Steeped in Brontë history

NewsD (India) highlights 'Five influential novels by women writers with enduring impact on literature and society', such as

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The eldest of the famous Brontë sisters wrote the novel under pseudonym (as was the practice with female authors of the time) in 1847. The novel, in a first person narrative, recounts the life events of its heroine in a commanding and intimate voice. Since its publication the novel has been hailed as an effective analysis of feminism, Christian morality, colonialism, class divide, madness, and sexuality. Jane’s famous speech where she asserts her identity is now recognized as powerful examination of female self and consciousness. Subsequent analysis have explored the role of colonial subject and the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, told from the point of view of Rochester’s first wife Bertha Mason, is regarded as a classic in itself. (Swati Saxena)

The New York Times recommends

Ballet Theater shifts its mood starting on Tuesday with the company premiere of Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre,”based on the Charlotte Brontë novel and featuring Devon Teuscher and James Whiteside as the leads on opening night. Marston, who choreographed the work for Northern Ballet in 2016, prides herself on bringing new perspectives to old narratives. As for the other principals who will take a stab at Jane? Isabella Boylston and Misty Copeland. The ballet continues through June 10. (Gia Kourlas)

Daily Beast reviews the film Ma.

Ma calls on various hallmarks and tropes from all over the place—Carrie, Jane Eyre, Misery, Saw, Hulu’s recent The Act—which is a polite way of giving the script far too much credit, instead of just calling it out for its shoulder-shrug, kitchen-sink writing. (Kevin Fallon)

The Business Desk chats with Penny Emmett, chief customer officer at Yorkshire-based assured resource provider, Cranford Group, about all things Yorkshire.

What is your favourite place to visit in Yorkshire and why? Howarth [sic] – I like the high street, with its old cobbles and lovely shops. I also enjoy the walks around the area – plus it’s steeped in Brontë history! (Rachel Covill)

Fantasy Magazine (Italy) announces that Jasper Fforde, author of The Eyre Affair, will be taking part at Stranimondi 2019 (12-13 October in Milan).

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Playing House Detectives!

An alert for today, May 31, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Parsonage Unwrapped: Playing House Detectives!
Friday 31 May 2019
19.30 h
A unique after-hours event

Join a member of our curatorial team and discover a different side to the Parsonage! This guided tour will help you uncover the clues hidden in the historic parts of the house and reveal what it would have been like in the Brontës’ time.

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Lady Caroline Lamb's influence on Emily Brontë

Only this for today: Anderson Valley Advertiser has an article on Lord Byron, his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb and her novel Glenarvon.

His affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, the spirited and eccentric wife of a future prime minister, offered an especially lurid proof of the byword’s sexual prowess. Lamb was seduced before she had met Byron at Holland House, an intellectual headquarters for English liberals. Once introduced, she told her diary, “That beautiful pale face will be my fate,” becoming so instantly intoxicated that Annabella Milbanke likened her to a rabid dog: “I really thought that Lady Caroline had bit half the company,” she wrote, “and communicated the Nonsense mania.” Despite being raised to privilege and wealth, Lamb had endured an almost feral childhood, brought up in the wilderness of a mansion with a distant mother and father and little formal schooling in spite of unusual intelligence. From the start of their relationship, Byron and the “evil genius,” as Byron dubbed Lamb, behaved as if they were characters in one of his poems, establishing elaborate games of courtship that included cross-dressing and sex by proxy. She sent him gifts of her pubic hair and asked for his blood by return of post. Byron recoiled at an imagination “heated by novel reading.” Wearying of her histrionics, he took respite in the arms of her rival Lady Oxford, sending Caroline into a fit of near insanity from which it took her several years to recover.
      Part of her rehabilitation involved the composition of a novel, Glenarvon, written in secret while dressed as a man. A roman à clef of thinly veiled portraits of the entire Holland House set in which she moved, it was remarkable not only for a sustained emotional pitch that bordered on incoherence, but also for its caricature of the affair in which she portrayed herself as the ethereal waif Calantha and Byron as the Irish rebel Lord Glenarvon. Glenarvon is the prototypical demon lover, part Vicomte de Valmont, part Samuel Richardson’s Lovelace, and easily seen as the forerunner of Emily Brontë's Heathcliff, stalking ruined priories, howling like a dog at the moon, showing to his victims a face that glowered “as if the soul of passion had been stamped and printed upon every feature.” Drawn inextricably to the powerless Calantha, he announces “my love is death,” while plunging into a sadomasochistic liaison that results in her utter degradation: “Weep,” cries Glenarvon, binding her tighter to him, “I like to see your tears; they are the last tears of expiring virtue. Henceforward you will shed no more.” (Andrew McConnell Stott)

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You, Me, and the Sea

A new novel with Wuthering Heights inspiration:

You, Me, and the Sea
A Novel
by Meg Donohue
ISBN: 9780062429858
Harper Collins - William Morrow Paperbacks
05/07/2019

From the USA Today bestselling author of All the Summer Girls and Dog Crazy comes a spellbinding and suspenseful tale inspired by Wuthering Heights that illuminates the ways in which hope—and even magic—can blossom in the darkest of places.

To find her way, she must abandon everything she loves…
As a child, Merrow Shawe believes she is born of the sea: strong, joyous, and wild. Her beloved home is Horseshoe Cliff, a small farm on the coast of Northern California where she spends her days exploring fog-cloaked bluffs, swimming in the cove, and basking in the light of golden sunsets as her father entertains her with fantastical stories. It is an enchanting childhood, but it is not without hardship—the mystery of Merrow’s mother’s death haunts her, as does the increasingly senseless cruelty of her older brother, Bear.
Then, like sea glass carried from a distant land, Amir arrives in Merrow’s life. He’s been tossed about from India to New York City and now to Horseshoe Cliff, to stay with her family. Merrow is immediately drawn to his spirit, his passion, and his resilience in the face of Bear’s viciousness. Together they embrace their love of the sea, and their growing love for each other.
But the ocean holds secrets in its darkest depths. When tragedy strikes, Merrow is forced to question whether Amir is really the person she believed him to be. In order to escape the danger she finds herself in and find her own path forward, she must let go of the only home she’s ever known, and the only boy she’s ever loved.... 

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The kind of people who play Brontë scenes out in their minds

On Literary Hub, Meg Donohue, author of the Wuthering Heights-inspired novel You, Me, and the Sea, discusses 'Why We’ll Never Get Tired of Literary Retellings' and goes to select her favourite twelve.

I make an effort to read a wide variety of books, but the genre that I find myself drawn to time and again is retellings of classic novels. I’ve yet to hear about a new twist on a timeless tale that doesn’t sound compelling to me. In fact, it’s a niche of storytelling that I enjoy so much that I’ve written my own entry into the genre, a novel entitled You, Me, and the Sea that is inspired by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. As I worked on my novel, I spent a lot of time thinking about my favorite retellings, and what it is, exactly, that makes these stories so endearing to readers—and writers. What I’ve come to believe is that reimaginings present a unique delight to readers because they manage to combine the pleasure of surprising twists with the comfort of a familiar story. [...]
And then there’s the pleasure of spotting the similarities and differences between the new novel and the one to which it pays homage—an English major’s version of Where’s Waldo. Retellings come in all shapes and sizes, with some adhering strictly to the plotline of their source of inspiration, and others using the older novel as a springboard to something entirely new. Some retellings, like Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (inspired by Jane Eyre), shift the story so that readers view it from a new perspective, giving voice to a character whose voice was not heard in the original. Others, like Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, have the story unfold in a different era, often revealing the ways in which the themes at the heart of the classic novel are timeless. [...]
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
If at a certain point retellings surpass the genre and become classics themselves, Wide Sargasso Sea has certainly done so. Published in 1966,  Rhys’s novel brilliantly reimagines Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from the point of view of the first Mrs. Rochester, the mad wife locked in the attic, and in so doing turns the classic entirely on its head, making the reader see each character in a new light. Brontë created strong, passionate female characters, and Rhys’s novel takes these characters several startling, feminist leaps forward. I believe this is the first novel I ever read that was directly inspired by another, jumpstarting my love for fresh takes on classics. [...]
Lyndsay Faye, Jane Steele
“Reader, I murdered him.” From this line—a zinger of a twist on one of the most famous sentences in literature—I was hopelessly hooked on this inventive reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Set in Victorian England, with Jane retooled as a witty serial killer, Jane Steele manages to capture all of the dark, romantic energy of the original story while refashioning it into something entirely new, fast-paced, and deeply entertaining.

Writer Morgan Meis talks about the Brontës and Wuthering Heights for Image.

Here's a scene I play out in my mind. The Brontë sisters (and little Branwell, of course) are sitting around the house in Bradford one fine mid-nineteenth-century afternoon. It’s a Saturday. The children have just been reading Byron’s “Darkness” aloud to one another for the umpteenth time. Or not reading it at all, as they have memorized it and can recite it at will:
_____ I had a dream, which was not all a dream….
Suddenly the postman comes to the door. I have no idea, actually, how the post was delivered in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the early to mid-nineteenth century, but let’s say it happened like this. The children run to the door. Patrick Brontë flips through the mail as the children cluster around him. He hands Emily a piece of mail covered in brown paper. Everyone knows exactly what this is. It is the latest edition of Blackwood’s Magazine, which the children will devour over the next months, reading each story, poem, and essay over and over again.
These same Brontë sisters will have the good sense to produce a mere handful of truly great works of literature and then die tragically young. Bravo.
One of these is Wuthering Heights, written by Emily. Wuthering Heights ranks, to me, as one of the greatest works of world literature partly because I’m still not sure I understand what it is. Even the plot confuses me, with its story wrapped in various nestlings of telling and retelling. The first two times I read it, I was baffled and mildly annoyed. And yet. The way others discussed the book kept me coming back. And a childhood memory of my father coming down the hallway late one night just after he’d given me a tattered paperback copy of the book, crying, “Heathcliff…. heathcliff….” with a mischievous smile at the corner of his mouth. And all the terrible movies that could never capture the book’s dark mystery. And all the literary essays that try and fail to penetrate its heart. And Kate Bush dancing, ridiculously, wonderfully, in her flowing red dress in the woods somewhere.
_____ Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy
_____ I’ve come home, I’m so cold
_____ Let me in through your window
Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” was released in 1978. That’s about 130 years of marinating in one book. And Wuthering Heights cannot, now, be disinterred from all that marinating, ruminating, slow digesting. All the stuff piled on top of the book has become one with the book; the Wuthering Heights of 2019 is a rich, encrusted, heavy thing.

Chicago Reader has selected 'Five films that address the position of women and sexual mores' of 19th-century women, including The Piano.

Set during the 19th century, this original story by Campion—which evokes at times some of the romantic intensity of Emily Brontë—focuses on a Scottish widow (Holly Hunter) who hasn't spoken since her childhood, presumably by choice, and whose main form of self-expression is her piano playing. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

The Telegraph and Argus announces that Prince Edward will be 'spending the day at Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, Ingrow Church and Bahamas Locomotive Society' on Friday and

From Ingrow West Station, he will board the beautiful L&Y Club Car, one of KWVR’s most luxurious carriages that dates back to 1912 to enjoy tea and cake on board whilst travelling through the beautiful Brontë countryside down to Keighley.

The death of Anne Brontë 170 years ago yesterday on AnneBrontë.org and on the Brontë Parsonage Twitter account. Sadly, Writergurlny also wrote a post about Anne for the occasion but got dates mixed up and celebrated her birthday (which is actually on January 17th). Bookish Whimsy posts about the 1950 TV adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Donna Reed as Jane and Vincent Price as Rochester. The Write Now! people try to renew interest in this alleged photograph of the Brontës.

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Wild Wednesday! Little Books

An alert for today, May 29th, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Wednesday 29 May, 11am-4pm
Wild Wednesday! Little Books
We think Patrick Brontë would have liked his children writing stories - but they wrote such tiny books he couldn't read them! Come along and try your hand at making your own little book - there'll be lots of lovely bits and bobs to decorate with and make it look really special.

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Miniature Dollhouse Books

Little Things of Interest sells miniature book for dollhouses of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in different scales: 1:6; 1:12 and 1:24.

For instance, this Wuthering Heights 1:6 miniature book:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, opens and has 12 pages and measures approximately 3/4 of an inch high by 5/8 of an inch wide. The title is prominent on the spine so it will look GREAT open or closed. Filled with quotes from the book such as “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” and “I have to remind myself to breathe -- almost to remind my heart to beat!”
I personally design every book which can take up to 2 hours. Scaled perfectly for your dollhouse, room box, dollhouse coffee table or a book shelf in your miniature scene. All my books that are 1/12 scale have miniature hard covers. Most of my miniature books are readable BOOKS. They are printed on both sides of the page with a readable passages. All of my books interior paper, hardcover book board covers, ink and glues are acid-free archival quality.
This is a collectors item and it is not recommended for small children.

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170 years without Anne Brontë

It is 170 years since Anne Brontë died in Scarborough and a couple of foreign sites put her in the spotlight: TeleSur (Venezuela) and Libreriamo (Italy).

On Twitter, the Brontë Parsonage retweeted a celebratory walk.

Ann Brontë died aged 29 in #Scarborough 170 years ago today. I marked it yesterday by doing this walk, thanks @ChrisGoddardMap weather (inc hailstorms!) evident by its condition! @BronteParsonage #brontecountry #Yorkshire pic.twitter.com/ib7lXSjgOh

— Robin Tuddenham (@robintuddenham) May 28, 2019

Première (France) comments on the first trailer of Jennifer Kent's film The Nightingale.

Il y a assurément du Emily Brontë dans cette première bande-annonce de The Nightingale, nouveau film signé Jennifer Kent, l’auteure du macabre Mister Babadook. Que cela soit dans les costumes du XIX°, la forêt dense et fantomatique, les effusions subtiles d’hémoglobine et le destin tragique de son héroïne. (François Rieux) (Translation)

The Sisters' Room features the 2017 project by Lynn Setterington in Collaboration with the Brontë Parsonage, Sew Near - Sew Far.

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The Faces of Sisterhood

A recently published thesis with Brontë-related content:

The Contradictory Faces of “Sisterhood”: A Case-Study on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Its Theatrical Adaptation by James Willing and Leonard Rae, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies and Its Miniseries Adaptation on HBO
Lama Alsulaiman, Chapman University
2019
First Advisor
Dr. Joanna Levin
Second Advisor
Dr. Myron Yeager
Third Advisor
Dr. Brian Glaser

Abstract
Feminist “Sisterhood” has been a debatable term throughout multiple generations and its ideology is mostly rejected by feminists in the younger generation. The concept mainly denotes a sense of collectivity and it is viewed as a gendered term due to its coinage by second wave feminists as a response to patriarchy. Hence, “Sisterhood” authorizes a collective identity that portrays women as victims and thereby the ideology that is associated with this term reduces the complexity and fluidity of female identity. Various representations of female bonds, in the political, literary and filmic spheres, have valued the idea of collectivity among females, even up to our present day. In order to deconstruct the attempts to redeem “Sisterhood” as an all-inclusive term, I trace representations of the ideology of “Sisterhood” in selected literary, theatrical and televisual works from multiple generations to argue for the rejection of this term and the inability to validate it as inclusive due to its insistence on a collective identity that imposes a blindness to and an underrepresentation of otherness. I explore how “Sisterhood” results in the objectification of females’ experiences in order to serve identity molds that restrict a female’s representation as an individual. I highlight this problematic ideology in Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë and a theatrical adaptation of the novel by James Willing and Leonard Rae (1879); The Women of Brewster Place (1982) by Gloria Naylor; Big Little Lies (2014) by Liane Moriarty and an adaptation of the novel as a miniseries on HBO (2017). While deconstructing the ideology of perceiving female bonds through the lens of “Sisterhood,” I conclude that the concept is problematic in relation to the portrayal of “other” females, and I demonstrate how it is also flawed on a general level since it takes away from the individuality of each woman portrayed throughout this ideology in order to meet specific commonalities among her “sisters.” Although the ideology of “Sisterhood” is outdated and restrictive, we can’t deny, as I further explore, that the investment in portraying it has contributed to raising important female issues.

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The right to a rich interior life (and a portrait)

The Daily Mail considers the fact that 'midlife' women have their portraits painted newsworthy. Is it? Should it?

I love Brontë novels about plain governesses, who demand the right to a rich interior life, and refuse to accept the fate laid down for them. And I think Philippa has captured that. Every day I walk past my portrait. This woman, who I both am, and am not, has taken up residence in my house. And heart. She’ll be with me for ever. (Liz Hoggard)

Here's how Aftonbladet (Sweden) sums up Caitlin Moran's books:

Konsten att bli känd hänger ihop med de tidigare böckerna Konsten att bli kvinna (2012) och Konsten att skapa en tjej (2014), och bubblar fram på Morans ­karakteristiska ordrika, metaforstinna och drastiskt muntra prosa. Här finns allt från teorier om systrarna Brontës ”chiffrerade sätt att skriva om onani”, till obetalbart pricksäkra iakttagelser om varningssignaler i killars ­lägenheter – Betty Blue-planscher och Hunter S Thompson-böcker är lika med att ”här bor en snubbe som hatar kvinnor”. (Malin Krutmeijer) (Translation)

Brisbane Times reviews the Harry Potter parody Puffs.

The idea is good: take the minor characters in a well-known work and put them centre stage.
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead took bit-players from Hamlet, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea took Jane Eyre’s mad Mrs Rochester, while Ricky Gervais made an entire series about sidelined figures in Extras. The approach can produce rewarding work. (Joyce Morgan)

AnneBrontë.org posts about the Brontës and Queen Victoria.

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The Brontës and the Idea of the Human

A new scholar book exploring the Brontë legacy:

The Brontës and the Idea of the Human
Science, Ethics, and the Victorian Imagination
Edited by Alexandra Lewis, University of Aberdeen
Cambridge University Press
May 2019
ISBN: 9781316651063

What does it mean to be human? The Brontë novels and poetry are fascinated by what lies at the core - and limits - of the human. The Brontës and the Idea of the Human presents a significant re-evaluation of how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë each responded to scientific, legal, political, theological, literary, and cultural concerns in ways that redraw the boundaries of the human for the nineteenth century. Proposing innovative modes of approach for the twenty-first century, leading scholars shed light on the relationship between the role of the imagination and new definitions of the human subject. This important interdisciplinary study scrutinises the notion of the embodied human and moves beyond it to explore the force and potential of the mental and imaginative powers for constructions of selfhood, community, spirituality, degradation, cruelty, and ethical behaviour in the nineteenth century and its fictional worlds.

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Nancy De Garrs, Bradford Whorty

The Telegraph & Argus publishes more information on the Nancy DeGarrs-Undercliffe Cemetery connection:
Picture Source

Nancy De Garrs was quite a ‘celebrity’ in Bradford Workhouse.
While other inmates sat on wooden benches, Nancy had her own armchair. There was much interest in the old lady who had been the Brontë family’s nanny, and she was visited by journalists keen to interview the last person to know the famous literary sisters.
Nancy loved to talk about her time with the Brontës. But with old age, and poverty, came a fear of ending up in a pauper's grave. When Nancy told the Pall Mall Gazette it was her last request to avoid such a fate, the London newspaper appealed for public donations so she could have a decent burial. It was taken up by other newspapers, including the New York Times. How much was raised isn’t clear. A 'typo' in a Manchester newspaper meant that some of the money was sent to Bedford workhouse, instead of Bradford...
And when Nancy died in 1886, aged 82, she was buried at Undercliffe Cemetery, in an unmarked grave costing just a guinea. For over 130 years she has laid in the weed-choked plot. Now she has been added to a list of ‘Bradford Worthies’ buried at the cemetery, and finally she is to have a headstone. “Nancy has been hidden all these years. We want to acknowledge her part in Brontë history,” says Allan Hillary, chairman of the Friends of Undercliffe Cemetery which is appealing for help to raise £3,000 for a headstone and to clear the area around the grave. Allan hopes it will become part of the Brontë Trail, attracting more visitors to the historic cemetery.
Stephen Lightfoot came across Nancy in newspaper archives. He and other cemetery volunteers spent six months researching her and, after finding her plot in burial records, cleared the waist-high overgrowth from it. “Nancy was a faithful servant of the Brontës for eight years and had a significant impact on the children,” says Stephen. “As well as the daily routine of looking after them, she took them for moorland walks and was involved in their play and early stories. The rich and famous are always remembered, but Nancy is representative of ordinary working people not always recognised.”
One of 12 children of a Bradford shoemaker, Nancy is remembered for another reason too - she restored Patrick Brontë’s reputation at a time when history was re-written. (...)
Nancy's story will be included in a "Bradford Worthies" tour at Undercliffe Cemetery in September. Also that month, Bradford actress and writer Irene Lofthouse will be talking about Nancy's life in character.(Emma Clayton) (Read more)

What can I give a child to help them with losing a parent? A hard question in The Guardian:

For some children, reading itself will be the great comfort, particularly reading about children in bleak circumstances. In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, the heroine has, by the end of chapter one, lost her mother to cholera. Beth’s death in Louisa May Alcott’s Good Wives is unfailingly moving – sentimentality can be medicinal. Jane Eyre’s orphaned plight might also sustain – Charlotte Brontë is the safest pair of hands. (Kate Kellaway)

The Idaho Press interviews the author Lois Requist:

Jeanne Huff: What’s on your bookshelf?
LR: I’ve thinned it out in recent years, though I still have one “Bobbsey Twin” book from 1947 and a copy of “Jane Eyre” from 1945.

The Times recommends a concert of The Unthanks in Dublin:

The Unthanks
Led by Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, this English folk group have released a plethora of critically acclaimed records, including Cruel Sister, their debut collection, which was Mojo magazine’s folk album of the year for 2005. Combining indigenous Northumbrian sounds with other genres, the eclectic band examined subjects as diverse as the First World War and Emily Brontë’s poems in their recent Lines trilogy. (Mel Clarke)

The restoration of an upstate New York barn into a family home in Architectural Digest:

I also knew I wanted to indulge my wallpaper fetish. Fornasetti’s blustery, surreal clouds—Wuthering Heights in a wall covering, says a friend—blow you into the great room from the front door. (Mieke ten Have)

Prensa Libre (Argentina) supposedly quotes from Charlotte Brontë describing Queen Victoria in her visit to Brussels in 1843. Regrettably, the quote has only a remote resemblance with the original one. The Stage Mirror publishes a response to Kathleen Stock's post Is Jane Eyre a Racist?, which was also a response to a previous article about reading Jane Eyre as a black person.

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Mapping Jane Eyre’s translations

Creative Multilingualism publishes an update on the Jane Eyre translations project

In April, Prismatic Translation’s Associated Researcher in Digital Humanities, Giovanni Pietro Vitali, stayed in Oxford to work with me on mapping the global diffusion of translations of Jane Eyre.

Mapping Jane Eyre’s translations is a challenge, on several fronts. First, where do you locate a translation on a map? It will have been done by a translator in a certain place, or places; but then it may have been published somewhere else; and it can be read wherever there is a reader who understands its language – which is, in many cases, pretty much anywhere. (...)
Then, after days of labour, the moment of magic, when you are suddenly able to witness the spread of Jane Eyres across the world, like this:

Or zoom in for a more detailed view, like this:

And this is only the beginning. The maps that we are currently working on organise the translations according to region and language, allowing a more analytical understanding of the processes at work; and they also show the translations unfolding year by year. So now (or, soon) you will be able to see before your eyes the startling spread of Jane Eyre translations that had already happened by 1850: Berlin, Brussels, Paris, St Petersburg, Stuttgart, Grimma, Stockholm, Groningen and – Havana!

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A Rose for a Cow, through Tinder

More Stranger Things-Brontë connections. This time through Detective Hopper and on SyFy Wire:

Detective Hopper (David Harbour) had a bit of a rough start. I’ve been known to be into Men Who Brood (I blame each and every Brontë sister), but running on pills and booze isn’t a great look. However, a rediscovered purpose, a shower, and a pack of children to care about does wonders for a man. Despite being longtime anti-daddy, something around Episode 4 changed in my heart. This is a man who shares my affinity for flannel and the belief that mornings are for coffee and contemplation. Consider me a daddy convert. (Alyssa Fikse)

The Times reviews the Chelsea Flower Show 2019. Concerning Mark Gregory’s Welcome to Yorkshire garden:

A gold-medal winner, Mark Gregory’s Welcome to Yorkshire garden showed one of Chelsea’s age-old “pictorial” gardens, a scene of dripping canal gates overlooked by a lock-keeper’s cottage, and everything awash with wildflowers, escapee lupins and camassias. It’s not every year you see ragged robin and clover at Chelsea. (...)
Green apart, a few colour schemes kept reappearing, especially that appealing mix of creamy apricot and pale pink, like you see in the rose ‘Phyllis Bide’. David Austin’s Roses pulled it off by planting as companions the apricot ‘Roald Dahl’ beside pink ‘Emily Brontë’, and it was delicious. (Stephen Anderton)

The Hollywood Reporter interviews Ruth Wilson who says

A lot of my characters have sort of had that really extraordinary inner monologue and inner emotional landscape going on. Whether it's Alison Bailey [on The Affair] or Jane Eyre, I think that memoir in a way made me understand women like that. She's sort of been within my life a lot more than I realized. (Suzy Evans)

The Telegraph & Argus mentions briefly those plans of a Jane Eyre film with Chinese money:

Bradford City of Film hosted the Secretary-General of the China Film Association along with a delegation of Chinese film producers and directors to events in London and Bradford in 2018, and a delegation from Bradford attended the Golden Rooster Film Festival, China’s largest film gala. Bradford City of Film also plans to work with the Chinese film industry on a re-working of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Emma Clayton)

Crunchyroll recalls the New Wuthering Heights Naruyoshi Kikuchi composition for the anime Lupin the Third (2012):

One of its other major departures was the music, with veteral Lupin composer Yuji Ohno sitting this series out. (He is, of course, back in full force with newer series!) Watanabe was at the reins as music producer, and jazz musician Naruyoshi Kikuchi stepped in as composer. You may have heard his saxophone stylings in .hack//Legend of the Twilight and Trigun prior to his work as a composer (which now includes the ONA Gundam Thunderbolt).
The result was an evocative bag of mixed musical elements, from the spoken-word "New Wuthering Heights" to the sax-heavy ending theme "Duty Friend". (Kara Dennison)

Les Nouvelles News (in French), The Hindu and Grazia review the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, seen in Cannes:

Alors oui, il y a du sexe dans ce « Portrait… » Mais il y a beaucoup plus : du désir, des sentiments, des jeunes filles en robes arpentant des falaises battues par le vent, des souvenirs des films de Jane Campion, des livres de Charlotte Brontë, tout un univers que la réalisatrice sait moderniser à travers une histoire d’amour passionnelle et empêchée. (Valérie Ganne) (Translation)

Wuthering Heights and Jane Campion’s The Piano (which won the Palme in a tie with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine in 1993) were inspirations in terms of the setting —“the beautiful yet hostile environment”. (Namrata Joshi)

Héloïse se dérobe d'abord, invisible, fantomatique, dans un décor (un bout de littoral breton venteux) qui pose un cadre de roman gothique, façon Les Hauts de Hurlevent. (Léo Soesanto) (Translation)

Valeurs Actuelles (France) reviews the recent biography Les Brontë by Jean-Pierre Ohl:

Charlotte ( Jane Eyre), l’aînée des Brontë, a survécu à Emily ( les Hauts de Hurlevent), à Anne ( Agnes Grey) et à leur frère, Branwell. C’est principalement à travers son regard que nous connaissons la famille - elle s’est en son temps confiée à la romancière Elizabeth Gaskell, auteur de la première biographie de Charlotte. Le temps a passé, les lectures de Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Julien Green, Cioran ( « Tout ce qui émane d’Emily a la propriété de me bouleverser ») ont fait le reste : Emily et Anne ont été réévaluées à la hausse. Jean-Pierre Ohl restitue l’histoire des enfants du pasteur Brontë, fratrie unique, incomparable (sauf aux Powys) dans l’histoire de l’art. (Olivier Maulin) (Translation)

Búsqueda (Uruguay) quotes the writer Carmen Posadas:

Un guionista de culebrones me explicó un día que hay dos argumentos clásicos que pueden plagiarse hasta la náusea y siempre funcionan. Uno es El conde de Montecristo (...) El otro argumento, más exitoso e infalible aún, es el de la Cenicienta. Cenicienta son, por ejemplo, Pretty woman, también Betty la fea, o la protagonista de Cincuenta sombras de Grey, así como incontables heroínas de novela rosa. Pero tampoco la gran literatura está falta de Cenicientas, porque qué otra cosa son, si no, las protagonistas de Orgullo y prejuicio, Sentido y sensibilidad o Jane Eyre.  (Translation)

Benzine (France) talks about the musical evolution of singer-songwriter Baptiste W. Hamon

Avec Baptiste W(alker) Hamon, c’est le cheminement d’un homme vers l’âge adulte, la lente évolution d’un humain qui se construit. Il fallait bien quitter l’enfance dans la première étape de sa discographie.Soleil Soleil Bleu entre en adolescence, le temps des amoureux transis. On entend encore une fois cette volonté à vouloir se faire rencontrer les Hauts de Hurlevent, la Lone Star d’Abilene et une belle langue française. (Greg Bod) (Translation)

In La Voz de Galicia, a Tinder-like app for cows and Jane Eyre:

Lo que puede pasar con estas nuevas parejas lo ha contado Rosamund Young en el libro La vida secreta de las vacas (Seix Barral). Esta mujer regenta la granja familiar Kite’s Nest, junto con su pareja Gareth y su hermano Richard, que está cerca de Worcestershire [en el centro de Inglaterra]. Lleva más de 40 años entre marelas a las que llama Dolly, Dolly II, Anne, Helen, Stephanie, Olivia o Jane Eyre [«huérfana al nacer»]. (Rodri García) (Translation)

Books with Noel reviews the Jane Eyre Manga edition. The Curious Reader explores if Heathcliff is a villain or a victim.

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Round the Kitchen Table in Bingley

This weekend in Bingley, West Yorkshire:

Bingley Little Theatre presents
Round the Kitchen Table - a Tribute to the Brontës 
Studio Upstairs
Saturday/Sunday 25/26th May 2019 at 7:30pm
Directed by Jan Darnbrough and Rosemary Grainger
Cast: Joanne Milnes, Kate Hames and Tracy Littlewood as Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë.

A celebration of the lives and works of the Brontës for the 200th anniversary of their births.
Also a one-act play: Branwell by Bettina Manktelow.
Plus Poetry and Extracts from Novels and Plays.

More information in Keighley News.

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Flawed Jane

Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton has selected her favourite flawed heroines for LitHub including

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
My idea of the kind of woman I wanted to be spilled into me straight from the pages of this book. Jane’s voice was a rallying cry against all the badges of my own supposed powerlessness: as a girl, a black person, and a child in a world where each of those adjectives moved you further away from the center of things. It’s because Jane was such an outsider, just as awkward and at times as angry as I was, that I wanted her to triumph, and it’s because of those same qualities that she does. She was a Victorian anti-heroine par excellence. For all its fierce, far-flung passions, Jane Eyre is a lesson in self-acceptance: “I care for myself.” Jane declares. “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” Yes, modern women are disenchanted with the hand Bertha Mason was dealt, and yes, it’s a disgrace that Jane finds contentment in a marriage so far beneath her. But to read Jane Eyre is to bear witness to a consciousness coming alive, and to feel the quickening of your own consciousness as a result.

In The Guardian, Kathryn Hughes reviews  Lucasta Miller's book L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated 'Female Byron'.

The teenage Brontës in Haworth certainly lapped up LEL’s work, especially “The Disconsolate One”, whose accompanying illustration – a distraught young lady weeping over a letter – they carefully copied out in their notebooks.

A contributor to Bustle 'Couldn't Be More Excited' about Gentleman Jack's season 2.

Every time the BBC produces a new period drama, excitement builds to an intense level. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does it like the BBC. You know what else builds excitement? Seeing same sex relationships on screen. Especially in terms of period dramas. Because obviously the likes of the Brontës and Jane Austen weren't keen on including same-sex dalliances. Which is a bit like straight-washing queer history. Gentleman Jack provides period and same-sex drama in abundance so obviously it has gone down a treat. But will Gentleman Jack return for a season 2?
Gird your loins and loosen your bodices, because it's a definite yes on this one. (Aoife Hanna)

Books Everywhere posts about Wuthering Heights.

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Meet Charlotte and Elizabeth in Whitby Abbey

This weekend is Story Telling Weekend at Whitby Abbey:

Story Telling Weekend
Sat 25 - Mon 27 May 2019
11am - 5pm
Whitby Abbey

Join us as we delve into the world of classic writers such as Bram Stoker, Charlotte Bronte and Lewis Carroll. Learn more about their literature in the very setting which inspired many of them, and if you ever dreamt of standing face to face with your favourite classic writers, this may very well be your chance…

And if you’re feeling inspired why not enter our childrens’ writing workshop?

Meet the Authors

Join two of our authors to hear what inspired them to become writers and how they think their work might be viewed in the future. You will also hear a reading or two from their most famous literary creations!

11.30am & 2.30pm – Meet Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell

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Wuthering Heights 1939 appalled purists

Yesterday would have been Laurence Olivier's birthday and GoldDerby celebrated with a ranking of his 15 greatest films.

7. Wuthering Heights (1939)
Directed by William Wyler. Screenplay by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, based on the novel by Emily Bronte. Starring Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson, Donald Crisp, Geraldine Fitzgerald.
Literary purists were appalled by this adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel, which only depicts 16 of its 34 chapters, slashing an entire crop of characters from the narrative. Yet director William Wyler perfectly captures the gloomy, tragic mood of the book, thanks in large part to Gregg Toland’s atmospheric black-and-white cinematography (which won the Oscar). Olivier and Merle Oberon perfectly embody Heathcliff and Cathy, the doomed couple at the story’s center. The film does an expert job recreating Victorian England (with Thousand Oaks, CA, standing in for those windy hills), while the operatic performances make our hearts swoon. “Wuthering Heights” earned seven additional Oscar bids, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Olivier (he lost to Robert Donat in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”). (Zach Laws, Chris Beachum)

Yes! Weekly reviews the film Wild Nights With Emily (Dickinson, not Brontë).

Other highlights include Emily’s chat with doddering Judge Lords (Al Sutton), in which he confuses Charlotte and Emily Brontë and their work. There’s also a fabulously funny bit involving Ralph Waldo Emerson (Robert McCaskill). (Mark Burger)

UNCG Now tells about a recent visit and talk by writer Zadie Smith.

She spoke of how her viewpoint has changed since the publication of her first book and shared her own early experiences with literature and her major influences, such as Alice Walker, E.M. Forster, and Charlotte Brontë.
“Everybody needs a way through,” she said. “It’s different for every person. For me, I needed books that allowed me to think I could write and books that had somewhat of my vision of what people are.” (Susan Kirby-Smith)

Stoke on Trent Live reports that,

Anne Hegerty - better known as ‘her off The Chase’ - has entered the age-old debate about the border between north and south. [...]
 Let’s face it, head north from Crewe and you’re not far off Lancashire. By the time you get to Junction 18 there’s people in smocks. By junction 20, they believe Wuthering Heights to be contemporary drama. (John Woodhouse)

Publishers' Weekly announces that the publishing house B&H will be 'tackling the classics'.

In a deal brokered directly with the author, B&H’s publisher for specialty products Clarissa Dufresne bought a series of guides to classic literature by Karen Swallow Prior (On Reading Well), an English professor at Liberty University. Each volume will feature an introduction as well as supplemental information intended to help readers “achieve greater understanding and appreciation” for selected works of literature, according to the publisher. The first two books in the series will be guides to Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, both slated for publication in March 2020. Though subject to change, additional titles in the series will include guides to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Tess of D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. (Emma Wenner)

Book Riot suggests '140 Literary Dog Names For The Very Best Bookish Dogs', such as

NAMES OF AUTHORS/POETS
Brontë (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë)
[...]
LITERARY DOG NAMES FROM CLASSICS
[...]
Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Kate Krug)

One way or another has an illustrated post on Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea.

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Emily Brontë Poems Illustrated

A very special edition of a selection of Emily Brontë poems translated into Spanish has just been published:

Emily Brontë. Poemas
With illustrations by Nadi Spasibenko
Translated by Marino Costa
UVE Books
April 2019
ISBN: 978-84-948073-5-0
34 pages, Special paper, Japanese binding.

La obra literaria de Emily Brontë no es abundante, pero extraordinaria, aún hoy se la recuerda como uno de los grandes exponentes del romanticismo y se la ha reconocido como una de las mejores poetas del siglo XIX.
En esta edición de arte, recogemos dieciocho excelentes poemas publicados por primera vez en 1845, donde la autora nos muestra una parcela de sus propias vivencias con una lírica inconfundible.

EDIT: Zenda Libros posts some excerpts of the book.

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Lydia Bennet in Wuthering Heights

History Extra looks at '6 unexpected royal encounters' with Queen Victoria from the book An Audience With Queen Victoria – The Royal Opinion on 30 Famous Victorians, by Ian Lloyd.

Charlotte Brontë, 1843
On 18 September 1843, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had arrived in Brussels shortly after 1pm during their state visit to Belgium as guest of their uncle, King Leopold I. Watching the carriage procession pass through the aptly named Rue Royale was a 27-year-old teacher from the nearby Pensionnat Heger, a school for young women.
Charlotte Brontë was half way through her two-year stay in the capital and was lonely, homesick and had developed an infatuation with her employer, Constantin Heger. She can’t have been too excited by the glimpse of her monarch, since it took her until 1 October to write an account of it after a prompt from her sister Emily, back in Howarth Parsonage: “You ask about Queen Victoria’s visit to Brussels. I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers. She was laughing and talking very gaily. She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the whole. They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle…”
Victoria would later become a huge fan of Charlotte’s. She read Jane Eyre aloud to Prince Albert in 1858 and reread it more than two decades later, when she noted: “Finished Jane Eyre, which is really a wonderful book, very peculiar in parts, but so powerfully — admirably written, such a fine tone in it, such fine religious feeling, & such beautiful writing. The description of the mysterious maniac’s nightly appearances, awfully thrilling, — Mr Rochester’s character a very remarkable one, & Jane Eyre’s herself, a beautiful one. The end is very touching, when Jane Eyre returns to him, & finds him blind, with one hand gone from injuries during the fire in his house, which was caused by his mad wife.”

AV Club also mentions Bertha in an article on New Coke making a comeback thanks to Stranger Things 3.

But today brings news that will strike fear into the hearts of those who remember what New Coke was like, as Variety reports that Coca-Cola’s aborted formula—which has been hidden away like Rochester’s crazy wife in Jane Eyre—will return this summer as part of a tie-in promotion with Stranger Things season three. Behold the horrible synergy your nostalgia hath wrought, and tremble at New Coke’s resurrection. (Britt Hayes)

The Washington Post had a live chat with humorist/columnist Alexandra Petri.

Q: Austen-Brontë Crossover
The Bennet girls could visit the Yorkshire moors and solve mysteries or something.
A: Alexandra Petri
I can’t picture them getting along with the Brontë girls — maybe Jane Eyre, but certainly nobody in Wuthering Heights. Although, wait, Lydia might really get into the whole ambiance. 

According to The Irish Times, a walk in Clear Lake and Dosaun Mountain, in Slieve Blooms, is reminiscent of Yorkshire and Wuthering Heights.

Way markers now hand-rail me across wind-tortured moorlands, which unvaryingly evoke haunting images of Yorkshire and Wuthering Heights. (John G O'Dwyer)

Vox features two new book series that aren't just publishing books 'by dead white men' such as Modern Library's Torchbearers which, as you know, will include 'cult favorite Villette by Charlotte Brontë'.

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If I Were in Heaven

Lídia Pujol is a Catalan singer-songwriter who recently created a musical show paying homage to the philosopher and theologist Raimon Panikkar: Panikkar, poeta i fangador. Now the concert has been edited in CD in a combined edition with the book Iniciació als Veda.

It contains a song adapting a famous Wuthering Heights fragment:

Capítol 3: Crepuscle i declivi. Mort i dissolució
La descoberta del fet que madurar significa aprendre a acceptar la condició humana real,  el destí de totes les coses existents en el temps i l’espai.
La mort no és el límit de la vida, sinó el seu centre.

 (...) If I Were In Heaven (Lletra: E. Brontë; L. Pujol. Música: L. Pujol; O. Roig; D. Espasa)

A review can be read in Segre (in Catalan).

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'I suspect L.E.L.’s enigmatic persona may have inspired Brontë’s own cagey first-person narration'

Poetry Foundation discusses Lucasta Miller's book L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated 'Female Byron'.

In 1830, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country was founded, and its London Tory staff reveled in literary gossip—much of it too specific to literary inner circles for readers (including the Brontë sisters) to comprehend. Fraser’s had somehow gathered particulars on Landon’s sex life, which they delighted in referencing with lewd innuendo. The magazine featured caricatures of her—sometimes lasciviously implying her fallenness—by artist Daniel Maclise. Within four years, Landon was a laughingstock in the male-dominated literary world, and she could only bite her tongue in response.  [...]
Like any female writer of the era, she was vulnerable. Charlotte Brontë, who lived apart from the literary marketplace—and who grew up reading L.E.L. together with her sisters—understood this precarity too. I suspect L.E.L.’s enigmatic persona may have inspired Brontë’s own cagey first-person narration: Lucy Snowe of Villette (1853) and, to a lesser extent, the titular Jane Eyre. “Absence was the heart of L.E.L.’s aesthetic,” writes Miller. “[She] made meaning radically unstable. Epistemologically she was a skeptic, who believed that ‘no one sees things exactly as they are, but as varied and modified by their own method of viewing.’ She vested her identity in the eye of the beholder, and yet constructed herself as a moving target. She was indeed moonlike, always waxing and waning.” L.E.L. was “a co-creation between the poet’s imagination and the reader’s fantasy,” as Miller notes. She understood the genesis of a reputation—and a brand—better than most: we can influence perception and fancy, but we cannot orchestrate it. Contemporary celebrity culture teaches us this as battalions of public relations flacks run damage control for a prominent figure who says or does something ill-advised. (Rachel Vorona Cote)

In the USA, May is national Get Caught Reading Month and so a contributor to Iowa Information shares what she's read this year so far. Here's an eye-rolling moment for you:

2) "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte
How this is a classic? I have no idea. The only other book that has made me this bored was "The U.S. Financial Crisis: Analysis and Interpretation: Lessons for China" by Cheng Siwei." (Lana Bradstream)

Cultured Vultures discusses the last episode of Game of Thrones with spoilers aplenty. We have extracted this spoiler-free:

 (If women abruptly going mental and dying seems a little overdone to you, why not look up Jean Rhys’s novel ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’?) (Huw Saunders)

A couple of newspapers are reminded of the Brontës in their reviews of the film Portrait d’une jeune fille en feu, directed by Céline Sciamma.

Lectrice, ça commence un peu comme Jane Eyre. Une femme qu’on devine éduquée, indépendante mais pas très bien née, arrive de nuit dans une grande demeure. Cette femme n’a rien d’autre à vendre que ses talents, ce qui n’est déjà pas si mal, en France au XVIIIe siècle, et se rend sur une île bretonne pour peindre le portrait d’une jeune aristocrate.
Tu te frottes les yeux, lectrice, car jusqu’à aujourd’hui, et la découverte du beau Portrait de la jeune fille en feu en compétition, la comparaison entre Charlotte Brontë et Céline Sciamma t’aurait fait hurler, et sans doute que nous aussi. Mais attarde-toi quand même ! Car voici deux créatrices dont le geste si simple, regarder d’autres femmes, leur donner la parole, les laisser dire «je», se charge encore de quelque chose d’inflammable qui nous a fait les trouver alliées. «Prenez le temps de me regarder !» ordonne Marianne, à la première réplique du Portrait…, avec une voix franche et directe qui n’est pas sans rappeler celle de Jane. Et comme elle a raison ! Jusqu’au bout l’on se prêtera à cette leçon de regard et l’on prendra le temps d’observer cette peintre, jusqu’à en tomber amoureux, car elle est sûrement l’un des plus beaux personnages qu’il nous sera donné de contempler lors de ce Festival, magnifiquement regardée par le film lui-même, et incarnée avec une précision folle par Noémie Merlant, aux grands yeux chargés d’intelligence et de désir. (Elisabeth Franck-Dumas in Libération (France)) (Translation)

È un melodramma, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu. Un melodramma algidissimo, dove il fuoco cui fa riferimento il titolo non è certo un falò o un rogo, ma una fiamma debole e languida come quella dei camini del film, che scalda lentamente e passioni delle sue protagoniste e le lascia a sobbollire senza mai farle debordare davvero da un racconto studiatissimo e fin troppo perfettamente bilanciato nell’uso dei suoi riferimenti letterari espliciti e impliciti: dai miti di greci, alle sorelle Brontë. (Federico Gironi on Coming Soon (Italy)) (Translation)

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Brontë Society Gazette. Issue 78. April 2019

The latest issue of The Brontë Society Gazette is now out (Issue 78. April 2019. ISSN 1344-5940).

ARTICLES

Wecolme by Rebecca Yorke, Brontë Society Head of Communication and Marketing
Letter from the Chair by Susan Aykroyd, Vice Chair and Acting Chair
World Bood Day 2019 and Patrick Brontë  by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Brontë Society Creative Partner
A Brontë Reader. A new exhibition coming soon to the Brontë Parsonage Museum
Celebrating Ann. Thirty years at the Brontë Parsonage Museum
Close-Up On the Collection: Images from the new exhibition Patrick Brontë: In Sickness and in Health
My Year as a Young Ambassador by Lucy Powrie
The Other Bicentenary. Arthur Bell Nichols by Stephen Whitehead
Membership Matters: Annual Generl Meeting and Summer Festival; Are you based in the USA? Making the most of your membership; Sarah Fermi; Ian Dewhirst by Linda Ling, Membership Officer
A reminder about our 2019 Gazette special issue: Teaching and Learning the Brontës...and me by Belinda Hakes
Bringing the Brontës to the World
Notice of the 125th Annual General Meeting of the Brontë Society
The Brontë Bookshelf: Si j'avais des ailes by Nathalie Stalmans by Helen MacEwan

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Maybe it’s Queer Brontë

In The Guardian, Lucy Mangan reviews BBC One's Gentleman Jack enthusiastically.

It’s Regency Fleabag! Because the heroine occasionally breaks the fourth wall and exteriorises her inner monologue. But it’s set in Halifax in 1832, so it could be Northern Jane Austen. Then again, it’s about Anne Lister, who – since her 4 million-word diary came to light and particularly the encoded sections were deciphered – has been dubbed the first modern lesbian, so maybe it’s Queer Brontë ...
You can afford to have a little fun with Gentleman Jack (BBC One); Sally Wainwright clearly has. The writer, best known for the harrowing Happy Valley series and whose most recent outing was a fierce account of the Brontës’ lives as the sisters of an unsalvageable alcoholic brother, has turned those 4 million words into eight pacy episodes that amount, by Wainwright standards, to almost a romp.

The Telegraph has loved the first episode too.

Anne Lister is a woman for our times who happens to have been around for the Corn Laws. Her encrypted diaries, decoded 150 years after her death, are an empowering LGBTQ+ urtext.
It was only a matter  of time until Sally Wainwright, the mighty bard of West Yorkshire who has tangoed in Halifax and walked with the Brontës, got around to the remarkable story of her local 19th-century lesbian landowner. (Jasper Rees)

And here's how the Daily Mail describes Suranne Jones's portrayal of Anne Lister:

Suranne Jones played the heroine as a charismatic mixture of Heathcliff and Mr Darcy, with a dash of Dick Turpin thrown in. She entered the tale driving a stagecoach at full pelt, and never slowed down. (Christopher Stevens)

To coincide with the show, AnneBrontë.org has an article on 'Gentleman Jack: Anne Lister And The Brontës'.

Financial Times reviews Lucasta Miller's L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated ‘Female Byron’.

Lucasta Miller, whose The Brontë Myth (2001) was a dazzling challenge to and exploration of the cult around the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, takes on in L.E.L. a literary figure whom she initially anticipated, as she comments in her postscript, “might be relatively quick to dispatch” as “a minor subject”.
The result is an energetic, fascinating and deeply researched book which is as much about the “strange pause” — the slippery, ambiguous hinterland in literature and history between the end of the Romantic era of Shelley, Byron and Keats, and the beginning of the Victorian age — as it is about Letitia Landon herself. [...]
Yet, Miller points out, in France, where Landon was well received on a visit in 1834, the reputations of her female writer contemporaries of similar lifestyle endured, and her influence on an early fan who longed for fame of her own, the adolescent Charlotte Brontë, is evident in her own greatest works: Jane Eyre and Villette. (Catherine Taylor)

Independent (Ireland) asks actress/singer Annalene Beechey about her 'cultural life'.

Movie: Wuthering Heights. Oh, the classic 1939 Wuthering Heights starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, David Niven. The drama, romance and acting is just sublime. I remember so clearly watching it with my family as a child and falling in love with it. I get very involved in films and cry at the drop of a hat.

The Sisters' Room reviews Charlotte Brontë Tre di Sei by Michela Monferrini and illustrated by Vittoria Facchini,

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Literary Places. Yorkshire Moors

A new literary traveller guide mentioning the Yorkshire and the Brontës:

Literary Places
Sarah Baxter
Illustrated by: Ms. Amy Grimes
Format: Hardback, 144 Pages
ISBN: 9781781318102
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Series: Inspired Traveller’s Guides

Inspired Traveller’s Guides: Literary Places takes you on an enlightening journey through the key locations of literature’s best and brightest authors, movements and moments – brought to life through comprehensively researched text and stunning hand-drawn artwork.
Travel journalist Sarah Baxter provides comprehensive and atmospheric outlines of the history and culture of 25 literary places around the globe, as well as how they intersect with the lives of the authors and the works that make them significant. Full-page colour illustrations instantly transport you to each location. You’ll find that these places are not just backdrops to the tales told, but characters in their own right.
Travel to the sun-scorched plains of Don Quixote’s La Mancha, roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Cathy and Heathcliff or view Central Park through the eyes of J.D. Salinger’s antihero. Explore the lush and languid backwaters of Arundhati Roy’s Kerala, the imposing precipice of Joan Lindsay’s Hanging Rock and the labyrinthine streets and sewers of Victor Hugo’s Paris.
Delve into this book to discover some of the world’s most fascinating literary places and the novels that celebrate them.

The book includes the Yorkshire Moors from Wuthering Heights.

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A Headstone for Nancy

A nice initiative to mark and incorporate into the 'Brontë trail' the grave of Nancy Garrs in Bradford's Undercliffe Cemetery. The Telegraph & Argus reports:

Picture Source

When Nancy De Garrs, the Brontës' former nanny, ended up in Bradford Workhouse, her dying wish was not to go to a pauper's grave.
Her plea was taken up by newspapers, including the New York Times, and money was raised for a headstone. But when she died in 1886, aged 82, Nancy was buried in an unmarked plot at Undercliffe Cemetery. Now volunteers have found the plot and cleared the waist-high undergrowth. And the cemetery has launched an appeal to fund a headstone finally paying tribute to Nancy, who had a significant impact on the Brontë children.
Aged 13, Nancy went to work for the Brontës in Thornton in 1816 with her sister, Sarah. They later moved with the family to Haworth. When the Brontës' mother died her sister looked after them, and Nancy and Sarah left, but Patrick thought highly of them and gave them £10 each. Years later, when Elizabeth Gaskell's famous biography of Charlotte Brontë was published, Nancy played a pivotal role in Patrick's legacy.
Stephen Lightfoot, a cemetery volunteer, researched Nancy after coming across her in newspaper archives. He said: "Elizabeth Gaskell was very critical of Patrick, and called Nancy and Sarah 'wasteful servants'. When Nancy alerted Patrick to this he wrote her a letter confirming that they were "kind, honest and not wasteful". Outraged by Gaskell's book, Patrick's friend, William Dearden, wrote a letter to the Keighley News in his defence. Gaskell later withdrew the excerpts on Patrick. Nancy played a major part in restoring his reputation."
When Nancy married, Patrick gave her presents, known as the "Brontë relics". They ended up in the hands of Nancy's nephew, John Hodgson Widdop of Girlington when she was in the workhouse, a destitute widow. When Nancy died Widdop had her buried in an unmarked family plot at Undercliffe, costing just a guinea. The whereabouts of the headstone funds remain a mystery - despite a letter by Widdop to the Keighley News thanking those who contributed. In 1896 he sold some of her Brontë relics to the Parsonage Museum.
Now the Friends of Undercliffe Cemetery aims to raise £3,000 for a headstone and to clear access to Nancy's grave.
"Nancy was the Brontes' nanny for eight years, she told them stories and took them for moorland walks. She had a huge impact, but she's been erased from history," said Mr Lightfoot.
Chairman Allan Hillary added: "She's been hidden in undergrowth - it's time to recognise her part in history with her name on a headstone. We'd like it to become part of the Brontë Trail." (Emma Clayton)

Classique News reviews Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera production in Nancy, France:

Il est vrai que cet opéra souffre d’un livret inégal, qui se tient à peu près dans la première partie de l’ouvrage, mais qui déçoit ensuite du fait de plusieurs maladresses : des scènes inutilement longues contrastent ainsi avec des accélérations subites du récit. D’où l’impression de raccourcis dramatiques et de personnages peu crédibles dans leurs comportements. On pense par exemple à l’amour d’Isabelle Linton pour Heathcliff, qui prête à sourire tant il est soudain : la cohérence aurait voulu que soit accordée une présence plus soutenue à ce personnage en première partie d’ouvrage. On regrette aussi la suppression de la scène du jeu, qui explique dans le roman comment Heathcliff se venge de son rival et devient maître des Hauts de Hurlevent à son retour d’exil. Le maintien de cette scène aurait notamment permis à Bernard Herrmann de donner davantage de variété à son inspiration musicale, qui alterne entre les ambiances sombres et morbides du prologue et du finale, avec des airs plus hollywoodiens et sucrés, souvent dévolus aux personnages féminins. D’une grande maitrise orchestrale, ces airs séduisent par leur perfection formelle d’inspiration néo-romantique, mais sans marquer les esprits au niveau mélodique. Alors que le chœur n’intervient qu’une fois brièvement en coulisse, on notera une absence résolue de tout recours aux ensembles, ce qui provoque une alternance monotone sur la durée entre scènes de parlés-chanté et airs. Enfin, on regrettera que la scène finale, beaucoup trop longue, refuse la réminiscence mélodique des émois passés de Cathy et Heathcliff, se contentant de mettre en valeur l’interminable agonie de l’héroïne. (...)
Si l’on excepte les faiblesses de l’ouvrage, on ne peut que s’associer à l’accueil chaleureux du public nancéen en fin de représentation, justement convaincu par la somme des talents réunis par cette production. (Florent Coudeyrant) (Translation)

The Hindu talks about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca:

There are many ways to read the original, according to [Sally] Beauman: One way is to accept it as a “convention-ridden love story, in which the good woman triumphs over the bad by winning a man’s love”; another way is to see its imaginative links, with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for example, and its “mythic resonance and psychological truth.” (Sudipta Datta)

The Sunday Times explores the Cleveland Way:

Two hours later, I’m on the moor, my companion for four days. Think Wuthering Heights with waymarks: old droving tracks, isolated tumuli, a sense of vastness. At times it’s glorious, at others moody, with the wind whistling through dry-stone walls. (Ben Lerwill)

Le Journal de Montréal (Canada) interviews the writer Antonine Maillet:

Les Russes aussi avaient l’art de nous faire voir tout un peuple et toute une époque. Je pense par exemple à Guerre et Paix de Tolstoï ou à L’idiot de Dostoïevski. Et puis il y a Les hauts de Hurlevent d’Emily Brontë. Ça, c’est du très grand roman. (Karine Vilder) (Translation)

La Città di Salerno (Italy) quotes the Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto saying:

Figlia di un noto intellettuale e critico giapponese, Banana cresce circondata dalla cultura e il suo linguaggio letterario, è frutto di una rielaborazione fuori dagli schemi, dei temi a lei cari, la famiglia, l’amicizia e l’amore. I suoi romanzi sono intensi e affascinanti, moderni e originali, scritti con una sorprendente sintesi dei concetti: «Il mio punto di riferimento letterario è il romanzo “Cime tempestose”, - rivela la scrittrice - ma ammiro molto anche Umberto Eco. (Maria Romana Del Mese) (Translation)

The Eyre Guide repost a review of Jane Eyre 1956. The Brontë Babe Blog reviews a 2010  novelette by Catherine E. Chapman, Brizecombe Hall.

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Floating Points and Dazzling Sun

A new Late Night Tales CD with a special Brontë track on it:

Floating Points
Late Night Tales series
Catalogue No. ALN52
Released. 29/03/2019

Floating Points’ personal collection of global soul, ambient, jazz and folk treasures form the latest in the warmly revered Late Night Tales series.

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points’ music taste is notoriously tricky to define, ranging from ethereal classical at one end to coruscating techno at the other, united only in a firm belief in the transcendental power of music to move hearts, minds and – yes – feet. Similarly, his production career has ranged from early experiments in dance music with breakout records such as the ‘Shadows EP’ and collaborating with legendary Gnawa master Mahmoud Guinia to his expansive album ‘Elaenia’, which met with critical acclaim upon its release in 2015.

This Late Night Tales excursion into the depths of the evening reflects his broad tastes. The globally-travelled producer has collected untold treasures on his travels from dusty stores in Brazil to market stalls near his hometown. There’s the gorgeous ‘Via Làctea’, culled from Carlos Walker’s debut album, Abu Talib’s (Bobby Wright) plaintive ‘Blood Of An American’ and Robert Vanderbilt’s gospel reworking of Manchild’s ‘Especially For You’. Raw soul and feeling oozing from each song’s pores.

At the other end of the music scale are the modernists, such as Québécoise Kara-Lis Coverdale who weighs in with the indelible ‘Moments In Love’, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith whose ‘Milk’ is an exercise in tranquility, while Sarah Davachi’s meditative mix-opener offers respite from a weary world.

We have some tracks exclusive to Late Night Tales; alongside Davachi’s offerings there is also Toshimaru Nakamura’s ‘Nimb #59’, as well as the now traditional cover version. Shepherd delved into his childhood memory for this one, a track taken from the first album his parents bought him, Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Music For Large & Small Ensembles’: Sam offers up his interpretation of ‘Opening Part 1’. Wheeler also contributes horns to Azimuth track The Tunnel, written and performed by Norma Winstone and John Taylor who, coincidentally, are the parents of Floating Points’ drummer Leo Taylor. Closing the album, Lauren Laverne reads the suitably nocturnal poem ‘Ah! Why, Because The Dazzling Sun’ by Emily Brontë.

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