Dystopic Jane

The Yorkshire Post talks about the removal and replacement of a 1904-made bridge on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway heritage line:

It was built in 1904 as part of the Midland Railway's branch from Keighley to Oxenhope, which opened in 1867 after an engineer visiting Charlotte Brontë's home village of Haworth after her death was surprised to find it was not linked to the railway. The route was shut in the Beeching cuts of 1962 and re-opened as a preserved line six years later. (Grace Newton)

Also in The Yorkshire Post, the presentation of a new guide of Scarborough,  Scarborough History Tour by Mike Hitches:

Number five on the tour is the Grand Hotel – “a High Victorian gesture of assertion and confidence (and) denial of frivolity” as Nikolaus Pevsner, the architectural guru, called it. Once Europe’s biggest hotel, the Grand is so vast, so architecturally serious, that it looks like a German spa hotel unaccountably set adrift in the North Sea and washed up on the Yorkshire coast.
Built on the site of the house where Anne Brontë died, it once boasted 365 rooms. You could stay a full year, with the guarantee of a different view every morning. You’d reach them on the grandest of grand staircases, designed for extravagant “Ready for you now, Mr de Mille” descents. (Stephen McClarence)

ScreenRant publishes a top ten of 19th-century novel film adaptations, according to Rotten Tomatoes and excluding Jane Austen:

6. Jane Eyre 1944
100 % Fresh
Let's begin with Charlotte Brontë's most famous book! This adaptation of the 1847 novel stars Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles as the titular Jane and Edward Rochester. Jane is an orphan of no fortune who takes a job as the governess of Rochester's ward Adèle. She falls in love with Rochester, but several obstacles stand in the way of their future. The film has been recognized by the American Film Institute, in 2002 and 2005, and the music, scored by Bernard Hermann, has been singled out for praise as a soundtrack experience all on its own. (...)

9. Wuthering Heights 1939
95 % Fresh
Based on the 1847 Emily Brontë novel of the same name (though written under a pen name, Ellis Bell), Wuthering Heights stars Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Directed by William Wyler, it is the most famous of the Wuthering Heights adaptations. It was nominated for eight awards at the Academy Awards, during one of Hollywood's best years. As an adaptation, it eliminates the second generation's story, and focuses solely on the tale of Cathy and Heathcliff. (Noemi Arellano-Summer)

Der Standard (Germany) reviews Die Nachreife der festgelegten Wörter. Übersetzungen im Wandel der Zeiten compiled by Ulrich Faure and mentions the controversial German translation of Wuthering Heights by Wolfgang Schlüter published a few years ago:

Ist auf dem Gebiet der Übersetzung also das Neue automatisch auch das Bessere? Plausibel wäre es: Schließlich ändert sich nicht nur die Sprache fortwährend, es ändern sich auch Lesekonventionen. Und man muss ja nicht gleich so weit gehen wie Wolfgang Schlüter, der vor drei Jahren Emily Brontës Sturmhöhe auf radikale Weise neuübersetzte. Schlüter ließ nämlich die Romanfiguren wie Aggro-Rapper aus Neukölln fluchen, von "Kotzbrocken" bis "Vollkoffer". So wollte er den schockierenden Eindruck der verbalen Grobheiten dieses Romans von 1847 für den heutigen Leser nachbilden. (Oliver Pfohlmann) (Translation)

NPR explains the terrible conditions of the people trapped in Idlib, Syria:

Hadithi's sisters and a brother live in Sweden and Germany. Because she has no relatives in Syria, she says novels are her friends — romantic novels like Wuthering Heights. She's read her favorites dozens of times in both Arabic and English. (Jane Arraf)

Quarantine reading recommendations in Republic World (India).

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is one of the most popular books which talks about a dystopian society. The book has been adapted into several series and movies. The book is about an orphaned girl named Jane. It shows how difficult her childhood was and other things she dealt with as a woman. (Anushka Pathania)

Dystopian Society? The Victorians? The Regency era?

Magdalene on reading books by men and women:

Back to the question of the next book that I’m going to read, now that I know better, I decided to pick a book written by a woman. This time I chose Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights that has been sitting on my bookshelf for years. I have also made a commitment with myself that for the whole year, I will only read books written by women. And hopefully one day, I can proudly say that I’m no longer a sexist reader. (Devita Wyjaya)

Jane Healey talks about gothic heroines and haunted house on LitHub:

Many gothic heroines come upon hidden rooms which hold within them secrets of the women that came before them, their husband’s first wives or their mothers—Bluebeard’s chambers, secret libraries, haunted attics—but in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette emerges from her tower room to find an entire house waiting beyond her locked door, “their world […] made of cardboard,” where the signs of life are like the signs of ghosts, “lights on the floor beneath” and laughter, a mirror of Bertha’s laughter that Jane had heard in Charlotte Brontë’s novel. On her dream walk through the house, Antoinette sees Jane and thinks her a ghost, just as she does her own reflection “surrounded by a gilt frame” like a painting of someone else.

Book Marks interviews the author Amy Richards:

Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Amy Richards: Jane Eyre, which was mostly a consequence of literature classes that were so jam-packed with male classics and coming of age stories, which I used to pretend I liked.

Rumbos (Argentina) explores the works of Elizabeth Gaskell:

Elizabeth Gaskell murió en Helyburn el 12 de noviembre de 1856. Sobrevivió un año a su amiga Charlotte Brontë, pero en ese breve tiempo consiguió dejar su obra, por la que será siempre recordada: la vida de la autora de Jane Eyre, a quien no sólo respetaba, sino que amaba como a una hermana.
Siento una gran admiración por Mrs. Gaskell; habiendo sido criada en una sociedad hedonista, entre tazas de té, labores y servicios religiosos, encontró la conciencia social para revelar lo que ocultaban las primeras ciudades industriales.
Sugerencias:
1) Leer Villette, de Charlotte Brontë, excelente novela sobre las clases obreras. (Cristina Bajo) (Translation)

Viceversa Magazine (in Spanish) rediscovers the poetry of Delmira Agustini:

El escaso interés en torno a la literatura femenina de habla hispana, llevó a los especialistas a esbozar una opinión paternal, misógina o cursi en relación a la obra de Agustini. Y aunque ya Sor Juana, en México, y Fanny Burney, Jane Austen y las hermanas Brontë en Inglaterra habían realizado una obra de la cual Agustini no llegó quizás a percatarse, ¿cuántas latinoamericanas pudieron haber escrito textos con una fuerza semejante a la de tales autoras, que jamás publicaron, y posiblemente se destinaron a avivar el fuego de las cocinas a cuyo calor escribieron sus cuartillas? (Alejandro Varderi) (Translation)

Nueva Revista (in Spanish) publishes the obituary of the writer José Jiménez Lozano (1930-2020):

Además, al leerlo está leyendo uno, a través de él, a toda una familia espiritual: Homero, Virgilio, San Agustín, Erasmo, Cervantes, Santa Teresa y Fray Luis y San Juan de la Cruz, Descartes y Pascal y Spinoza, Dostoyevski y Tolstoi, las hermanas Brontë y Emily Dickinson, Kierkegaard y Unamuno y Simone Weil, Azorín y Machado, William Faulkner y Flannnery O’Connor… Amigos, maestros, cómplices, una estirpe de escritores atentos al detalle, a la conciencia, al espíritu, a la vida, a lo real: “He visto el mundo por sus ojos, o me parecía que ellos lo veían por los míos”. (Ernesto Baltar) (Translation)

Polityka (Poland) quotes the writer Jan Parandowski and his stay-at-home advice:

A może wspaniała „Alchemia słowa” Jana Parandowskiego? Ukazał się po latach w Dowodach na istnienie. Parandowski zalecał pozostawanie w domu: „setki literatów wyzyskują środki lokomocji, by wędrować po całym świecie w poszukiwaniu przygód, nieznanych środowisk, osobliwych typów, by się nasycić rozmaitością życia i zebrać w swoim pojęciu kapitał, który da wysokie odsetki. Wynik jest raczej żałosny. (...) Tu jakbym słyszał głos Rembrandta: »Zostań w domu – mówił do młodego artysty, który chciał jechać w świat – zostań w domu! Życia nie starczy na poznanie cudów, jakie się tam znajdują«. (...) Siostry Bronte są wybornym przykładem. Odcięte od świata, żyjąc na probostwie Hawarth (sic), wśród pustkowi Yorkshire, nie doświadczyły nic z tego, czym pulsują ich powieści. Zwłaszcza Emilia, autorka »Wuthering Heights«, nigdy na czas dłuższy nie wyjeżdżała ze swej parafii, a życie starej panny w purytańskim domu w połowie XIX w. nie dawało jej najmniejszej sposobności do obcowania z takimi mężczyznami jak jej bohater Heathcliff. Wzięła go z tych tajemniczych zasobów, którymi rozporządza wyobraźnia twórcza”. (Justyna Sobolewska) (Translation)

Digital News (Italy) recommends Jane Eyre 1996, which is on Premium Cinema Emotion HD, tonight at 21.15h. The Sun is still mentioning the Brontë chicken murder in Coronation Street. BookForum reviews Paula Rego: The Art of the Story.

The Examiner talks with shop owners and visitors in Haworth and how the coronavirus crisis is hitting them. The Brontë Parsonage Museum is not immune either and has announced:

Following careful consideration, the Museum & Shop will be closed until further notice due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We have made this decision in the interests of the health & wellbeing of our staff, volunteers & visitors.

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) March 17, 2020