Wheeling Birds and Tiny Books

The Boar lists five facts you didn't know (well, if you are a usual reader of this blog you probably did know them by heart) about Emily Brontë:

Born on 30 July 1818, this month marks the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth, the second youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings. Last summer I was lucky enough to visit the Brontë Parsonage and contributed to the re-writing of the manuscript of Wuthering Heights to celebrate this bicentenary. Emily lived happily in her close-knit community, rarely seeking an opportunity to travel. Her famous literary works including Wuthering Heights (1847) and No Coward Soul is Mine (1846) reveal a striking contrast to her reserved personality. (Imogen Allport)

The New Yorker explores the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library:

The library categorizes these items as “Realia”—objects from everyday life. The Berg Collection includes Charlotte Brontë’s writing desk, with a lock of her hair inside; trinkets belonging to Jack Kerouac, including his harmonicas, and a card upon which he wrote “blood” in his own blood; typewriters belonging to S. J. Perelman and Paul Metcalf; Mark Twain’s pen and wire-rimmed glasses; Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly drawings; and the death masks of the poets James Merrill and E. E. Cummings. (Gareth Smit)

If you are interested, you can check our own visit to the Berg Collection a few years ago.

Corridor8 reviews Kate Whiteford's exhibition Wings of Desire at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

By a deeply recessed arch window in the servant’s room in the parsonage, a film of wheeling birds and an ever-changing landscape plays itself out. Behind it lurks the eerie music of the Unthanks and amongst it the beautiful Yorkshire tones of Chloe Pirrie reading Emily Brontë’s The Caged Bird. Brontë rescued an injured hawk, nursed it to health and flew it on the moors. When she returned from Brussels, the hawk was gone and she writes that despite asking one and all but never saw him again. She had named him Nero.
Land artist Kate Whiteford has created a breath-taking double screen installation of images using digital film, Super 8 and aerial imagery to present the landscape from the human and from the bird’s eye perspective. (Karen Tobias-Green)

The Monitor lists several new YA books:

“My Plain Jane” by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows
The most delightful, gothic, ghostly mash up of the Brontës EVER, and I mean a real mash up! There was nothing about this book I didn’t love. The trio of authors has so much snark, and so much sass, you can’t help but laugh out loud throughout this story. The writing is awesome, the story is hilarious, the characters will have you eating out of the palms of their hands; they are that amazing! A twist on the original Jane Eyre, throw in a ghost and a murder mystery and you’ve got yourself a clever little gothic tale. (Margie Longoria)

The Cut talks about the new fashion ad campaigns for fall:

Fall 2018 ads are starting to hit the market, and they range from opulent to absurdist. Dior models posed on Parisian streets in newsboy caps and plaid pleated skirts, while Loewe models read copies of Madame Bovary and Wuthering Heights. (Aubri Juhasz)

Picture Credits: Steven Meisei.

The Australian talks about a scholar expert in the work of the Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger:

The pieces provide insights into a broad range of places and subjects. These include Laurel and Hardy, Nazi propaganda films and The Third Man, set in Vienna, in which her twin, Helga, had a role.
Aichinger saw it once a week for decades. She was also an avid student of the Brontë sisters’ novels. (Tess Livingstone)

The New York Times reviews Robert Gottliebs's Near-Death Experiences...

One of the running subthemes in the book is the many-splendored ways contemporary movies mangle literature, biography and history, casting the tall “Nicole Kidman at her frostiest” as Thomas Wolfe’s warm, plump lover and muse Aline Bernstein in “Genius”; reducing Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky in the film of the same name to a pair of rutting clotheshorses; and smothering the emotional tempests of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”: “The new film version of ‘Jane Eyre’ isn’t all bad, but it’s all wrong.” (James Wolcott)

ABC Radio's On Drive with Richard Glover (Australia) has a short piece on Emily Brontë:

200 years ago - this month - Emily Brontë was born, the author of one of the most unusual novels in all of literature, Wuthering Heights. Take a listen to literary lecturer Susannah Fullerton in this week's self improvement lesson.

Some of the Off-Off Broadway upcoming season is discussed on Broadway World:

Finally, Amina Henry's new play, The Great Novel, will round out the season in June 7 thru June 29, 2019. The production will partner with The Flea Theater's Anchor Program, with direction from Sarah Norris. For most of her adult life, Bertha has served as the Brennans' housekeeper. While polishing the silverware and washing the windows, she dreams of honoring the promise she made to her grandmother long ago to write the next great American novel. But as she drafts her story, she can only see the imprints of the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and most of all, the Brennans. 

The Daily Telegraph discusses the new novel by Justine Ettler, Bohemia Beach:

The main character Cathy, a famous concert pianist, strongly resembles her namesake in Wuthering Heights. (Emily MacDonald)

The Post-Star interviews James LaRosa, executive producer of the TV series Hit the Floor:

I think there are many different kinds of romantic possibilities and certainly there was something very Wuthering Heights about Zude. Everything was conflict and everything was 'you and me against the world' and with Noah ... who knows what will happen. (Interview by Jim Halterman)

Idaho Press interviews the writer Lois Requist:

Jeanne Huff: Who are your favorite authors and why?
LR: I started at 10 with the Brontë sisters. Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry James. Those are the old ones. James Michener, Jesmyn Ward, Saramago, Pamuk, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood. I need something that reaches me to my core, something I recognize as truth.

Onedio (in Turkish) lists several powerful real and fictional women:

18. Jane Eyre
Edebiyat tarihinin en güçlü kadın karakterlerinden biri Jane Eyre'dir. Charlotte Bronte'nin yarattığı karakter onurlu ve yaşadığı birçok zorluğa rağmen mücadele eden sabırlı bir karakterdi. (Sheida) (Translation)

Premiere (France) presents some films of the week in France:

Dark River by Clio Barnard
La cinéaste croise en filigrane l’idée du corps d’Alice (Ruth Wilson) injustement colonisé dans l’enfance par un père incestueux, avec cette terre que des promoteurs veulent arracher aux éleveurs. Tels deux animaux tout droits sortis d’un onirisme rural à la Brontë, la sœur et le frère se guettent, se battent et se rebiffent, tantôt l’un contre l’autre, tantôt l’un avec l’autre. (Translation)

Zonared (Spain) bitterly criticises After by Anna Todd:

Repito que se puede disfrutar de 'After', al igual que se puede disfrutar de 'Cincuenta sombras de Grey', de 'Crepúsculo' o de 'Cumbres borrascosas', pero hay que concienciar a la audiencia de que eso no es amor. (Sonia Sarria) (Translation)

We understand the point, but to put Wuthering Heights in such... colourful company is painful.

KBIA Radio recommends Wide Sargasso Sea as a summer reading; Blogger by the Sea gives reason to love Wuthering Heights; Pug and Books didn't like Villette; Smexy Books reviews My Plain Jane; Just One More Pa(i)ge posts about Brightly Burning; Rachel Sutcliffe has two new Brontë posts: a summary of the Rev Peter Mullins Brontë remembrance service on the Brontë Society's annual summer festival and an article on Mademoiselle Rachel (aka Villette's Vashti). The huge power of a tiny book on Eleanor Scorah's Objects blog:

Eleanor Scorah reports on an encounter with a minuscule book, during Durham’s Literary Juvenilia conference, which enticingly hints at the author who we would subsequently know and cherish as Charlotte Brontë.

The poet Jessica Grace Hanson tweets:

I was on radio Sheffield yesterday with @Rony37 talking about my Emily Brontë Poem [commissioned by @BronteParsonage] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p069tmh0 … (12 mins in) take a listen if you want.

The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is all over the internet: Broadsheet Brisbane, Kent Online (Folkestone), Illawarra Mercury, de Standaard (in Brussels), Upsala Nya Tidning...