The main topic I would like to explore with you concerns the episodes of the novel that are difficult to translate into images, and their oneiric equivalents in the first, middle and last scenes of Hurlevent. According to what Pascal Bonitzer said in a filmed interview [see the Rivette DVD collector pack released by ARTE in the Autumn 2002], the first scene was inspired by Bataille. While leafing through the critical publications for Emily Brontë’s novel, he came across a book by Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros…
JR: Well, it is not a book but an article, a very long article, which he collected later in a book called – I think – Literature and Evil (La Littérature et le Mal). Pascal knows Bataille far better than I do, since he was the subject of his PhD thesis. As for me, a long time ago, I merely skimmed through this article by Bataille. The truth is that I am not very familiar with it.
VH: So there was this article, but also an illustration, apparently a reproduction of a painting by Poussin…
JR: No, it was not exactly an illustration. It all started – and it has been stated in a number of interviews, so you must have heard about it – it all started when I had no plans to shoot an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, or anything else, for that matter. It was after…
VH: …the Balthus exhibition?
JR: It was after Love on the Ground (1984). I had just finished the editing – it was probably at the end of 1983 or at the start of 1984. I believe it was at the start of 1984 that the Balthus exhibition took place in Beaubourg.
So I went to this exhibition. Seeing as he’s a bit of an eccentric and all that, I am very fond of Balthus. So I went to the exhibition which was actually superb. I already knew the drawings produced by Balthus for the book that the Gallimard editions had intended to publish at the beginning of the 1930s – around 1932 or 1933, I think. These drawings, by the way, were more or less contemporary with Buñuel’s first desire to film the novel … I believe he had already written the screenplay…
VH: Which he only shot 20 years later …
JR: Yes, but still, his screenplay was written at the time in question. So it was in the air for this little group, and Buñuel, Balthus and so on knew each other. They used to gravitate around the Surrealists, while retaining their independence. And then, although I had already seen some reproductions of the drawings, the Balthus exhibition of Beaubourg featured a small, separate room – a kind of tablier, as one says in old French – where they actually displayed all the Balthus originals – the ink as well as the pencil ones, the final drawings as well as the sketches.
And I was struck by the fact that Balthus enormously simplified the costumes and stripped away the imagery trappings which are so much foregrounded in the Wyler movie. I wondered why nobody had ever made a movie in which Catherine and Heathcliff were the age they actually are in the novel. Because in the Wyler movie they are 30 and in the Buñuel movie 30 or 40.
Therefore they are adults, and it does not mean anything. Well, it does mean something, but something completely different. So I felt like making a movie with some very young actors. I started with this idea in mind and made the first adaptation – well, maybe not the first one because there are adaptations that I have never seen – in which they are their age.
It was a novel that I had read, like everyone else, when I was 18 or 19 in its classic French translation, the famous translation called Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent by Frédéric Delebecque – which is quite a good translation. It is a free translation, a kind of adaptation for the French language, which, as far as I know, is pretty faithful. The only criticism that I might pass, very quickly, on the translation of Monsieur Delebecque is that everybody uses the “vous” form while, theoretically, between Catherine and Heathcliff…
VH: Maybe because there is never any “thou” in the novel…
JR: Of course. Still, I don’t know which Emily Brontë would have chosen. Because, on the one hand, when she writes the novel in 1840 or so, the “you” is very strong above all, maybe, in a Protestant environment. On the other hand, I really find that the “tu” form comes more naturally. In English, I am not sure…
The important thing is that it was quite a good translation. In fact, I had gone through it and tried to establish a few comparisons with the English text. And of course, when we prepared the movie, I bought the English text and compared. But then, I deliberately decided not to re-read it.
So I started with this idea in mind, and talked first to my producer, Martine Marignac, with whom I had already made North Bridge (1980) and Love on the Ground, and then to Pascal and Suzanne Schiffman, with whom I had worked on Love on the Ground too. (Love on the Ground was the first movie I had made with Pascal; Suzanne, I had known for years and years.)
But I had decided not to re-read it: I asked Pascal to summarise it for me. I only wanted to have the outline of the story and of the characters, that’s all. And from the start, I told him: “Only the first part”, because I knew about the second part. I had a very strong memory of the Wyler movie – because I hate it – and of the Buñuel movie because, as you know, I find it very beautiful. The characters are 40, but still, the movie remains very, very powerful. 

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La Sarabanda's Wuthering Heights again

New chances to see La Sarabanda's production of Cime Tempestose:

Cime Tempestose A show by Mara Gualandris and Loredana Riva
Directed by Loredana Riva

Sabato 30 Gennaiao, alle ore 20.45
La Compagnia teatrale La Sarabanda"di Olgiate Molgora presenterà il bellissimo e pluripremiato spettacolo "Cime Tempestose", tratto dall'omonimo romanzo di Emily Brontë

30 aprile 2016  Bussero

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Solid grandeur

Via the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page, we have found out that their 'creative partner' Tracy Chevalier spoke about the upcoming new exhibition at the Parsonage yesterday on the radio.

Keighley News shares an 1856 photograph of Keighley and accompanies it by a contemporary description of the town by Elizabeth Gaskell.

This shop has the date 1856 above its door, so it was built as novelist Mrs Gaskell wrote her impressions of Keighley while researching her life of Charlotte Brontë published in 1857.
She saw Keighley "in process in transformation from a populous, old-fashioned village, into a still more populous and flourishing town", and was struck by the "solid grandeur" of its new rows of grey stone houses. (Yvonne Bruce)

The Yorkshire Post reports that Bridlington would like to profit from its appearance on the film Dad's Army.

[David Hinde, town crier, chairman of the Old Town Association and unofficial cheerleader for all things Bridlington] identifies Brontë-dominated Haworth as the template he’d like to copy. “That used to be a bit down-at-heel but look at it now. We’ve got Hockney, Lawrence of Arabia was based here, Amy Johnson... all these things but we don’t capitalise on them. We need to seize this opportunity.”(Grant Woodward)

They even had their own Brontë connection as Charlotte Brontë stayed there back in the days when it was called Burlington.

The Huffington Post reviews Josephine Corcoran's poetry collection The Misplaced House.

Out from here, the collection encompasses felt others, noting in the opening poem that, "Stephen Lawrence isn't on the National Curriculum," and thus ensuring the speaker's children learn at bedtime about the young man who was murdered for being black that, "He wanted to be an architect." This circle sweeps up Polish villagers alongside the Brontë sisters, imagining their human lives. Finally, the collection touches on the widest circle, politics, in two poems that know exactly what they are doing by pretending to misunderstand. (Robert Peake)

Seattle Times features new band The Science of Deduction:

The songs abound with literary references. “James Joyce is Going Blind” uses the famed writer’s loss of eyesight as a metaphor of cultural decline. “Agnes Gray” (sic) is based on the Anne Brontë novel of the same name. And the band’s name refers to the deductive process used by Sherlock Holmes in solving his cases. (Gillian G. Gaar)

7th Space tells about the 80th anniversary of a Chinese production company.

"Angels over the Rainbow - Cathay 80th Anniversary Celebration", organised by the Hong Kong Film Archive of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, will feature Cantonese productions of Motion Picture & General Investment Co Ltd (MP & GI) directed by Tso Kea, Wong Tin-lam and Wong Toi in Focus IV in March. To cater to the predominately Cantonese-speaking audience, MP & GI (later known as Cathay) began making Cantonese movies in Hong Kong in 1954 and recruited the finest directorial talent in Cantonese cinema. These movies included adaptations of literary classics and contemporary novels, among other captivating productions.
The romantic tragedy "Love Lingers On" (1957) is based on Emily Brontë's gothic novel "Wuthering Heights".
Concentrating on the characters' simmering mental troubles, Tso Kea shepherds the tale of profound passion, thwarted love and bitter vengefulness with broad narrative strokes and delicate orchestration of mise-en-scène.

Londonist recommends the Foundling Museum exhibition on literary orphans Drawing on Childhood.

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New Haven's Moors, Jane in Islington and Charlotte's Letters in New York

Three new theatre alerts in the US and the UK today, January 29:

A world premiere in New Haven, CT:

The Moors
By Jen Silverman
Directed by Jackson Gay
January 29–February 20, 2016
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)

The bleak moors of England. The bleakest. Two spinster sisters—one desperately unhappy, the other resolutely miserable—live with their elder brother and their mastiff in a gloomy, old mansion. When a governess is summoned to their isolated home, teeming with secrets and desires, what price might they pay for love? Inspired (perhaps) by certain 19th-century gothic romances, and the sisters who wrote them, Jen Silverman’s The Moors courses with a distinctly contemporary, darkly comic sensibility.
The Moors is the recipient of a 2015 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award.

The Cast
Jeff Biehl (the Mastiff)
Hannah Cabell (Marjory)
Birgit Huppuch (Huldey)
Jessica Love (a Moor-hen)
Kelly Mcandrew (Agatha)
Miriam Silverman (Emilie)

A new chance to see the Rosemary Branch Theatre production of Jane Eyre in Islington, London:

Jane Eyre
Directed, adapted, and designed by Bryony J. Thompson
Featuring original music composed for the production by James Young
Lighting by Ned Lay

29 January - 14 February
Tuesday-Saturday 7.30, Sunday 6pm
Rosemary Branch Theatre, Islington, London

To celebrate Charlotte Brontë's 200th birthday and 20 years with Cecilia Darker & Cleo Sylvestre at the helm of the Rosie, Bryony J. Thompson's well loved production of Jane Eyre returns.
Orphaned into an unloving household, subjected to poor treatment at a charity school, Jane Eyre emerges to seek her fortune unbroken in spirit and integrity. She becomes a governess to the ward of the enigmatic Mr Rochester, eventually falling in love with him and he with her. This story surpasses mere melodrama and illustrates a passionate and tenacious woman's search for a wide rich life.
Part ghost story, part Gothic romance, and part religious tract, this gripping adaptation of a favourite classic remains faithful to the text. The book literally comes to life with imaginative staging and a cast of only six. Set in 1840s northern England, the early stirrings of feminism shine through the strict adherence to social structure giving this venerated novel its iconic status.

The cast includes: Alice Coles, Jack Collard, Madeline Gould, and Alice Osmanski with Ben Warwick as Rochester and Emilia Williams as Jane Eyre.

And in New York a reading of new play based on Charlotte Brontë's letters:

Irish Repertory Theatre
Reading Series 2015-2016

Charlotte's Letters 
by Jennifer O'Grady
Friday, January 29, 2016
3:00 pm at the DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th Street

Charlotte’s Letters will be read by  Bianca Amato* (The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek, Macbeth), Colby Minifie* (Punk Rock, “Blue Angel”), Madeleine Rogers* (Still, Arcadia at Juilliard), Margo Seibert* (Rocky, The Undeniable Sound of Right Now) and David Christopher Wells* (Mothers and Sons, The Coast of Utopia). *courtesy of AEA

A fresh, imaginative take on the Brontë sisters, Charlotte’s Letters intertwines novelist Charlotte Brontë’s two years as a young woman at a girls’ school in Brussels—where she became close to her married teacher and employer, Monsieur Heger—with her friend and biographer Mrs. Gaskell’s struggle to salvage Charlotte’s posthumous reputation and save her trailblazing novels. Linking the stories is the mystery of Charlotte’s attraction to Heger, who encouraged her rare writing talent and that of her sister, Emily, while helping inspire scandalous books like Jane Eyre. Charlotte’s Letters is a vividly theatrical and wryly humorous exploration of the boundaries between love and friendship and the making of art and identity.

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'A key part of the Brontë sisters’ heritage will be lost forever'

The Guardian has an article on Wycoller Hall and its Lancashire county council’s support due to be removed in 2018.

A country house that provided the model for Mr Rochester’s home in Jane Eyre is under “dire threat”, say campaigners. More than 6,000 people have signed a petition calling on Lancashire county council to reconsider plans to scrap their management and maintenance of Wycoller Hall, near Colne.
The ruin of the 16th-century manor house, at the centre of a country park, was immortalised by Charlotte Brontë as Ferndean Manor in her 1847 novel – the property where romantic lead Mr Rochester relocates after fire destroys his home at Thornfield Hall. Wycoller Hall is just over the moors from Haworth in West Yorkshire, where the Brontë family lived. It is believed that Charlotte and Emily visited Wycoller village frequently.
Although fallen into disrepair, Wycoller Hall is a listed building and is currently managed by Lancashire county council. The council is proposing to stop maintenance and abandon ranger service patrols as part of £262m budget cuts, but campaigners fear this will make the property vulnerable to vandalism and result in its being “lost forever”.
Richard Wilcocks, former chairman of the Brontë Society, said the council’s proposals were a “smack in the face” on the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth. “It is very depressing that Lancashire county council is planning to close down essential services for Wycoller Hall, which is much more than a place of interest for Brontë lovers,” Wilcocks said. “This action amounts to an act of vandalism against part of our heritage, and it is particularly thoughtless and cynical this year, when the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth is being celebrated.”
According to the Friends of Wycoller, who have set up an online petition against the proposals: “Ferndean Manor … is under dire threat – as is the picturesque and inspirational Brontë Way, which starts at Ferndean Manor and leads to Brontë Parsonage museum, Haworth.
“Visitors will no longer be able to see the great aisled barn or use the countryside activity centre. The visitor toilets will close and the privately run cafe and shop are unlikely to survive. A key part of the Brontë sisters’ heritage will be lost forever.” (David Barnett)

Click here to sign the petition. Apollo Magazine relays the story too.

The Washington Post reviews Winter by Christopher Nicholson, described as 'a passionate reimagining of Thomas Hardy’s troubled love life', and tells a funny anecdote:

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was once asked if he’d read “Wuthering Heights.” No, he never had. And why not? Because, explained the author of the heartbreaking “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” he’d heard that it was “depressing.” (Michael Dirda)

Chicago Tribune reviews Samantha Hunt's novel Mr Splitfoot.

That the American Gothic so often takes the shape of a road trip isn't surprising. The Gothic tends to offer up dark inversions of a society's cherished ideals — think of the domestic angel gone mad in "Jane Eyre" and "The Yellow Wallpaper," or patrimony turned poisonous in "Wuthering Heights" — and what do Americans idealize more than the freedom of the open road? The creepy car trip, traces of which appear everywhere from "Lolita" to "Psycho," is a fun-house reflection of our national fetish for limitless mobility, its villains often drawn from the ranks of the immobile — in other words, locals. (Amy Gentry)

The Washington Post reviews the film Southside with You, based on Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date.

Mr. Darcy. Heathcliff. Rhett Butler. Edward Rochester. They’re all swoon-worthy male characters, and now there’s a new name to add to the list: Barack Obama. (Stephanie Merry)

Business of Fashion takes a look at Armani Privé's new collection summarising it as 'A Sci-Fi Wuthering Heights'.

Lilac. It’s a lovely colour on a bush. And there’s something about chinchilla that takes the tone well. It may also be the colour of Old Hollywood. Even though we know the town in black and white, it’s not so hard to imagine it redolent with the scent, the shade. For his couture show tonight, Giorgio Armani courted those impressions by putting each and every one of his models in a black wig that was supposed to evoke Merle Oberon, Cathy to Laurence Oliver’s Heathcliff in 1939’s very black and white Wuthering Heights. Appreciate that oddity and you may be able to come to terms with the collection. (Tim Blanks)

BooksBlog (Italy) tells the story of doctor Paul Kalanithi who died when he was 37 years old.

Nel maggio 2013 Kalanithi, neurochirurgo alla Stanford University, mandò un’e-mail a un amico per spiegargli di avere un cancro in fase terminale: “La buona notizia è che sono sopravvissuto alle due Bronte, a Keats e a Stephen Crane, la cattiva notizia e che non ho scritto nulla”. (Davide Mazzocco) (Translation)

If you are a Brontëite who happens to be an Aries, here's your horoscope (ugh) for the week according to Pacific Sun:

Do you know Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights? At one point, the heroine Catherine tells her friend about Edgar, a man she’s interested in. “He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace,” Catherine says. “I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.” If you’re a typical Aries, you’re more aligned with Catherine than with Edgar. But I’m hoping you might consider making a temporary compromise in the coming weeks. “At last, we agreed to try both, …” Catherine concluded, “and then we kissed each other and were friends.” (Rob Brezsny)

Bustle has selected 20 love quotes to celebrate Valentine's Day, including one from Wuthering Heights. The story of a man whose life was saved by books on IOL, one of them being Wuthering Heights (South Africa). Daily Kos has one more Jane Eyre strip. Pajiba posts about Wuthering Heights 2011. On the Brussels Brontë Blog, Eric Ruijssenaars has written a post about the curious story of an 1853 Dutch translation of a novel called Broeder en zuster by Acton Currer Bell.

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Wuthering Heights in Birmingham and Emily visits Puebla

Today, January 28, is the opening night of a Wuthering Heights student production in Birmingham:

The Ruddock Performing Arts Centre

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Probably one of the most unconventional "love" stories ever told.  Because her adored Heathcliff has been degraded to the status of a servant by her elder brother's vindictiveness, Catherine marries a man who she doesn't love. "Wuthering Heights" tells the tale of Heathcliff's consequent destructive revenge on two ancient families across two generations.

This year's KES & KEHS senior production brings Emily Brontë's extraordinary novel to thrilling life. Devised by the company with physical theatre and music making the poetry of the page resound through the Ruddock Hall, the performance is being made up as we go along - it is fair to say that you will never have seen anything quite like it...

January 28,29,30 7:00PM

And in Puebla, México, a workshop
on Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Virginia Wolf. These are the details:

Librería Universitaria del Complejo Cultural Universitario de la BUAP
Tres escritoras inglesas: Jane Austen, Emily Brontë y Virginia Woolf
Professor: Frank Loveland Smith.

Lugar: Sala Lúdica de la Librería Universitaria
Presentaciones: Enero 21 a Marzo 31, 18:00 hrs. a 20:00 hrs.

Sesiones:
1era. Introducción
2da a 4ta: Orgullo y prejuicio, de Jane Austen
5ta a 7ma: Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë
8va a 10ma: Orlando, de Virginia Woolf

(...) Por otro lado, muy diferente, está la niña mala del XIX: Emily Brontë, quien muere joven y virgen, autora de una sola novela: “Wuthering Heights” (Cumbres Borrascosas), la cual escandalizó en su momento a buena parte de la crítica, que la consideró enfermiza, inmoral y malignamente hipnótica, sin embargo hoy en día tiene todo el reconocimiento que merece. (...)
Este taller acercará a los asistentes a conocer tres modos de hacer literatura desde la mirada de una mujer, de la mano de tres escritoras inglesas espléndidas, con características diferentes: femenina la primera, apasionada la segunda y muy inteligente la tercera, quienes a través de sus historias harán vivir a sus lectores gratas emociones.

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Charlotte will be waiting

El diario (Spain) tells more about the background of Ángeles Caso's Brontë novel Todo ese fuego.

Con respecto a su última novela ha explicado que a las Brontë las descubrió tarde porque "en la adolescencia tenía prejuicios absurdos con el hecho de que sus creaciones fuesen novelas románticas decimonónicas".
Pero cuando las leyó se quedó "totalmente boquiabierta por el talento extraordinario y por el atrevimiento que habían tenido al escribir algo así en pleno siglo XIX"; ello unido a la visita que realizó a su casa hace tres o cuatro años: "me apeteció recomponer un día de aquel verano, en el que estaban escribiendo sus novelas, felices".
Ha indicado que su pretensión con el libro era "ponerle imaginación a sus almas e intentar recrear su mente", por ello confía en que "quien lo lea entienda que no es una novela histórica, sino que es una novela que transcurre en un día, dentro de la mente de las hermanas Brontë". (Translation)

Another Spanish newspaper, El periódico, reviews Víctor García Tur's novel Els ocells which includes

hallazgos propios: la relación de la turista urbana y la adolescente rebelde, el doble envejecido de Cary Grant, las hermanas Brugés –las Brontë del lugar-, el paseo entre cipreses a imitación de las secuoyas de ‘Vértigo’, la deriva al estilo ‘District 9’. (Vicenç Pagès Jordá) (Translation)

It looks like a new world record of Kate Bush lookalikes singing and dancing to Wuthering Heights is afoot in the US as How Stuff Works reports. Kate Bush is also in the news today as The Independent tells about the handwritten lyrics to Wuthering Heights she sent to a fan back in 1978. Kate Howe vlogs about Jane Eyre.

More music as Svenska Dagbladet reviews a concert by Anna von Hausswolff.

Jo, nog är det så magnifikt dystert att en åskmaskin från Dramatens rekvisitaförråd hade passat som handen i handsken. När hon utbrister i några galna skrik över en gotisk orgelslinga i Philip Glass-stil ser jag för mitt inre scenen från "Jane Eyre" där Mr Rochesters stackars inlåsta fru dör i en dramatisk eldsvåda. Tankarna går lätt åt sådana håll. Vi är ju på Dramaten. (Dan Backman) (Translation)

There's another Jane Eyre strip on Daily Kos.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum is opening again on Monday, as reported on its Facebook page.

The Museum is bustling with activity as we prepare to reopen to the public at 10am on Monday. Our first visitor through the door will receive a free copy of 'The Bronte Cabinet' by Deborah Lutz. Come and see us, Charlotte will be waiting..

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Perchance to Dream

If you like to listen Chiwetel Ejiofor reading a Wuthering Heights excerpt, here is your chance. The latest episode of BBC Radio 4's Words and Music: Perchance to Dream.

Freud argued that dreams could be interpreted, and for many literary characters, such as Winston in 1984 and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina the dream is used as a device to reveal the character's true or subconscious feelings. Nightmares are also well represented, with chilling passages from Moby-Dick and Wuthering Heights. There are also aspirational dreams from real people such as Churchill and George Mallory, and literary figures; Jude the Obscure is desperate to escape his miserable life through learning, while Rebecca Sharp sees a rich husband as her salvation. Prophetic and opium-induced dreams also feature, alongside music by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Stravinsky and Handel. Extracts are read by Sophie Thompson and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Producer - Ellie Mant.

  

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A namesake for Lucy

A teen has written an article for The Guardian asking to enjoy the books they are studying at GCSE.

At the beginning of the course, I did quite enjoy Of Mice and Men, but a year down the line I ended up slamming my head on the table many a time as I thought about the pain of reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet and having to analyse the characters and themes. I didn’t want to read about Cathy and Heathcliff’s destructive relationship or tragic Shakespearean lovers; I wanted something exciting, something to make me think instead of wanting to cry every time I opened the pages. (WordsareLife)

Garuyo (Mexico) would love to see an actual flesh-and-blood Heathcliff.

2. Heathcliff / Cumbres borrascosas
Logró convertirse en todo  un millonario y, según la escritora Emily Brontë, él es alguien muy tosco casi sin sentimientos. Ajá, ahí su encanto: Heathcliff es el hombre “imposible y rudo” que queremos enamorar. Todo un reto. (Claudia Aguilar) (Translation)

Los Angeles Review of Books features Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton.

We know Lucy through her longing, through her hunger, much as we know her namesake in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. Just who she is — the mystery behind the name and the desire — haunts the pages and the reader of Strout’s newest novel.
Names always take prominence in Strout’s works (consider the titles The Burgess Boys, Olive Kitteridge, Amy and Isabelle), and Lucy Barton is no exception. Nineteenth-century in cadence, evoking George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and Charlotte Brontë, Lucy Barton literally means “light from the barley farm.” Indeed. (Katherine Montwieler)

The Millions is looking forward to Dana Spiotta’s new book, Innocent and Others, and quotes her as saying

This year, since I am reaching the milestone of what is optimistically referred to as “middle age,” I want to return to those books that I read so long ago. From The Red and the Black and Jane Eyre to Manchild in the Promised Land and The Basketball Diaries. And many more books that I remember loving. Will I still love them? They are the same of course, but maybe it will be a measure of how much I have changed. What I now think is engaging and moving and beautiful. What I think is funny. What I think is true (with all my experience as a person and a reader). Or maybe not, maybe my connection to these books of my youth will be exactly the same. I wonder if my young self will be in those pages, waiting for me. (Edan Lepucki)

Cine Vue reviews the film The Lure which

is directed with such brio, with the air of a Gothic musical romance - it's a disco-era Wuthering Heights - and Kuba Kijowski's colourful photography really stands out. (Ed Frankl)

Le Monde (France) is also reminded of Wuthering Heights when looking at Ann Demeulemeester's Autumn/winter 2016 for men.

 Il y a aussi un peu du Heathcliff des Hauts de Hurlevent dans cet homme-là avec une touche de Marquis de Sade : une personnalité complexe qui saura se défendre dans le monde d’aujourd’hui. (Carine Bizet) (Translation)

Melanie Reid mentions Charlotte Brontë in her column in The Times. Daily Kos has a Jane Eyre comic strip. Revista GQ (Spain) interviews writer Irvine Welsh, who is said to be a fan of the Brontë sisters. 24 Dash reports HearFirst, a 'Lancashire-based company, which delivers a full range of equality, Deaf and disability related training courses to organisations across the UK', as having 'already secured a number of new clients including Brontë Parsonage Museum'. MoviePilot comments on the composite sketches of literary characters but makes a muddle of showing Mia Wasikowska as an apt lookalike for Jane Eyre's sketch. Booksploitation reviews Patricia Park's Re Jane.

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Winifred Gérin: Biographer of the Brontës - a review

We would like to thank the author for sending us a review copy of this book.

Winifred Gérin
Biographer of the Brontës
Helen MacEwan
Sussex Academic Press
ISBN: 978-1-84519-743-8
November 2015

It's like a Brontë rite of passage. When you read the Brontë novels and - for some reason⁽¹⁾ - you need to know more about the women who wrote them, you go through the standard biographies and of course you can't miss the Gérin ones. Who can resist an individual biography for each of the four Brontë siblings? You begin by whoever attracted you the most in the first place and read your way through the other three. This usually entails either trips to the local library or a search around secondhand bookshops, as neither of the Gérin biographies have ever been reprinted after their first publication. Still though, and this is obviously to their credit, they are perhaps more read than more recently-published books on the Brontës.

And then a strange thing happens: once your (perhaps never-ending) thirst for knowledge about the Brontës begins to be satiated and you take a step back, you also begin to wonder about the biographer with a foreign-sounding name who wrote these biographies⁽²⁾. And up until a few months ago, the intrigue remained, alleviated perhaps by her entry on the Dictionary of National Biography or a few enquiries aimed at people who know, but there was no real answer as to what moved Winifred Gérin to write them.

Enter Helen MacEwan, founder of the Brussels Brontë group, with her biography of the biographer. It might be a strange concept to non-initiated people, but it also goes to show how many seemingly 'normal' lives are anything but.

Born in 1901 and living a life that almost spanned the whole of the 20th century (she died in 1981), Winifred Gérin's romance with her Belgian musician first husband Eugène Gérin, their reality-always-surpasses-fiction escape from occupied France during World War 2 and of course her life in Haworth with her second husband researching her biographies all make for a truly engrossing read, brilliantly told by Helen MacEwan, who has managed to piece together  the widely-scattered writings by Winifred Gérin from all these different periods of her life. Most notably, the unpublished autobiography she wrote at the end of her life at the insistence of her Oxford University Press editor which sadly didn't find a publisher after her death.

She called her autobiography The Years that Count and focused on the stories she most loved to tell: anecdotes from her first marriage, from occupied France and from her time working near Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Her happy childhood, Edwardian upbringing, family life and poetry-writing are also things you can't really imagine when you read her biographies. Although of course, the years that count for Brontëites will be the ones she spent writing her biographies.

Helen MacEwan also makes a good use of parallels between the life of Winifred Gérin and the Brontës themselves. Winifred Gérin's own childhood was as imaginative as the Brontës' and we relished this anecdote:

Their favourite game that summer involved regularly parading the heads of various dolls [...] on top of wooden poles [.] [...] On that Sunday afternoon on 14 July 1907 the children were marching the heads of their decapitated victims through the front garden, red ink streaming in abundance down the poles, belting out the words of the Marsellaise, 'Allons enfants de la patrie', at precisely the moment the visitors' carriage drew up at the front gate. Despite [their father]'s explanations of the significance of the date for Francophiles, the startled visitors were unamused by this choice of a Sunday-afternoon pastime, confining themselves, however, to remarking that 'the children seemed extraordinarily bloodthirsty'.

A trip to Haworth with her artist sister Nell brought her to the man who would be - unexpectedly for her - her second husband. Twenty years her junior, John Lock was a Brontë enthusiast who sparked in Gérin the Brontë interest that was already there. Together they formed a Brontë team: they got married, moved to Haworth and lived what would seem like the perfect life for any Brontë fan. They spent their days getting to know the place that saw the Brontës bloom into writers, researching their lives and writing about them. Sadly, and as Helen MacEwan points out and which seems to be the case with the Brontë Society, embroiled in fights with the Brontë Society over renovations and appointments to the point of resigning their membership. It's something you don't expect, do you, these two well-known Brontë biographers (John Lock went on to write - after much effort - the pioneer biography of Patrick Brontë: Man of Sorrow) which led the path for much of today's works, not being members of the Brontë Society in protest for their way of doing things.

These questions posed by her husband John Lock in their joint guide to Haworth⁽³⁾ gave us food for thought:

What would these moors, that high carpet of grass, these rolling hills, what would they mean to us without the memory of Emily Jane Brontë? [...] Would they seem beautiful or grim? Haunt us or be forgotten? most of us will never know, for it is her life, her writings, that have led us on, will draw us back again, just as surely as if she held our hand.

And of course Helen MacEwan highlights some of the thoughts we had when we first read Gérin's biographies in the late 1990s-early 2000s, technologically light years away from both Gérin's time of research and today. We obviously didn't know about Gérin's background then, but we knew that what she had done was ground-breaking in terms of research. MacEwan deems it 'an impressive achievement', particularly for a 'newcomer to biography'. The rivalry with Daphne Du Maurier when they were writing their biographies of Branwell Brontë at the same time⁽⁴⁾ turns the craft of biography-writing  into a most thrilling race and makes for a very interesting read on the background of both takes, which ended up being so different. Even if she claims that her Branwell biography 'placed [Gérin's] reputation on a still firmer footing', MacEwan seems resigned to consider Daphne Du Maurier to be the 'winner' because 'it is [her] book that is still on sale today' but we think that's not a valid point when it comes to Gérin's books as none of her Brontë biographies have been republished and Brontëites from all over the world must - as we said above - look for them in secondhand bookshops. And besides, Du Maurier's Infernal World was only republished in 2006 by Virago alongside many of her lesser-known novels in preparation of the centenary of her birth in 2007.

Helen MacEwan's success is in her untiring research and her vivid storytelling, which combined make Winifred Gérin and her entourage really leap off the pages of this biography. The reader truly is happy with her and suffers with her. Her final years - the years during and after the publication of Brontë biographies - are particularly interesting, not just because we rejoice in her successes but because for some reason we have seen her grow into herself. Joanna Richardson, a biographer friend of Gérin's, once claimed that readers of biographers 'ought to know what sort of marmalade the subject eats for breakfast'. Helen MacEwan doesn't exactly say, but her knowledge and openness about her subject do make it easy to guess. What a well-done and well-deserved tribute this is.


Notes
(1) Even if Helen MacEwan, a Brontë devotee herself, claims that,

Such fanaticism may be found alongside a certain lack of fulfillment in the devotee's own life. 

We beg to differ.

(2) If you are curious about Brontë biographes, Helen MacEwan also includes a short tidbit on another early Brontë biographer: Ellis Chadwick of In the Footsteps of the Brontës fame.

(3) Lock, John and Gérin, Winifred, A Guide to Haworth: The Brontës' Moorland Home (Haworth: Petty, 1956).

(4) Daphne Du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë was published in October 1960 and Gérin's Branwell Brontë in July 1961.

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The land of the Brontës

Booktrade reports that the Huddersfield Literature Festival, which is 10 years old this year and runs from 3rd – 13th March,

promises to be the best yet. The 2016 Festival also marks the centenary of the birth of Harold Wilson in Huddersfield, and the bi-centenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë.
Irvine Welsh, explorer Levison Wood, Joanne Harris, actor and comedian Ben Miller, theatre critic Michael Billington, poet and playwright Lemn Sissay, Christopher Fowler, Rupert Thomson, Claire Harman, Milly Johnson and Egyptologist Joann Fletcher are all appearing this year. Alan Johnson MP will present the annual Harold Wilson Lecture, in partnership with the University of Huddersfield and the Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales.
The Festival runs from 3rd – 13th March, with some events taking place before and after these dates. A Big Screen Family Day, John Peel Pub Quiz, Writing and Publishing Workshops, Mother's Day event with stand-up Kate Fox, events for National Libraries Day, LGBT events, Open Mic Night and Poetry Competition ensure that the tenth anniversary will truly be celebrated in style.

A.V. Club recaps the latest episode of Downton Abbey (Season 6 , Episode 4). Beware of spoilers!

But when family and staff stumble over the housekeeper’s new name (“Mrs. Carson,” Rosamund says, “it’s like Jane Eyre asking to be called Mrs. Rochester”), the two volunteer to remain Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes in the manor. Some things never change. Downton Abbey thinks that’s a virtue. (Emily L. Stephens)

Some of the characters from Downton Abbey would certainly be proud of this reader's letter to The Telegraph:

Sir – While most countries teach their citizens to take pride in national achievements, Britain seems to take pride in denigrating itself. It is not surprising that young people are considerably less patriotic than they used to be.
Britain has much to be proud of. It is the land of Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontës, Newton, Churchill, the Beatles, Elgar, J K Rowling and Adele. This is where the Industrial Revolution and the world wide web originated, and we created the Commonwealth, the Scout Movement and the Salvation Army.
The much-maligned British Empire gave the world a global language and it spread democracy and the rule of law. We also have the most loved and internationally respected head of state in the world.
To paraphrase the apparently unfashionable Cecil Rhodes: to be born British is to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Nicholas Young
London W13

Leighton Buzzard Observer reviews Matthew Bourne’s choreography based on Sleeping Beauty.

I love that our Princess Aurora is a real wild child – you see that in the baby puppet and then when the grown-up Aurora is on stage she is still a bit of a rebel!
“The relationship between her and Leo is almost a bit Wuthering Heights or Lady Chatterley’s Lover – which is exciting to dance and portray. [says Principal Dancer Dominic North] 

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Wide Sargasso Sea painting on a book

Gala Knörr is a Spanish artist established in London who recently shared on instagram this oil painting on vintage book:

Wide Sargasso Sea (2015)

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Stellar Protagonist

Bristol 24/7 reviews Sally Cookson's adaptation of Jane Eyre, now back in Bristol:

Drawing most successfully on such lines from its source, Jane Eyre returns to BOV where it was conceived and devised, after its much-lauded season at London's National Theatre (now its co-producers). There, the show underwent a nip-and-tuck from its original epic two-parter into a more compact 210 minutes. Having seen it in two parts (albeit in the wrong order), I can't say that this production has suffered at all. It didn't miss the trimmed 45 minutes, even though that's an eternity in terms of theatrical real-time: a successful vanishing trick. (Rina Vergano)

The odyssey of Javed Bhatti completing a double run of the Pennine Way on grough:

Bhatti completed The Montane Spine Race early last Saturday and spent a few hours recuperating in Kirk Yetholm before turning round to attempt the full 431km (268-mile) route again, this time southwards.
grough caught up with the runner as he approached Top Withins on the West Yorkshire moors, reputed setting for Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. Appropriately, he was in high spirits as he tackled the penultimate day of his two-week-plus challenge.
He said: “I’m feeling really good. I’m really enjoying it, it’s getting better and better at the moment. We had a cold start, sunshine, a little bit of wind but that’s quite pleasant.”

A reader of The Telegraph vindicates the pride of being English:

Britain has much to be proud of. It is the land of Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontës, Newton, Churchill, the Beatles, Elgar, J K Rowling and Adele. This is where the Industrial Revolution and the world wide web originated, and we created the Commonwealth, the Scout Movement and the Salvation Army. (Nicholas Young)

Fiona Wood talks about her novel Cloudwish among other things on news.com.au:

The following year, I created Vân Uoc Phan, a minor character in Wildlife, my second novel. (Vân Uoc now takes centre stage in my new novel, Cloudwish. She gets to do plenty and has the thumbs up from Jo.)
When Jo was in year eight, we read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Even though the classics aren’t universally popular with secondary school students, Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books and I was confident I was offering a good read, with a stellar protagonist. So I have to admit I was a little disappointed when we started the book; Jo read with understandable hesitation as she encountered a seemingly nonstop stream of unfamiliar vocabulary. It seemed those sentences were longer than I remembered.

Télérama (France) recommends the recent France Culture radio adaptation of Jane Eyre:

La réalisation de Juliette Heymann est fine, la musique discrète mais évocatrice, les bruitages de Patrick Martinache subtils et forts — l'auditeur est complètement immergé dans une bagarre entre Jane et son cousin, ou se sent doucement frôlé par Jane et Edward lorsqu'ils se déclarent. Surtout, l'interprétation de Julie-Marie Parmentier est impeccable : sa diction claire, sa voix fraîche lui permettent d'adopter un timbre tantôt ­enfantin, tantôt plus mature. Toujours convaincant. (Laurence Le Saux) (Translation)

Público (Portugal) quotes António Lobo Antunes as saying:

Se me perguntar qual é a maior escritora portuguesa, respondo-lhe que é a Agustina [Bessa-Luís], não tenho a menor dúvida. Mas há mais. A madame de la Fayette, que escreveu La Princesse de Clèves, Mme de Sévigny, a grande epistológrafa, a Emily Brontë (estava a dizer maravilhas do Monte dos Vendavais e o George Steiner a torcer o nariz, e tinha razão, é uma escrita histérica...). (Rui Cardoso Martins) (Translation)

An article about Ebba Witt-Brattström published in Sydsvenskan (Sweden) quotes from the recent New Yorker article by Adelle Waldmaan on the ideal marriage according to literature:

I essän ”The Ideal Marriage, According to Novels”, som nyligen publicerades i The New Yorker, skriver författaren Adelle Waldman om vad som skiljer manliga och kvinnliga författares sätt att skildra kärlek.
Romanfigurer skapade av kvinnor, menar hon, och hänvisar till såväl Jane Austen och Charlotte Brontë som Elena Ferrante, är upptagna och intresserade av sina älskades hjärnor. De söker efter en partner som de kan känna samhörighet med, inte bara sett till attraktion och känslor. De eftersträvar intellektuell och moralisk jämställdhet. (Filip Yifter-Svensson ) ( Translation)

Die Welt (Germany) announces a Hamburg screening of the National Theatre production of Jane Eyre:

Wer Cary Fukunages grandiose "Jane Eyre"-Verfilmung mit Mia Wasikowska und Michael Fassbender von 2011 im Kino gesehen hat, weiß, dass der Stoff der viktorianischen Romanvorlage von Charlotte Brontë auch heute noch alles andere als verstaubt, pathetisch oder gar kitschig ist, wenn die Inszenierung stimmig ist. Dies ist auch der Regisseurin Sally Cockson mit ihrer Bühnenadaption am Londoner National Theatre gelungen, Cocksons "Jane Eyre" wird von der britischen Presse einhellig gefeiert. (Translation)

Región de Murcia (Spain) interviews the writer Pilar Pedraza:

¿Y por qué a menudo se ponían seudónimos masculinos?
Pues no tanto para tapar su identidad femenina como para preservar su libertad. George Sand, George Eliot, Vernon Lee… muchas de ellas escribieron con nombres de hombre, sí. Pero todo el mundo sabía quiénes eran. Quiero decirte que a veces se exagera y se victimiza algo que, en realidad, debería ser reivindicado. Porque Jane Austen o las Brontë estaban en el mercado. Vivían de la pluma. Había un público lector de mujeres y había mujeres ilustradas, que iban a conferencias, que estaban en los círculos de escritores y artistas. Y esto no hay que ignorarlo. Ni caer en el victimismo. Y poner de manifiesto que las mujeres no siempre han estado en la carbonera o en el rincón de la casa. Las mujeres del pasado no vivían en ningún limbo infernal, ni es verdad que no pintaran nada en la sociedad. Sí que pintaban. Y en la literatura, bastante. (José Miguel Vilar-Bou) (Translation)

A Howorth (!) sighting in the North-West Evening Mail; Cinque Cose Belle (in Italian) quotes from Wuthering Heights; Public Books reviews Patricia Park's Re Jane; AnneBronte.org posts a nice Anne Brontë beginner's guide infography.

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The Jane and Bertha in Her

The new poetry book by Rita Maria Martinez contains plenty of Brontë references:

The Jane and Bertha in Me
by Rita Maria Martinez
January 12, 2016
Publisher: Aldrich Press (January 12, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0692543412

Rita Maria Martinez’s The Jane and Bertha in Me is a Rubik’s CubeTM of Janes. Each poem is a smartly annotated, hauntingly revisionist homage to Jane Eyre. Martinez’s astounding poems are literary, conversational, personal, fun, as she confidently transports her Janes from the Moors to Macy’s, from Thornfield Hall to the world of tattoos.
—Denise Duhamel, author of Blowout

There is some kind of serious magic at work in this wonderful book. Reading it, I feel as if I am waking up in another world where Gothic sensibility of Jane Eyre joins the surreal of contemporary American culture. The experience is nothing short of intoxicating. I can’t wait to read more of Rita Maria Martinez’s work.
—Nin Andrews, author of Why God is a Woman

Rita Maria Martinez’s The Jane and Bertha in Me gives an unusual twist to the well-known characters from Jane Eyre, envisioning Jane at the guidance counselor, Bertha getting a makeover. These persona poems give us greater insight into the minds of madwoman and governess alike and even minor characters like Blanche and Alice, with beautiful, lush language and empathetic vision. Even casual fans of Brontë’s great book will enjoy this lively re-imagining.
—Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of The Robot Scientist’s Daughter

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What would Jane do?

Financial Times reviews the upcoming The Woman who Ran by Sam Baker:

The Woman Who Ran has echoes of classic Gothic fiction as Helen Graham arrives at an out-of-the-way Yorkshire village and rents the Brontë-ishly named Wildfell House. The place is a ruin, but then so is Helen’s life; her relationship with retired journalist Gil is no comfort, and there are things in her past that she will have to face up to. Questions of trust — and of simple survival — become very pressing ... Baker evokes the minatory setting with real panache and excels above all at orchestrating the steadily rising tension. (Barry Forshaw)

The Reviews Hub posts about the new performances of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre adaptation in Bristol:

After an incredible run at London’s National Theatre, Sally Cookson’s epic reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre returns to Bristol Old Vic as a single thrilling piece of drama.
Unlike many screen adaptions that have portrayed Brontë’s novel as a romance, Cookson and the ensemble’s interpretation of the story does not focus solely on Jane’s love for Rochester; instead, the play is a platform for a strong female voice to challenge the constraints of class and gender.
Cookson’s adaption is as much about Jane’s psychological journey as it is her relationship with the brooding Rochester. The spirited heroine knows the boundaries that restrict her – both in terms of class and gender – are unjust and cruel. This production rejects any hint that this is a story about a “poor, obscure, plain, and little” literary character; this is a story of an individual with a brilliant mind who strives for personal freedom.
Even Bertha – often thought of as the silenced madwoman in the attic – is granted a voice; Melanie Marshall’s sung performance transforms Rochester’s imprisoned wife into a haunting songstress storyteller. Her renditions of Mad about the Boy and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy are mesmerising. (...)
A must-see and fitting production to start Bristol Old Vic’s 250th birthday celebration, Jane Eyre is a compelling piece of theatre that intelligently finds new meanings to Brontë’s vivid descriptions. The adaption’s focus on the fight for personal freedom will surely resonate with many.

Keighley News celebrates that 2015 was a strong year for tourism in the region:

Numbers visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth remained constant, at around 69,500, but the world-famous literary shrine saw a two per cent rise in income.
Attendances for educational activities such as talks and workshops were also about the same, but shop sales soared by 20 per cent.
The museum is anticipating an increase in visitors this year as it stages a series of events celebrating the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë's birth.
"We are delighted that numbers have remained steady and look forward to welcoming more people this year," said Rebecca Yorke, the museum's marketing and communications officer. (Alistair Shand)

The wonders of the Yorskhire Dales are explored by Jack Blanchard in The Mirror:

Every leaf speaks bliss to me. So wrote Yorkshire’s most famous daughter Emily Brontë of autumn days in God’s Own County.
Standing atop a soaring peak in the Yorkshire Dales on a crisp November morning, you can see exactly what she meant.
Every way you look the hills explode with colour – deep reds, blazing yellows, rich oranges and shimmering golds.
Any lingering doubts about taking a trip to the great British countryside at this time of year are quickly blown away on the autumn breeze.

Chlöe-Grace Moretz is a well-known Wuthering Heights fan. Now on Contact Music:

"I enjoy books that aren't really YA (young adult) in that sense," she says, "so when I read The 5th Wave it's a very un-YA YA book. It deals with bigger problems and bigger emotions than most YA books. My favourite novel in general is Wuthering Heights!" (Rich Cline)

The Australian reviews the novel Cloudwish by Fiona Wood:

“Cloudwish” is also the ethereal meaning of Van Uoc’s name. Although a successful student and photographer, she prefers to be invisible at school and “the shape of not fitting in was almost comfortably familiar”. However her inner resolve and love of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre give her enough confidence to challenge injustice and constantly ask herself, “What would Jane do?” (Joy Lawn)

Young readers of classic books in The Times of India:

Authors like Jane Austen, Brontë Sisters, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf have given readers of all ages a chance to understand the society of yore from women's point of view. Abhishek Mankar, a student of NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences, who is hooked to Persuasion by Jane Austen these days, says, "I love reading classics which have strong women characters. Books like Sense and Sensibility and Jane Eyre take me back in time where women took tough decisions in matters related to family, society and career. It makes me understand their perspective." (Rishabh Deb)

Bustle and a list of books with slow starts but worth reading:

Jane Eyre is (famously) full of death, romance, house fires, lies, crazy people living in attics — there's a lot of exciting stuff in there. It's just not in the beginning. The book starts out with sad baby Jane, a little orphan being raised by her cruel and uncaring relatives (sound familiar?). And then poor little Jane is packed off to an abusive boarding school (very different from Hogwarts), where her days are full of drudgery and hunger. It's a grim, slow-paced story to begin with, but as Jane begins to grow up, she becomes more and more self-reliant, and her story becomes far more interesting. (Charlotte Ahlin)

We don't think that Jane Eyre is a particularly slow-starter, though.

The Houston Chronicle gives you advice on how to be a Romantic, with a capital R:

Shine a mirror on the flaws of all women you meet, and torment them until they say, "I am Heathcliff!" Get Sir Laurence Olivier to play you in a movie. More than one. Be moody, cynical and defiant. No. Matter. What. (Doni Wilson)

Luton Today presents a production of Matthew Bourne Sleeping Beauty choreography. Quoting principal dancer Dominic North:

“The relationship between her and Leo is almost a bit Wuthering Heights or Lady Chatterley’s Lover – which is exciting to dance and portray.

Fashion Times talks about Veronique Branquinho's pre-Fall 16 Collection:

For Pre-fall 2016, Veronique Branquinho was once again seemingly inspired by the sort of Gothic heroine written about by the Brontë sisters.
She asked us to "Imagine a forest, a winter forest, dark and romantic." (Jayne Mountfort)

The Hindustan Times interviews the Booker prize winner Marlon James:

The UK publisher who first read my book asked me to turn it into a Jane Austen novel.
You’re joking!
She said could I rewrite it in an 18th c Standard English voice. She’s basically saying can I turn my slavery novel into a Jane Austen novel or maybe it’s Wuthering Heights with whipping! (Manjula Narayan)

Cherwell explores the English country house in literature:

With Wodehouse we can revel in the glorious farce and decadence of the era; with Ishiguru we shudder at the dark secrets they contain; in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the country house even becomes one of the main characters in the novel. The English country house in literature is ambiguous and varied – and it’s here to stay. (Ben Ray)

Film Totaal (Netherlands) reviews Jane Eyre 1944:

Het boek van Brontë is een complex verhaal en vormt een karakter studie van Jane, iets dat moeilijk samen te vatten is in een kleine twee uur. Toch slaagt de film daar erg goed in en weet het in ieder geval de sfeer perfect weer te geven, iets dat latere verfilmingen wel eens misten. Joan Fontaine en Orson Welles waren beide op het top van hun kunnen in 1943 en weten de personages uit het boek echt leven in te blazen. Leuk detail is dat Elizabeth Taylor in de film te zien is in een vroeg klein rolletje. Ze was nog onbekend en stond dan ook niet op de aftiteling. (Michelle Iwema) (Translation)

Eskilstuna Kuriren (Sweden) and madwomen in the attic:

Alltså att GW:s mamma, låt oss förresten kalla henne det hon hette, Margit, måste ha varit ett klassiskt fall av "Madwoman in the attic". Alltså en kvinna av det slag som inte haft några andra val än att dväljas i begåvningsreserven.
Typen beskrevs redan 1847 i Charlotte Brontës "Jane Eyre" där en galen hustru hålls inlåst på vinden av sin make.
Nu var ju grovarbetare Gustav Persson naturligtvis inte av den sort som låste in frugan, han var säkert precis så snäll och beskedlig som sonen GW beskrivit honom. (Translation)

La Voz de Galicia (Spain) remembers how

Como puede suponerse por su frase, Emily Brontë, la romántica autora de Cumbres borrascosas, fue especialista en calentamientos, pero la pobre murió de tuberculosis a los 30 años, tras haber contraído un resfriado en el funeral de su hermano Branwell. (Moncho Núñez Centella) (Translation)

Il Corriere della Sera (Italy) interviews the author Lucinda Riley:

È una necessità profondamente umana: ascoltare o raccontare una storia. Dickens scriveva a puntate per i periodici. Le sorelle Brontë venivano pubblicate con pseudonimi maschili, era forse letteratura “da donne”? Il libro della mia vita è Cime tempestose. (Mateo Persivale) (Translation)

Once again the sketches of literary characters by The Composites are in the news. Now in an article in the Daily Mail. Indianapolis Business Journal mentions a local production of The Mystery of Irma Vep. A Universe in Words reviews Mick Jackson's Yuki Chan in Brontë Country. Que la suerte esté siempre de vuestra parte (in Spanish) reviews Wuthering Heights. bookalibre (in Italian) reviews Shirley.

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