Ponden Hall is on the market

Ponden Hall is on the market again. Daily Mail and Yorkshire Post talk about it:

A historic country home which housed Emily Brontë and her siblings from a storm and inspired her to write Wuthering Heights has gone on sale for £1.25million.
Ponden Hall in West Yorkshire has fascinating and well-documented connections to the literary family as Emily is said to have based parts of the Lintons' Thrushcross Grange and Heathcliffe's farmhouse in her 1847 novel on the Grade II listed home.
The property has been operating as a B&B for the last four years and is set across four acres of land in the area of Haworth.
Ponden Hall dates back, in parts, to 1541 and the main hall was built in 1634 by the Heaton family, who owned the property from 1541 to 1898.
The house, which is on the market with estate agents Fine & Country in Leeds, underwent a major renovation in 1801 - the year the story begins in Wuthering Heights, the renovations include the addition of the impressive library.
Anne, Emily and Branwell took shelter at the house in 1824 during the great Crow Hill Bog Burst, when thunderstorms and rain caused a huge mudslide while they were walking on the moor. Their father Patrick later wrote a famous sermon about the incident.
In Wuthering Heights a wealthy man called Lockwood rents a grand property called Thrushcross Grange from the landlord Heathcliff, who lives in a remote moorland farmhouse - Wuthering Heights.
Ponden Hall has always been identified with Thrushcross Grange and there are details in the book that correspond with that house - such as the room with the window where Cathy's ghost appears to Lockwood.
But more recent studies showed Ponden is also believed to have inspired the Wuthering Heights farmhouse, which it is more alike in terms of size, style and detail.
An account from the time by a man called William Davies describes being taken on a tour by Patrick Brontë and shown an old manorial farm called 'Heaton's of Ponden' which he was told was the original model for Wuthering Heights. 
Julie Akhurst and partner Steve Brown have owned the property for 20 years and started running it as a B&B four years ago.
Julie, 55, said: 'We knew very little about it when we bought it other than it was associated with Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights. We just fell in love with it and knew it was very special the minute we walked through the door.
'I started doing research and discovered it is also believed to be in the inspiration for Wuthering Heights farmhouse. In the first illustrated edition of Wuthering Heights there is an illustration of this house. (...)
'It was a B&B when we bought it and we turned it into a private house for years and then started running it as a B&B again four and a half years ago.
'We get an endless stream of visitors from all over the world - China, South America, Japan - interested in the Brontës and Wuthering Heights.
'We've done an enormous amount of renovation but we've done it gradually, it's taken about 16 years to finish everything.
'Now we're looking to retire. It could easily continue as a B&B - it's full of visitors at all times of the year - or it could easily be a private family home for someone who's a Brontë fan. (Terri-Ann Williams)

The most popular B&B room at Ponden Hall is the Earnshaw room. It features a tiny east gable window that exactly fits Emily Brontë’s description in Wuthering Heights of Cathy’s ghost scratching furiously at the glass trying to get in.
The words of the story’s narrator, Mr Lockwood, still gives readers goosebumps: “I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand.”
“We think that Emily based that scene on this room because old documents relating to the house describe a box bed in a room across from the library and you can see where it was bolted to the wall by the window. It is just how it is described in Wuthering Heights.
“Plus the date plaque above the main entrance identifies the hall as being rebuilt in 1801 and Emily’s story starts with that exact date,” says Julie who has had a replica box bed made for the room.
It pleases Emily fans, who Julie says are the most ardent of all. “There is something about Emily that makes people very emotional. She is a complete enigma. People cannot work out how a woman who had a very sheltered background wrote this dysfunctional, violent, sexual, amazing novel.”
The replica bed is indicative of the attention Julie and Steve have paid to historical detail during a renovation that has preserved and uncovered historic features while providing modern day comforts.
The Brontë sisters would certainly still recognise the property, near Haworth.
The door, the mullions, beams, wide staircase and the fireplaces are still there, along with their favourite room, the library.
Its shelves may soon contain Julie’s own book. She has enjoyed using her academic skills to research the hall’s past and is hoping to write a history of Ponden Hall.
“It would be a fitting tribute to a home that we have loved so much,” she says.
*Ponden Hall is on the market for £1.25m. (Sharon Dale)

The Telegraph & Argus and the upcoming events at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Elly Griffiths, who created the Dr Ruth Galloway series of novels, will be at the West Lane Baptist Centre to discuss her latest book The Stone Circle.
Elly was born in London and worked in publishing before becoming a full-time writer, and popular series featuring the forensic archaeologist asset in Norfolk.
The series has won the CWA Dagger in the Library Award, and has been shortlisted three times for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year.
Her Stephens and Mephisto series is based in 1950s Brighton. She lives near Brighton with her archaeologist husband and children.
Elly’s appearance is one of a series of events throughout 2019 to mark the 200th anniversary of Patrick Brontë being invited to become minister in Haworth.
While in the village his daughters Charlotte, Emily and Anne wrote their famous novels Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The Brontë Parsonage Museum will host the Celebrating Patrick day on March 17, which is both St Patrick’s Day and Patrick Brontë’s birthday.
The Brontë Society Spring Walk will be the same day at St James’s Church, Thornton, where Patrick served before moving to Haworth.
The Brontë Society is teaming up with Bradford Fair Trade for the nine-mile walk from Thornton to Haworth, where there will be a welcome of tea and birthday cake for walkers in the Old School Room.
The School Room will also be open to visitors from noon till 4pm, for the launch of a project to bring the history of Haworth to life at the time when Patrick was its perpetual curate. People are invited to go along to find out how they can get involved.
There will also be guests including Zaffar Kunial, the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s writer-in-residence, who will read from his new collection Us and talk about his plans for the residency.
The Brontë Parsonage will host its monthly Brontë Treasures session on March 29 at 2pm, when a curator will offer unique access to treasures from the museum’s collection.
The same day will see the latest Parsonage Unwrapped event at 7.30pm, entitled Breaking The Mould, focusing on the unconventional streak manifested in the lives of Patrick, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne.
A spokesman said: “When the Brontë novels were first published, their work was viewed as accomplished, ground-breaking and quite frequently controversial.” (David Knights)

iNews vindicates the figure of Patrick Brontë:

The first rule of any children’s adventure is to get rid of the parents. Children’s literature came out of an adult desire to impart morality and history, but quickly ran away from that into a children-only world of entertainment and fantasy.
If the world of your child’s imagination seems remote, imagine how Patrick Brontë felt, a widowed clergyman who tried to bring up his four surviving children alone. There he was, sitting at his desk, writing his sermon, while in the corner of the same room, his kids were being The Brontës.
The Brontë children had a vast imaginary world, for which they produced maps, history books and newspapers. It began when Charlotte and Bramwell invented the Glass Town Confederacy and populated it with Bramwell’s toy soldiers.
When the younger Emily and Anne were finally allowed to join in, they staged an insurrection by discovering Gondal, an imaginary island of their own, and going to war. The children kept on visiting and elaborating these shared worlds into their twenties.
We know now that this was the crucible in which some of the greatest works of literature were forged. Some of Emily’s most heart-scalding poems are about invented characters. But Patrick couldn’t have known that the Gondal game had any value at all. Maybe he found it worrying.
They often talk about the place in the present tense – “the Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine” – the way modern gamers locked in their bedrooms on endless Call of Duty sessions do.
But he let them get on with it, allowing one of the most sustained, exuberant bouts of creativity on record. He already knew that reading for pure pleasure had its rewards.
He was born into poverty in Ireland, but his habit of reciting Milton caught the attention of a local vicar and, instead of spending his life picking spuds and delivering linen, Patrick ended up in Cambridge. There is an exhibition dedicated to him at Haworth Parsonage at the moment.
He lost two children – to typhus and tuberculosis – and his wife to cancer, so it is profoundly moving that he spent so much of his energy visiting the sick and campaigning for improved conditions.
The one photograph of him – a weary old man, who has tragically outlived everyone he loved – is not endearing. It is hard not to feel the isolation of the lone parent left on the boring side of the magic wardrobe while the children built their fantastical empires.
But when you look a bit closer at the Gondal world, you can see it is full of Patrick. After all, he was the one who gave Bramwell those toy soldiers. The maps of the fictional countries are based on the schoolroom maps he used to educate his children.
The stories themselves are a kind of fan fiction about the Duke of Wellington, fantasy versions of what he was reading about in his newspapers. We are the stories we tell, and our children are listening even when we think they’re not.
In the summer of 1846 he underwent a pioneering eye operation for his cataracts. It involved cutting his eyeball – without anaesthetic. Afterwards he had to stay “in darkness and inertion” for weeks while it healed. Charlotte stayed with him in the dark room. There was nothing to do but talk.
If the world of your child’s imagination seems remote, imagine how Patrick Brontë felt
Patrick’s dad, for all his poverty, had been that high-status thing: a great storyteller – what’s known in Gaelic as a seanchai. Patrick changed his name from Prunty to Brontë but he never changed his accent. That storyteller’s voice from a remote Irish cabin found an echo in an industrial town in Yorkshire and in the pages of the novel Charlotte wrote shortly after. At the heart of Jane Eyre is a strong man made dependent by blindness. (Frank Cottrell-Boyce)

The Wall Street Journal reviews the new book by Lucasta Miller,  L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron":

In her first book, “The Brontë Myth” (2001), Lucasta Miller retrieved the three scribbling sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, from more than 150 years of variously fabricated identities and liberated their writings from the clutch of myth. (Katherine A. Powers)

Financial Times reviews the novel Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi:

It has strong magical realist notes, drawing on elements of folklore and fairy tale and its broad sphere of reference takes in Emilys Dickinson and Brontë, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Emile Zola, Jerry Springer, fado music and Stormzy. (Susie Boyt)

Once Again NPR's Ask Me Another makes a Brontë reference:

Ophira Eisenberg: According to Merriam-Website (ph), the first word in this book's title means to blow with a dull, roaring sound. In the next four paragraphs, I'll discuss why Emily Brontë chose to do these sounds from up high instead of down low. They're both thinking. I'll give you a hint. It's Emily Brontë's only novel.
(Laughter)
Jonathan Coulton: Just make a list of all of her novels, and look right at the top.
Eisenberg: Right at the top.
(Laughter)
Eisenberg: The main character's name is Heathcliff.
Allison Kave: Oh.
(Soundbite of Bell)
Eisenberg: Allison.
Kave: "Wuthering Heights."
Eisenberg: That is correct.
(Applause)

 Bel Mooney, columnist of the Daily Mail is clearly a Brontëite:

I’ve read empowering statements about women (Jane Eyre and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall); re-met one of the nastiest sociopaths in literature (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights); and faced cross-cultural conflicts in Brussels (Villette) and desperate workers trying to protect their livelihoods (Shirley — both those by Charlotte Brontë).
Shirley is set against a background of wars and foreign trade problems, which struck a powerful chord. Agnes Grey (Anne Brontë) exposes cruelty to animals and to governesses — making me reflect gloomily that in this age of puppy farms, dog and cock fights and the sexual exploitation of women things haven’t moved on much.

From victim to survivor. The story of Elizabeth Smart in the Star-Telegram:

The key to making that transformation from victim to survivor may be two profound understandings.
One is that a predator can torment your body, but can’t get to the spirit inside, like the character in “Jane Eyre” who learns he can’t get to the bird — the soul, the spirit — inside Jane’s cage. (Michael Ryan)

BuzzFeed and books to start again:

Jane Eyre
The classic coming-of-age story of Jane Eyre as she grows into an adult and falls in love with Mr. Rochester.
"I know it's a classic, but I love it. To me it epitomizes the idea of a second chance, not only for Rochester, but also for Jane, who is given multiple chances at having a family." —Ariel Teague (Arianna Rebolini)

The Independent interviews the Russian chef Alissa Timoshkina:

This diversity is reflected in her own background. She was born to a mother of Jewish Ukrainian heritage and a father whose family hailed from Russia’s far east, and came to England at 15 to attend boarding school, a “Jane Eyre experience,” she says. (Julia Platt Leonard)

Female characterization in Destructoid:

Perhaps no one exemplifies female individualism more tangibly than Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847). In spite of 19th-century cultural biases against women, Jane Eyre demonstrated a level of assertiveness that she nurtured from her time in her aunt's "care" (to put it generously) to her tenure as governess in Thornfield Hall. Even as she developed a romantic fondness for the estate's master, Jane Eyre still tried to hold her ground in the face of adversity (e.g. Blanche Ingram, the truth behind Rochester's marital situation), to the point where she was willing to start over by teaching at a village school instead of sacrificing her self-control to Rochester by returning his feelings for her. Given the patriarchal mores of the Georgian era, the fact that Jane Eyre (successfully) attempted to become Rochester's equal through her leveraging of her past experience and vocation makes her individualistic character arc all the more remarkable and bold. (Michel Sabbagh)

Reader's Digest and siblings who changed history:

Charlotte (born 1816), Emily (born 1818), and Anne (born 1829) were the only Brontë sisters to survive childhood. Often left alone together, the isolated girls wrote stories to entertain themselves. In adulthood, each went on to become a novelist: Charlotte wrote Jayne Eyre (sic!), Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne penned Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Although Anne may be less well-known now than Charlotte or Emily, her novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a best-seller in 1848 and sold more copies than Emily’s 1948 novel, Wuthering Heights. (Lauren Cahn)

Nerds and Beyond interviews actress and comedian Alison Becker:

Britt: Favorite book?
Alison Becker: Wuthering Heights

The Statesman and Gothic Romances that will question your beliefs:

Wuthering Heights
Authored by Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece. Published in 1847, this story follows the doomed story of Catherine and Heathcliff—a love story spanning generations. Heathcliff and Catherine are in love with each other, it is obvious to everyone. However, when Catherine decides to marry Edgar Linton, mainly for his wealth and social status, Heathcliff is distraught and goes away. He comes back and plans his revenge against everyone and is successful in ruining the lives of almost everyone who wronged him. A complex character, Heathcliff garners our sympathy as well as our anger. The reader, most of the times, does not know what to feel about him.
Through Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë has created a classic tale of love, obsession, insanity and revenge. (Shreya Thapliyal)

Jane Eyre is the perfect YA novel, according to Tweetspeakpoetry:

 I also could not stop thinking about how Jane is the perfect YA hero.
Reading deeply led to researching (somewhat deeply) and then to writing deeply. I came up with a list of 11 characteristics of YA novels and why Jane Eyre is one of them. (Megan Willome)

SVT (Sweden) talks about the new adaptation by Tone Schunnessson of Jane Eyre being performed in Göteborg:

 När klassikern Jane Eyre sätts upp på Folkteatern i Göteborg har ”den galna kvinnan på vinden” fått komma ned från fångenskapen på vinden – och börjat tala.
Charlotte Brontës klassiska roman ”Jane Eyre” från 1847 har älskats, filmatiserats och dramatiserats i oändlighet. Men det hindrade inte författaren Tone Schunnesson från att göra sin egen tolkning av den.
– Jag tänker att det är en evig berättelse, för den handlar om alla de stora sakerna; att bli fri, att bli sin egen, att bli förälskad, galenskap, hemlöshet, fattigdom…säger Tone Schunnesson när Kulturnyheterna träffer henne inför premiären av Jane Eyre på Folkteatern.
En förutsättning för att hon skulle vilja göra en bearbetning av romanen var att karaktären Bertha Mason, den ”galna kvinnan på vinden”, skulle få repliker.
– Framförallt vill jag ge Bertha en röst för att jag är väldigt nyfiken på henne och känner igen mig i henne. Snarare kändes det som att det skulle vara svårt att dramatisera pjäsen på något annat sätt, utan att ge henne röst. Det var inte något politiskt eller aktivistiskt beslut – utan ett mänskligt. För mig var det helt nödvändigt att hon skulle få börja tala, säger Tone Schunesson. (Read more) (Translation)

To put together in the same sentence Borges, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Heathcliff is not for the faint of heart. La Razón (México) does the trick:

Igual que Borges, científicos como el físico Stephen Hawking y el matemático Roger Penrose se han preguntado si el Universo es infinito, si empezó a existir en un momento determinado (el Big Bang) o siempre ha estado ahí. También se preguntan si hay un número incontable de universos. Esto también trae a la mesa la cuestión de si el tiempo es infinito o no, pues a partir de la revolución del pensamiento que inició Albert Einstein al publicar la Teoría general de la relatividad, los físicos consideran que el espacio y el tiempo son lo mismo. Son como Catherine y Heathcliff, los amantes eternos que no pueden existir uno sin el otro, los doppelgänger de la novela Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë. (Gabriela Frías Villegas) (Translation)

Le Monde (France) reviews the French translation of Rodrigo Fresán's La Parte Soñada:

De là ses brochettes de citations en exergue : Nabokov, Dickens, Brontë, Proust, etc. (Claro) (Translation)

El Diario de Burgos (Spain) interviews the Film Symphony Orchestra musical director, Constantino Martínez-Orts:

Diego Santamaría.- John Williams. Más de un centenar de bandas sonoras a sus espaldas. Supongo que hacer criba habrá sido complicado...
CMO.- Ha sido muy complicado. De hecho, decidimos partir el homenaje en dos programas porque podríamos haber hecho tres o cuatro conciertos, pero ya era demasiado y era una propuesta mucho más ambiciosa. Tuvimos que hacer esa criba y dejar algunos temas en el tintero que nos hemos quedado con ganas de interpretar. Por ejemplo, temas de culto como Jane Eyre. Ha sido muy complicado, pero creo que de alguna manera hemos sido bastante justos y el recorrido que se hace por su filmografía, que al fin y al cabo es toda su vida, recoge de una manera bastante completa los grandes títulos y las obras maestras desconocidas, esas joyas que se interpretan muy poco en concierto y que pensamos que había que incluir. (Translation)

News Biella (Italy) talks about a recent Brontë-related event that took place in Biella, Italy:

Lo scrittore e giornalista biellese Pier Francesco Gasparetto è stato ospite del Lions Club Biella Bugella Civitas per una conferenza al Circolo Sociale Biellese sul tema “Donne e letteratura: il mito delle sorelle Brontë”, alla presenza del prefetto Annunziata Gallo.
L'incontro ha voluto ricordare le tre celebri scrittrici ottocentesche attraverso il romanzo del professor Gasparetto “Casa Brontë”, uscito nel 1991, con il commento e la lettura di alcuni brani.
Nel corso della serata sono state inoltre proiettate le immagini dei luoghi dove hanno vissuto Emily, Charlotte e Anne, ma anche i loro ritratti e le fotografie delle pellicole cinematografiche più celebri che hanno rese famose nel mondo le autrici di “Cime Tempestose” e “Jane Eyre”. (Translation)

Cugat.Cat (in Catalan) recommends the performances of Jane Eyre in Sant Cugat del Vallès. Studenti (in Itaian) posts about Wuthering Heights. Bustle quotes from Charlotte Brontë in a compilation of quotes for women's history month. L'Express (France) finds the Wuthering Heights (house) of the tropics in Saint Helena. Libreriamo (Italy) describes Agnes Cecilia by Maria Gripe as her most Brontëan novel.