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Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The first episode of I Am, Yours Sincerely, C Brontë aired yesterday (available here) and here's how Radio Times sums it up:
Charlotte Brontë (1816—55) really did not enjoy being a governess. One of her young charges flung a bible at her, which may have been the inspiration for an incident in the opening chapter of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre.
Here, four essayists, including Brontë’s latest biographer Claire Harman, use some of her 900 surviving letters to reveal her as a young woman whose hope and ambition were indelibly tarnished, through no fault of her own, by unhappiness and frustration. (Jane Anderson)
News - or rather the press release - about the Celebrating Charlotte Brontë: 1816 – 1855 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London has reached the media: ArtDaily, ITV News, Artlyst, NDTV, L'express (France), France TV, etc.

Bustle lists '6 Women Authors Who Wrote Under Male Or Ambigous Pen Names To Get Published' and both Charlotte and Emily are there though strangely enough Anne has been left out.
1. Emily Brontë
Brontë's gorgeously written and renowned novel Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. After she died, Brontë's sister Charlotte published a posthumous edition three years later under Emily's real name.
2. Charlotte Brontë
The oldest Brontë sister and the author of Jane Eyre also used the fake last name Bell, taking Currer as her first name. She explained the decision:
Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while 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. (Suzannah Weiss)
Writer Victoria Álvarez admits to being influenced by the Brontës in an interview by El País (Spain).
—¿Cuáles son sus referentes? ¿Qué libros recomendaría?—Gente como Oscar Wilde o Edgar Allan Poe siempre han estado a mi lado. Mis libros beben mucho de los libros de Wilde, nadie te hace reír como él; también de otros clásicos como Jane Austen o las hermanas Brontë. De literatura actual, recomendaría siempre a Kate Morton. En especial una novela suya ambientada en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, El cumpleaños secreto. Por ambientación es la que menos me pegaría, porque no es una de sus novelas victorianas, pero su estilo es sublime, es sin duda mi favorita. (Jorge Morla) (Translation)
USA Today and others report that Wuthering Heights 1992 is leaving Netflix on March 1st. Delirious Documentations compares (ehem) Wuthering Heights and Star Wars. Postcards from Asia discusses several sequels of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Accidental Travel Writer reviews the Hong Kong performances of the Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre production. Finally an alert from Ithaca, NY:
Book Talk: Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel
Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 4:30pm
Olin Library, Room 107 Olin Library, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA

What does it mean to dream over a book?
Join us for a Chats in the Stacks book talk with Elisha Cohn, assistant professor in the Department of English at Cornell. Her new book, Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel, was just published by Oxford University Press in December 2015.
Still Life explores the 19th century aesthetics of agency through the Victorian novel's fascination with states of reverie, trance, and sleep, drawing upon the writings of novelists Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy. Bringing affect theory to bear on the novel form, Cohn explores the new styles they created for experiences of "still life"— a sensuous lyricism that suspends narratives of self-cultivation.
Cohn's research focuses on Victorian literature with an emphasis on the novel and theories of the aesthetic. She has published essays in Victorian Studies, the Journal of Victorian Culture, Contemporary Literature,and elsewhere. Her current interests include the history of neuroscience, animal studies, and affect theory.

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