Modern biographers don't have cooks

On LitHub, Lucasta Miller discusses 'the obsessions of the literary biographer'.

Literary biographers are in it for the long haul. Researching the lives of dead novelists and poets can take years. Ten is not unheard of, especially when the subject has not been “done” before. My first book, The Brontë Myth, took about eight years from inception to publication—in fact more, because the idea had been simmering for some time before I begun. My second book—L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron”—has been nearly nine years in the making. Only obsession can explain what keeps the literary biographer going.
Of course, I’ve done all sorts of other stuff in the meanwhile: journalism, editing, teaching, not to mention bringing up children and keeping a house while my musician husband was on the road. I sometimes think of the Victorian novelist and mother of four, Mrs. Gaskell, when she was working on her Life of Charlotte Brontë in the 1850s. She used to sit at the dining-room table writing, while fielding domestic interruptions from, say, the cook, who wanted instructions as to what to make for the next family meal. She completed her life of Charlotte Brontë in only two years. I don’t have a cook. [...]
One thing I did learn, however, from critical theory was that the art of biography was a cultural practice. In The Brontë Myth, I took a carefully detached stance, exploring the Brontës’ image through history to show how biographers’ perceptions were influenced by their own cultural preoccupations, but largely avoiding the messy business of being a biographer myself. [...]
I first heard of Letitia Landon—who was known by her initials “L.E.L.” and called the female Byron in her day—through the Brontës, who read her poetry as teenagers. At that time, I felt almost embarrassed to discover that the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had admired Landon, who was (if she was remembered at all) regarded throughout the 20th century as an “insipid” minor lady sentimentalist.

Aftonbladet (Sweden) reviews Tone Schunnesson's stage adaptation of Jane Eyre currently on stage at Göteborg's Folkteatern.

Ett komiskt raster på Jane Eyre låter motsägelsefullt. Men okej, allt är möjligt på teatern, och här tiltas dramat alltså åt det absurda hållet. Det fungerar stundtals, till exempel i händerna på Lena B Nilsson. Hennes jovialiska Mrs Fairfax har exakt tajming och humorn sitter som en lågmäld smäck. Den stora behållningen är annars samspelet mellan Jane Eyre och Mr Rochester. Emma Österlöf och Francisco Sobrado är storslagna tillsammans.
Men i stort grumlar en massa frustande, bisarra inslag dramats essens.
Möjligen hade det klaffat om man vågat sänka pulsen. Skådespelarna levererar sina repliker som om det brann i knutarna. Kanske för att den vindlande sagan behövt anpassas för scen. Men synd just för att det saktfärdiga, passionerade berättandet bleknar.
När det kommer till Bertha fungerar tempot bättre. Nina Jemth Öhlund är ursinnigt otäck, full av kraft och ger nya ledtrådar om den hemliga hysterikan på vinden. Målningar, böcker och danskonst har försökt tränga bakom hennes psykotiska pannben. Jemth Öhlund ger Bertha nerv och konturer. Knuten är skambeläggande snarare än galenskap.
Det känns logiskt och rimligt. Desto svajigare ter sig publikfriande inslag som fyllefesten där Jane blir mobbad av sin antagonist Blanche i strumpeband.
Scenografin är smart och antyder jämte kostymen att det här skulle kunna utspela sig i dag, men lika gärna under viktorianska eran. Med det senare följer att klass- och könshierarkierna som i romanen är tydliga och en bärande förklaring till att relationerna kompliceras.
På Folkteatern behåller man bara fragment av dessa maktordningar. Jane föraktas: en alldaglig guvernant utan anor. Samtidigt har rollen gjorts nutida i sitt uppstudsiga sätt gentemot människor med mer makt, och till sitt eget själsliv. Andrea Edwards och Helmon Solomon gestaltar Janes inre och publiken får på så vis ta del av hennes tankar.
Även det ett snyggt drag i en överambitiös helhet. (Liv Landell Major) (Translation)

Westword reviews The Moors, currently on stage at the Arvada Center’s Black Box Repertory Theatre.

The title alone tells you that this play is about the Brontës — but if they’re imaginatively central, they’re peripheral in terms of plot. Two strange and lonely sisters live in a barren, featureless house in the bleak middle of the Yorkshire moors (a running joke throughout is that the set barely changes as it supposedly morphs from bedroom to parlor and back again). The Brontë sisters had a mad brother, Branwell, and here someone called Branwell is imprisoned in the attic like Rochester’s mad wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. But the sisters aren’t Charlotte, Anne or Emily; they are childish Huldey and cruel, cold Agatha. An Emilie does arrive eventually; she’s a governess lured by the warm letters she believes were written to her by Branwell. In short, if you’re trying to piece together autobiographical fact or bits of plot from the novels, if you’d like Heathcliff himself to show up in all his dark rage and desolate love, you’re going to be disappointed. Though the sisters’ Mastiff, like Heathcliff, does enter a doomed love affair and — also like Heathcliff — would rather destroy than lose the object of his affection. Which happens to be a Moor-Hen, incapacitated by an injured leg.
Huldey and Agatha have almost nothing in common, though each wants to write, seeks immortality in her own way, and is intrigued by journals. Their maid, Marjory or Madeline — her identity is fluid and she’s either pregnant or suffering from typhus or both — seethes as she performs her menial tasks and eventually comes up with a revenge plot that leads to an ongoing question of just who will murder whom. She’s well played by Annie Barbour.
An overarching theme is loneliness and the need to be seen, and the Mastiff, played by Geoffrey Kent, expresses these painful feelings more eloquently than the sisters ever do, though his thoughts tend to be fragmented. His relationship with the memory-challenged Moor-Hen is so funny and sweet, and so deftly played by Kent and Emily Van Fleet, that you set aside all reservations about biological differences — not to mention the sheer ridiculousness of the premise — and actually care about the outcome. Both actors do just enough to remind you of their creatures’ non-human status — Van Fleet with occasional birdlike movements of her head, Kent with rambunctious, doggy capers — while communicating seriously human emotions.
All of the acting is splendid: Emma Messenger is riveting as nasty, conniving Agatha, and Regina Fernandez’s perpetual smile as governess Emilie begins sweetly ingratiating moves through puzzlement and dawning understanding, and ultimately becomes so mean and secretive that it chills your blood. Then there’s Jessica Robblee’s Huldey: Give a highly talented actor a role with so many facets, where she can go from limited, flat statements to an outburst of song that mingles rock and ballad with a ruthless belt reminiscent of the murderesses in the musical Chicago, and you get one of those knockout performances that — almost alone —can make a critic’s life happy and worthwhile.
I can’t claim that I ever put the pieces of The Moors together into a coherent whole, or found a way to fit the script into the tradition of such absurdists as Ionesco. But given an evening as wonderfully distracting, crazed and absorbing as this, who cares? (Juliet Wittman)

Harper's Bazaar takes up the story of Ponden Hall being on the market.

Brontë biographer Winifred Gerin thought that the building was also the basis for Wildfell Hall, the old mansion from Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The Brontë sisters made regular visits to Ponden Hall in the 19th century, once seeking shelter there after being caught in a mudslide and storm in 1824. They then became friends with the owners, and used to borrow books from their library.
The nine-bedroom house near Haworth was transformed into a B&B in 2014 and is popular with Brontë fans making literary pilgrimages. The most sought-after room is the Earnshaw room, which features a tiny east gable window that matches Brontë’s description in Wuthering Heights of Cathy’s ghost scratching at the glass trying to get in. (Ella Alexander)

Here's how Slate describes the memorable character Dylan McKay, played by Luke Perry, who died on Monday.

He was a brooding Heathcliff with a Porsche, a Byron of monosyllabic California brah poetry (“It’s Dylan, you know the drill”), and—with his pompadour, sideburns, trick eyebrow, leather jacket, white T-shirts, and sensitive soul—most certainly a knockoff James Dean. (Willa Paskin)

Wallpaper features Alexander McQueen's Autumn/winter 2019 collection:

It was on rolls of those very textiles (used in her collection too) that guests were invited to sit on at the Lycée Carnot, immediately setting a mood that combined with all things Northern, from the woollen fabrics to the local Rose Queen festival traditions, the Brontë sisters, the punk aesthetics and the heyday of Factory Records. The collection was a brilliant summary of all this. (Marta Represa)

And so does WWD:

For the collection’s overtly feminine side, Burton drew inspiration from multiple sources connected to the north of England — rose festivals, the Brontës, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, who lived in the region, and the mills. Burton used humble white poplin for a full-skirted shirtdress, and interrupted the ottoman stitching of a body-con knit dress with insets of “floating threads” inspired by the configuration of a fabric looms. Another specific mill reference: an off-beat silvery number embroidered all over with long sequins inspired by those heddle needles. They shook when the model walked, creating shimmer and a cheeky sound effect. (Bridget Foley)

The Sun has included a quote by Charlotte Brontë among other 'inspirational words from J.K. Rowling, Michelle Obama and Beyoncé to mark' International Women's Day on Friday.