RIP Anne Brontë

On a day like today 169 years ago, Anne Brontë died in Scarborough accompanied by her sister Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey. For us, Anne's death is one of the most vivid, poignant moments in the Brontë story.

My life has been a morning sky

Where Hope her rainbow glories cast

O'er kindling vapours far and nigh:

And, if the colours faded fast,

Ere one bright hue had died away

Another o'er its ashes gleamed;

And if the lower clouds were grey,

The mists above more brightly beamed.

But not for long; ­- at length behold,

Those tints less warm, less radiant grew;

Till but one streak of paly gold

Glimmered through clouds of saddening hue.

And I am calmly waiting, now,

To see that also pass away,

And leave, above the dark hill's brow,

A rayless arch of sombre grey.'

('Self-communion', fragment)

The Daily Cardinal reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant and the reviewer is clearly not a fan of the author.

So why, then, does Ishiguro get so much praise?
I think it has more to do with the culture surrounding literature than anything Ishiguro actually wrote. There’s a vein of misery running through literature, dating all the way back to the Greeks but seen more recently in the Brontë sisters and, later on, William Faulkner (and even more recently Cormac McCarthy, a mediocre writer Ishiguro has expressed great admiration for). (Martin Rakacolli)

Broadway World UK reviews the play Adam & Eve at The Hope Theatre.

With metafictional references to Jane Eyre (it's the subject of Nikki's essay and part of the character's raison d'être; we also see Eve reading it), Cook touches on the theme of gender politics. Unfortunately, this feels under-explored - an opportunity missed to add deeper layers to the central premise through Adam's interaction with Nikki. (Dzifa Benson)

A well-thumbed (to put it mildly) library copy of Jane Eyre on My Jane Eyre collection.