Bleaker but Exciting

Next weeks at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Keighley News:

This month’s Parsonage Unwrapped, on Friday, November 30, has the quirky title, ‘The Brontës on Tour’, and presents the opportunity to learn more about what happens when we loan items to other organisations.
In 2016, The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City presented An Independent Will, an exhibition featuring manuscripts and possessions of Charlotte Brontë.
Our curator, Sarah Laycock, will share the fascinating details behind the planning of the transatlantic touring exhibition, so this is a great chance to learn more about the complex preparations undertaken to share these priceless artefacts with an international audience. Tickets cost £20/£17.50 and include a glass of wine.
Our final free Tuesday talk of the year asks the question ‘Who was Emily Brontë’? We’ve spent all year asking this question in various guises, so we thought it fitting to end the year pondering both the myths and the truths about the most enigmatic Brontë sibling. The talk is free with admission to the museum, and takes place in our cellar at 2pm.
And we have something a little unusual – and fun! – taking place on December 5: a live recording of the hit podcast Bonnets At Dawn. ‘Austen vs. Brontë: Bonnets at Dawn’ is a weekly literary podcast that compares and contrasts the lives and work of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. The show is hosted by writers Lauren Burke (Team Brontë) and Hannah K Chapman (Team Austen) who will seek to unravel the mysteries of the ‘coolest’ Brontë sister.
We approach the final three weeks of our screening of Lily Cole’s film ‘Balls’, so if you haven’t yet seen it, you need to visit December 3!‘Balls’ is approximately eight minutes long. It’s an incredibly moving film, taking as its starting point Heathcliff, the foundling character central to Wuthering Heights, and the film explores links between the London-based Foundling Hospital story, and Emily’s novel. The film is free with admission to the museum.Along with a panel of experts, comprising Brontë scholar, Dr Claire O’Callaghan, illustrator Isabel Greenberg (whose graphic novel based on the Brontës’ childhood stories is due out next year) and Parsonage staff Amy Rowbottom and Lauren Livesey, they will cover a wide range of topics including Emily’s juvenilia and feminism in Wuthering Heights. This event is free with admission to the museum, and recording is anticipated to take approximately two hours, between 1-3pm. Places are secured on a first-come first-served basis.
My next piece – the final one of the year – will let you know what we’re up to this Christmas, and I can reveal details of our plans for January and beyond. For any further information take a look at our website bronte.org.uk/whats-on or call us on 01535 640192. (Diane Fare)

The Times interviews the one and only Ruth Wilson:

Virtually on leaving the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art, she won the title role in the BBC’s new Jane Eyre and spent a cold winter in 2006 filming it outside Bakewell in Derbyshire.
“Jane,” I wrote in a review at the time, “is played by Ruth Wilson, an unknown 24-year-old fresh out of drama school. There is not a reaction shot in which she does not look intelligent, and not a line she delivers that does not suggest the thinking behind it.” The only odd thing was that Wilson and her Rochester, Toby Stephens, seemed to have difficulty making mouth contact when kissing. (Andrew Billen)

Westport News and bookstores love:

I have a recurring fantasy: I am locked inside a library overnight with no means of escape. I am surrounded by all the literary figures I have grown to know intimately. Reading, after all, is a personal and intimate experience. All through the night I move among them, prowling the stacks. I share an hour with Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens. I move among the dusty, moldy pages of Tolstoy and Kafka. I mingle a while with Thomas Wolfe, Irwin Shaw, Hemingway and the rest of the gang. I stop to relax with Updike and Cheever. I share a laugh with Robert Benchley. I snuggle up with Jane Eyre and the Brontë’s. When I am tired, I close my eyes, curl up in a stuffed chair, and fall asleep with Shakespeare. (Judith Marks-White)

The Irish Times reviews Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World:

Outsiders “use their apartness to see the world afresh”, Lyndall Gordon believes. Five 19th-century female writers, she contends, changed the world. In a period when a woman’s reputation was her security, Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf defied convention and “changed the face of literature”. Shelley was the “prodigy” (she wrote Frankenstein at 19), who committed herself to a married poet. Brontë was the “visionary”, devoted to “the world within” and despising “the world without”; “visions come to a rebellious loner bold enough for the encounter”. (Brian Maye)

The Yorkshire Evening Post is visiting London:

So we walked a few hundred yards to the vibrant British Library, where we saw the manuscript of Jane Eyre, Beethoven’s tuning fork and Scott’s journal from his ill-fated Antarctic expedition with Captain Oates’ poignant farewell: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Dallas Morning News recommends the local performances of The Moors:

It's not a Halloween play, but The Moors at Theatre Three does promise to be a gothic immersive experience. Plus, artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt has lots of spooky things planned for the lobby. The 2017 off-Broadway play by Jen Silverman is a dark comedy in a wild, woman-centered world of the wind-swept romantic novels conjured by the Brontë sisters. Taking pinches of plot from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Silverman serves up a deliciously twisted story about Emilie, an independent governess in the Jane Eyre vein who shows up at the home shared by the sternly forbidding Agatha and her silly sister, Huldey. Emilie, a romantic like the characters in Wuthering Heights, yearns to meet the women's mysterious brother, Branwell, whom Emilie knows only through correspondence. Not sure about a happy ending, but odds are good for a funny one. (Nancy Churnin)

TES is for letting all students resit their GCSE English and maths exams:

“The children of the poor were excluded from every hope of progress,” says the character St John Rivers, describing the educational landscape of his town in the 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It's a comment that still resonates in 2018 – a time when the attainment gap between the highest economic quintile and the lowest remains a chasm.
Rivers is offering Jane a chance to become mistress of a new school and, less admirably, he continues, “your scholars will be only poor girls – cottagers’ children – at best, farmers’ daughters”. (Andrew Otty)

Bustle talks about Carla Gugino in The Haunting of Hill House:

Olivia is essentially the modern-day incarnation of the madwoman in the attic trope, à la Mr. Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre. (Rebecca Patton)

BuzzFeed News recommends We Were Liars by E. Lockhart:

We Were Liars seduces you with summer love, a remote island setting, hints of Wuthering Heights, and millions of theories you’ll develop along the way to its utterly destructive reveal. (JM Farkas)

The Herald reviews a new paperback edition of Melmoth, the Wanderer:

From Frankenstein to Wuthering Heights, Gothic Romance has enjoyed a long shelf-life, but Melmoth the Wanderer, published in 1820, never caught on in the same way. (Alastair Mabbott)

The Australian asks the author Richard Flanagan about the greatest love stories and reminds us how

On the online lists, Jane Austen and the Brontës are prominent.

YourTango and being 'ugly':

I know I'm not the most beautiful person on the planet. A kind person could call me plain and be well within their rights. I like the idea of being plain. I feel like it's a word that could have described Charlotte Brontë or many of the character actresses I admire. (Rebecca Jane Stokes)

de Volkskrant (Netherlands) describes the work of the illustrator John Atkinson Grimshaw:

Dat de ‘master of moonlight’ tegenwoordig geen begrip meer is, komt wellicht doordat zijn werk in maar weinig grote musea is vertegenwoordigd, veel is ondergebracht in particuliere collecties. Vaak gereproduceerd is Grimshaw desondanks wel, vooral op omslagen van victoriaanse auteurs, van Sherlock Holmes en Wilkie Collins tot R. L. Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Anne Brontë, Henry James en Joseph Conrad. (Erik van den Berg) (Translation)

For instance, this Penguin cover.

Le Temps (Switzerland) interviews the writer Alice McDermott:

Née à Brooklyn en 1953 dans une famille d’immigrés irlandais, Alice McDermott a grandi à Long Island puis, drapée dans sa tenue noire, elle a suivi l’enseignement très rigoureux d’une école catholique avant de dévorer les romancières anglaises, les sœurs Brontë, Jane Austen ou Virginia Woolf. (André Clavel) (Translation)

Le Figaro (France) explores the work of Paula Rego:

Le monde peint de Dame Paula Rego opère puissamment. Il ressemble à cette artiste de 83 ans au charme intact et espiègle, derrière les manières courtoises et l'usure de l'âge. C'est un concentré de sortilèges et de jeux. Une collection de références littéraires (Jane Eyre si romanesque de Charlotte Brontë, 1847, et sa lecture inverse par la subtile Jean Rhys dans La Prisonnière des Sargasses, 1966) et picturales, nobles ou moqueuses (de Manet et Goya à James Ensor et Odilon Redon). (Valérie Deponchelle) (Translation)

Göteborgs Posten (in Swedish) interviews the book publisher and radio/television presenter Jessika Gedin:

Som liten var det mest sagor, klassika äventyrsböcker, Sherlock Holmes och Systrarna Brontë. Vuxenlitteraturen började Jessika med ”först” i tolvårsåldern, med Günther Grass Blecktrumman. (Translation)

Aula Magna (Spain) interviews the writer Alaitz Leceaga:

 En la novela podemos notar referencias al realismo fantástico de Isabel Allende o incluso del propio García Márquez ¿son buscados? ¿qué referentes literarios podemos encontrar en usted como autora?
Isabel Allende es una de mis autoras favoritas. “La casa de los espíritus” y su manera tan especial de tejer la historia de una familia con toques fantásticos, siempre me ha encantado.
“Cumbres Borrascosas” es otra de mis referencias. El paisaje marcado de los páramos, al igual que el carácter de sus personajes, hacen que sea una de mis historias predilectas. (Teresa Fernández) (Translation)

Carme Portaceli's Jane Eyre adaptation will be performed in Móstoles, San Sebastián de los Reyes and Fuenlabrada as reported in Noticias para Municipios, Madrid Norte, Crónica Norte and Ariadna Gil is interviewed on Cadena SER (Spain).

A walker who got lost on the Brontë moors and has been happily rescued as told by The Yorkshire Post. Hopefully, he didn't get lost following the The Darlington & Stockton Times suggested 'bleaker but exciting' Brontë moors walk. The official Emily Brontë poem for the autumn (Fall, Leaves, Fall) gets quoted on Elite Daily.