Zamorna: so vain, so wicked!

The Beat interviews Isabel Greenberg:

Nancy Powell: Were you a big fan of the Brontës before Glass Town? Isabel Greenberg: I was absolutely a fan of their novels growing up. I’d read them and of course seen various TV and film adaptations, but I knew nothing at all about their juvenilia. For me the story behind both the juvenilia and their subsequent novels, makes them more extraordinary.
Powell: Which sister and/or book was your favorite? Greenberg: When I was younger, Jane Eyre was my favourite. I enjoyed Wuthering Heights very much, but I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I reread it as an adult. I also had not read any of Anne’s works until I was an adult. Knowing what I know about their lives, all of their works are extraordinarily radical, albeit in different ways. Jane Eyre is my favourite for dialogue. Wuthering Heights I think is actually so funny in places, and also just wild and strange. And the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an incredible book for a woman of that time to have written. It deals with an alcoholic husband and a woman who leaves him with her child and seeks to make her own way in the world.That doesn’t totally answer your question…I guess if I really had to pick, Jane Eyre. But I think I would get on well with Anne the best! [...]
Powell: Had you visited Haworth Parsonage before this project?  Greenberg: I hadn’t. I went up about four times over the course of the project. My first visit was very early on, and I simply walked around, soaked up the atmosphere, and went on the moors. But I went back twice subsequently to sketch and draw around the parsonage. I drew room plans so I could get a feel for how the house connected. The atmosphere of the place is very special. On my second visit I was significantly deep into the research stage that all I was thinking about was the Brontës, and I was really very moved by it. There is something incredible about the way it has kept the past alive, and the sheer number of people you see walking around the town, who have come just for them, only adds to the magic of it.
Powell: You make the alter egos of the Brontës feel alive, and like extensions of their real selves. Being that this is a fictional re-imagining of their childhood stories, how much was based on fact? Did you feel any qualms about extending the arc of Glass Town beyond what the Brontës imagined? Greenberg: I didn’t. I felt that since the juvenilia had never been intended to be published, and that they themselves treated it as such a fluid work in progress, it was fair to adapt it! I hope they would approve. I also knew that while their novels are universally known and loved, the juvenilia is less explored by the general public, so there was less anxiety on my part about people being upset by changes I had made. I tried to be as accurate as I could be with their biographical details, but after a certain point I decided that I was creating a work of fiction. [...]
Powell: Which set of Brontë characters, person and alter ego, was your favorite to draw? Greenberg: I think Charles and Charlotte. Charles was the character under whom Charlotte wrote as the most. I found this so interesting, that as a teenage girl she would have chosen the voice of an acerbic man to be a funnel for her own. And he was so funny and dry! When she wrote as him her commentary on the other Glass Towners is very witty and snarky. I loved this, and so I imagined this relationship between them, as creator and creation, in which they spar and debate. I always enjoyed the sections of Jane Eyre where Jane and Rochester have these great, sparky conversations, and so it seemed natural to me that Charlotte and Charles would have that. So those sections were great fun to create. But in terms of who I loved to draw… Zamorna! I had a lot of fun with him, he was such a terrible villain; so vain, so wicked!

First Things claims that the novel, as a genre, is 'on its deathbed'.

In The Decline of the Novel, Joseph Bottum puts words to something every reader of fiction has long sensed in his bones: The novel is dying, if not dead; fiction is no longer a useful means of grappling with reality.
“For almost three hundred years,” he begins, “the novel was a major art form, perhaps the major art form, of the modern world—the device by which . . . we tried to explain ourselves to ourselves.” The novel represented a maturation of storytelling—the adulthood of fiction, taking the reader into the interior of the human person. Now, the form is on its deathbed. Lingering readers are seeking in it something other—diversion, entertainment—than what the readers of Jane Austen or the Brontës, Dickens or Kafka, were seeking back in the day. (John Waters)

Scuola Zoo (Italy) recommends 10 period love stories and among them is Wuthering Heights.

Cime tempestose di Emily Brönte [sic]. Pochi lo sanno, ma anche questo libro fa parte di questo genere di romanzi. Oltre a narrare la storia di Catherine e Heathcliff, questo libro è un viaggio nella brughiera inglese della contea di York: Wuthering Heights, Gimmerton, Thrushcross Grange. (Chiara Greco) (Translation)

Onirik (France) reviews the book Miss Charity: tome 1 by Loïc Clément, Anne Montel et Marie-Aude Murail.

Marie-Aude Murail a expliqué, à propos de Miss Charity, « J’ai écrit Miss Charity pour rendre hommage aux créatrices du XIXe siècle, à la volonté de fer qui leur fut nécessaire pour se frayer un chemin dans un monde régenté par des hommes. J’ai hésité sur le modèle à suivre, Jane Austen, la comtesse de Ségur, Charlotte Brontë ou George Sand ? Puis je me suis souvenue d’une biographie qu’on m’avait offerte quelque vingt cinq ans auparavant, Le Petit Monde animal de Beatrix Potter, par Margaret Lane. Je l’ai relue et j’ai été émerveillée. » (Claire) (Translation)

Brussels Brontë Blog tells about a recent 'Visit to Mariemont Museum to See Charlotte's 'L’Ingratitude''.