The Yorkshire Post is looking forward to next week's event discussing the possible influence of Anne Lister on Emily Brontë.
It was over in a heartbeat, and it was doubtful that anyone in church even noticed it.
But the exchange of glances across the pews between Emily Brontë and Anne Lister may have been a seminal moment in literature.
On the outskirts of Halifax, two miles from where it happened, authors and historians will gather on Monday to consider just how deeply Gentleman Jack influenced Wuthering Heights.
It was in the autumn of 1838 that the 20-year-old Emily left home in Haworth for a seven-month teaching residency at Elizabeth Patchett’s progressive Law Hill School at Southowram, some 12 miles over the moors and in the shadow of Shibden Hall, Ms Lister’s family home.
During the harsh winter that followed, the sight of the oddly-dressed, aloof and sexually promiscuous Ms Lister awoke in the repressed and homesick Emily a rebellious streak that would characterise her work.
“They would absolutely have been in the same place at the same time, not least in church,” said Claire Harman, the author of five literary biographies, including Charlotte Brontë.
“The school had a pew at church and Anne Lister had a pew, and she would have heard all the gossip about her, not least from Miss Patchett, who was running a girls’ school right next to Shibden. She was known as Gentleman Jack even then.”
The snobbish Ms Lister is unlikely to have noticed the “downtrodden, underpaid, miserable assistant teacher” across the church, but the encounter left a lasting impression on Emily’s work, said Ms Harman, who is one of the speakers at Monday’s event inside Halifax’s Bankfield Museum, where costumes from this year’s TV series about Ms Lister are also on show.
“Emily Brontë was actually much more of a free and untrammelled spirit than even Anne Lister. She was not somebody who bothered about conventions at all,” she said.
“She had a heretical and an amoral mind, which is what makes her a great and very unusual poet.
“I‘ve thought for a long time that Wuthering Heights is a homo-erotic novel, or at least a non-heterosexual one. Heathcliff is not my idea of a romantic hero.
“Its stirring-up comes from Emily’s experience at Law Hill, and Anne Lister’s strangeness and power was a big part of that.”
Nick Holland, another Brontë author, also said Emily would have been impressed by Ms Lister. “I think she felt a kindred spirit – not sexually, but as a unique, intelligent woman who struck out on her own. That’s the sort of person Emily was,” he said.
Angela Clare, collections manager at Calderdale Museums, who has organised Monday’s public event in partnership with the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth, said Ms Lister’s current TV fame, after two centuries hidden from the world, had caused literary historians to now consider her work considered alongside the Brontë sisters.
“Anne Lister never published, but her achievement of 5m words of diaries can’t really be overlooked,” she said.
“There are lots of crossovers with the Brontës in the type of lives they led, in the same area at around the same time, so we wanted to experiment and bring them together for a conference.”
Helena Whitbread, the historian who transcribed Ms Lister’s coded text, will also speak at Monday’s all-day event, for which tickets at £45 are on sale at bronte.org.uk. (David Behrens)
Via
The Outline, we have come across this Instagram post by Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame).
Book Riot has an article on 'Jane Heir: Writers, Families, and Writer Families', including of course
The Brontë Sisters: Anne, Emily and Charlotte
Arguably the most famous group of sibling writers of the literary canon, these ladies wrote some of the most beloved British classics. With Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Wuthering Heights, the sister Bronte may prove that literary talent is genetic. (Corin Balkovek)
Prensa Libre (Guatemala) features the #LeoAutorasOct movement, which is about only reading women writers during October.
“En octubre, lea solo a escritoras. No importa el género, edad o el siglo. Desde Mary Shelley a Dolores Redondo, desde Virginia Woolf a Mariana Enríquez, desde Anne Brontë a Ana María Matute. Si lo ha escrito a una mujer, atrévete a leerlo” (Astrid Morales) (Translation)
Le Devoir (Québec, Canada) reviews the novel
Les Foley by Annie-Claude Thériault.
À travers la voix des narratrices, dont certaines sont adolescentes ou à peine sorties de l’enfance, on se rappelle les jeunes héroïnes en communion avec la nature, posant un regard lucide sur leur injuste condition et sur la cruauté de la société envers elles, que l’on rencontre chez les sœurs Brontë. Le souffle poétique traversant chaque récit évoque également la douce révolte ayant animé Emily Dickinson. (Manon Dumais) (Translation)
Sensacine (Spain) recommends watching Jane Eyre 2011 this weekend.
'Jane Eyre': Brontë, Romance, Fantasmas y Fassbinder
Por qué la recomiendo: Reconozco que soy más de ver las adaptaciones cinematográficos de clásicos literarios que de leerlos y también que terminé viendo Jane Eyre por una entrevista en The Graham Norton Show a Michael Fassbender en la que el actor contaba que el caballo que montaba en la película se excitaba cada vez que se subía encima de él. Pero la cinta, dirigida por Cary Joji Fukunaga -sí, el mismo de la nueva James Bond-, me sorprendió para bien. El romance entre el misterioso Edward Rochester y su heroína protagonista engancha. También el fantasma que ronda por la mansión de Thornfield Hall y el estilo visual con el que Fukunaga cuenta esta historia. Película perfecta si tu plan es un "sofá y manta" en toda regla.
Te gustará sí... te apuntas a todas las adaptaciones de Charlotte Brontë o Jane Austen, a las historias románticas con aire gótico o al trabajo de los actores Michael Fassbender y Mia Wasikowska. (Andrea Zamora) (Translation)
MD Theatre Guide reviews a local stage production of Agatha Christie's
And Then There Were None.
Of all the characters, Sara Bennett’s Emily Brent, is at once the most enigmatic and the most obvious. This is a woman who would have thought that the judges at the Salem witch trials were soft on crime. And, she doesn’t believe that her crime—driving a 17-year-old pregnant, unwed girl (this is set in the late 1930s) to suicide is a crime. She was upholding society’s standards and morals, and if people have to die for that, then that’s acceptable. She embodies all the repressed women from Jane Eyre through any of Henry James’s characters, yet you don’t sense any vulnerability or reason for this extreme rigidity. In fact, one thought was that she’d make an excellent serial killer, so unflinching is her personal code. One doesn’t see the fun in watching this character die for the mysterious Mr. or Mrs. Owen—and in fact, she’s simply stung with a hypodermic needle (stand-in for a bumblebee) and goes to sleep, permanently. It’s as if she was removed because, in some ways, she’s the most dangerous of any of the alleged murderers. (Mary Ann Johnson)
Hip Hop Corner (France) features French rapper pone and his album
Kate & Me.
S’il ne renie évidemment pas son héritage passé, cet album est avant tout centré autour de Kate. Comprenez, l’auteure-compositrice-interprète britannique Kate Bush, pour qui l’artiste voue une profonde admiration. « Elle est très inspirante et je suis à des années-lumières de son talent. Sa musique représente tout ce que j’aime, la profondeur, la beauté, la singularité, l’émotion et l’innovation« .
Pour illustrer tout ça, Pone lui dédie son album, mais surtout le premier morceau « It’s Me Cathy », en étirant un sample de son titre « Wuthering Heights », sorti en 1978. « J’ai trouvé que la façon dont elle disait « Its me Cathy » dans son morceau avait quelque chose de profondément hip-hop, et que ça irait bien avec Biggie. Aussi, il faut savoir que c’est elle qui a utilisé le premier sampler, donc on est forcément liés », affirme l’artiste. Forte du début à la fin, cette introduction lance le projet en fanfare avec un feu d’artifice sonore. Un véritable spectacle durant lequel le beatmaker clame haut et fort son retour triomphal aux machines. Il faut que Kate Bush entende ça. Où es-tu Cathy ? (Jérémie Leger) (Translation)
Express looks into the financial struggles of music/entertainment retailer HMV.
Mr Hyman continued: “When you want to buy a Charlotte Brontë novel, a Shostakovich piece or Cinema Paradiso they are going to be the same wherever you buy them from.
“If you’re selling something which is unique you’ve got something to defend there.”
HMV has been fighting against online giants such as Amazon which often offer the same products, readily ordered straight to the customer’s front door.
The retail analyst also explained that “the economic model of retailing is under unprecedented challenge”.
He said: “In order to make money you have to add value – adding value to a product that is made by somebody else is really difficult because where can you differentiate yourself? (Kate Nicholson)
The Times has published the obituary of John Chapple, scholar and biographer of Elizabeth Gaskell, who completed the monumental task of compiling the letters of such as prolific letter writer as Mrs Gaskell was.
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