Warped and Sticky

The upcoming events at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Keighley News:

The Woman Question is the title of a special Brontë-themed evening marking the centenary of women gaining the vote.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth will host the September 28 event as the latest entry in its monthly Parsonage Unwrapped programme.
The 7.30pm event focuses on what it would be like to be a working woman in the 19th century when the Brontë sisters were writing.
A spokesman said: “The Brontë sisters knew from a young age that they would have to earn a living and were educated to become governesses and teachers.
“The Brontë servant Martha Brown had barely left her teens before she began working as a servant to the Brontë family.
“The evening will explore the working lives of the women of the Parsonage, and how they operated within the constraints and expectations of the age.”
The museum will hold its monthly Brontë Treasures night on the same day, at 2pm, when a curator will offer unique access to treasures from the Brontë Society collection.
The third monthly event, Late Night Thursday, will be on September 20 when the museum will open till 8pm so that visitors can avoid the crowds.
After 5.30pm, entry is free to local people providing proof of residence in the BD22, BD21 and BD20 postcode areas or living in Thornton.
All three events are held monthly, as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s year of celebrations for the 200th anniversary of Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë’s birth.
This month the museum is also hosting the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing, which features workshops on writing crime and historical fiction, advice on writing online, and a performance by leading point Patience Agbabi.
The museum will host free talks on October 2 – at 11am and 2pm – entitled Critical Responses to Wuthering Heights.
Visit bronte.org.uk/what’s-on for information on all events. (David Knights)

Sussex Express presents an event at the end of September at the Charleston's Small Wonders Festival:

I am Heathcliff takes place at Charleston on Friday, September 28 (4pm), as part of the Small Wonder short story festival.
Heathcliff, the brooding anti-hero of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, has gone down in history as the epitome of romantic love – thanks in part to cinema and theatre .
Yet that is so far from what his creator intended, it is in fact a misreading of the book, as the foreword by author Kate Mosse to a new collection of short stories, explains.
I am Heathcliff, the opening event at this year’s Small Wonder festival, dissects the influence Heathcliff and Brontë’s novel has had on literature. This collection of specially commissioned stories inspired by Wuthering Heights and curated by Kate Mosse celebrates the bicentenary of Emily Bronte’s birth. It is a collection that takes a long, hard look at the reality that was Heathcliff through a range of mostly contemporary stories.

Vulture asks Jemima Kirke for her favourite books:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
I’ve been looking for Heathcliff ever since. My copy is all warped and sticky from all the tears I’ve shed over it.

Bustle on new classics:

Don’t get me wrong, I love the classics. Give a novel written by Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, or the one of the Brontë sisters, and I’ll happily read it — and then talk anyone’s ear off who will listen to me talk about its many merits. But the truth is, sometimes I just want to read a book that feels more relatable, one in which the setting, the politics, the people, and even the fashion is more recognizable. (Sadie Trombetta)

and books about books:

If you have a thing for literary's leading ladies, you'll fall head over heels for How to Be a Heroine [by Samantha Ellis], a tribute to the likes of Lizzy Bennet, Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Eyre, Franny Glass, and more. A captivating exploration of the book world's most iconic female characters, and the women who wrote them into being, this engaging analysis will make you think about the many ways your favorite literary heroines influenced, empowered, and inspired you. (Sadie Trombetta)

Maya Salam's Gender Letters in the New York Times quotes an 1855 article on the NYT:

“The world would soon be depopulated if it were filled with persons of great intellectual stature,” warned a 1885 New York Times article that called out Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen as examples of “literary spinsters.” The good news for these “female brain workers,” according to the piece: They are more likely to live longer than married women with many kids. 

Not Emily, though.

Lancashire Post looks for the best country parks in Lancashire:

Wycoller Country Park in Colne is famous for its association with the Brontë sisters who referred to many of the nearby landmarks in books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It has many footpaths leading to local beauty spots which include Bank House and Wycoller Beck. The site also includes the Atom Panopticon and Wycoller Hall.  (Natalie Parker)

San Francisco Chronicle reviews the audiobook edition of The Victorian and the Romantic by Nell Stevens:

“The Victorian and the Romantic” is exactly that. Its strongest portions explore a trip Gaskell takes to Rome just as her biography of her deceased friend, Charlotte Brontë, is published. The love between Gaskell and Norton, which begins in Italy and lasts a lifetime without ever being marked with as much as a kiss, leaves us longing for the story of it never to end. (Meg Waite Clayton)

Houstonia Magazine recommends the local performances of The Moors:

Take touchstones of English literature such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and layer on plenty of dark comedy trappings, and you’ll get Jen Silverman’s The Moors. Says MU Artistic Director Jennifer Decker: “I was sold as soon as I realized there was a side story with an ill-fated love affair between a pet Mastiff and a lost moor hen, a rock power ballad, a murder plan involving an ax, and a brother who may or may not be imprisoned in the attic. That kind of weirdness is right up Mildred’s Umbrella’s alley.” (Morgan Kinney)

Bookriot says goodbye to summer with a Jane Eyre quote:

“It was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good: I thought she loved me.” (Emily Westrom)

Diacritik's (in French) summer reads is devoted to a new edition of Wuthering Heights in French and its free retelling La Migration des Coeurs by Maryse Condé:

Un chef d’œuvre franchit les frontières et touche des sensibilités et imaginaires que rien ne disposait à la rencontre. Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent, par son tragique et son absolu, fait partie de ces créations qui nous investissent à chaque lecture. Pourquoi ce retour vers ce classique anglais ? L’occasion d’y revenir, bien sûr mais aussi de faire connaître le beau roman de Maryse Condé, La Migration des cœurs (1995) qui, sans masque, le dédie à son illustre devancière :

« A Emily Brontë

Qui, je l’espère, agréera cette lecture de son chef d’œuvre.

Honneur et respect ! »

A l’occasion du bicentenaire de la naissance d’Emily Brontë (1818-1848), les éditions Robert Laffont dans leur collection « Pavillons Poche » ont réédité son unique roman dans la traduction de Frédéric Delebecque, avec une préface inédite de Lydie Salvayre (Prix Goncourt 2014). C’est l’occasion de (re)lire le roman anglais et de faire, peut-être, découvrir celui de Maryse Condé. Deux romans dont la lecture emporte loin du quotidien pour nous plonger dans des univers mêlant passion et connaissance. (Read more) (Translation)

Letralia (in Spanish) about women as authors:

Nombres de la talla de Virginia Wolf o las hermanas Brontë han permitido que el camino que les toca emprender hoy a otras escritoras no sea un campo de minas, como lo fue a lo largo de la historia. (Rafael Bailón Ruiz) (Translation)

El Sur de Acapulco (in Spanish) quotes W. Somerset Maugham:

El escritor británico W. Somerset Maugham, malhumorado y escéptico como buen inglés de entre guerras, escribió algunos ensayos, en realidad prólogos compilados de manera posterior, en donde explica la novela de una forma que me parece precisa: considera que las más grandes no lo son por perfectas, Moby Dick, El jugador o Cumbres borrascosas; obras que son clásicas no por sus virtudes, sino por sus defectos. (Adán Ramírez Serret) (Translation)

Vogue (France) mentions the Loewe edition of Wuthering Heights;  Owlcation suggests a Jane Eyre discussion with extra cupcakes; The Eyre Guide visits Haddon Hall and The Brontë Babe Blog reviews Rita María Martínez's book of poetry The Jane and Bertha in Me.