A long way from Heathcliff

Canberra Times reviews The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis.

Best-selling author, Rowan Coleman admits to "a life-long love affair" with the Brontë sisters, since she visited the Parsonage in Haworth with her mother when she was ten years old.
To Coleman, the Brontës were women who "fought for their rights to have lives as rich and notable as their male counterparts, refusing to believe that their gender consigned them or their talent to a polite and quiet existence".
Coleman under the pseudonym of Bella Ellis, imagines the sisters using their formidable brains to solve crimes. The Vanished Bride is the first in a series featuring the Brontes as "lady detectors".
In a retrospective prologue in 1851, after the deaths of all her siblings, Charlotte remembers "the adventures they had forged together, the dangers they had faced, the shocking revelations they had uncovered and the secrets they had kept". She resolves to put pen to paper, to tell the story of The Vanished Bride and of 1845, the year all the Brontë siblings lived at home, as Branwell had been dismissed from his position at Thorp Grange after a sexual encounter with his employer's wife. [...]
In her author's note, Ellis says The Vanished Bride "is a novel written with fondness, warmth and appreciation for three legendary and revolutionary authors that have had a lasing impact on my life...And I hope, it's a pretty good yarn too". Believe me, dear reader, it is. (Anna Creer)

While Star Tribune has a short review of Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town.

Greenberg contrasts the bleak setting of the Brontës’ father’s remote parsonage on the Yorkshire moors (“its windows were the only light before a grand and infinite darkness”) with the colorful dramatics of Glass Town, rippling with conquest, rivalries, thwarted love and “half-imagined ideas.”
Each sibling refracts themselves into central characters of their overlapping and sometimes competing story lines. But Greenberg rewardingly focuses on Charlotte, whose creations take on lives of their own (“we will sneak into your stories,” one promises). She later used the most dramatic, romantic Glass Town story line — about the vengeful kidnapped African prince Quashia — as the inspiration for “Wuthering Heights” ’ Heathcliff (depicted in adaptations by white actors until very recently).
Charlotte’s moodiness, tight bond with Branwell and departure for school frays ties with Anne and Emily, who break off and form the rival kingdom of Gondal.
Increasingly, the fervid dramatics of Glass Town become how the Brontës play out their internecine conflicts and try to look past their lives’ often grim limitations.
Looking back, Charlotte notes “the dangers … of an interior world that was brighter, more golden than the gray reality.” Drawn with a cheery and expansive sweep that belies its sometimes somber subject, “Glass Town” is a testament to the (usually) redemptive powers of imagination. (Chris Barsanti)

In The Guardian, author Edna O'Brien shares the book that 'made' her.

The book that made me laugh. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. The folly and scheming of those four gallants was a long way from Heathcliff but they captivated and charmed me, partly because they were such bunglers and because of how Dickens loved them and explored every corner of human fallibility.

La Razón (Spain) claims that 61% of writers (or 63% in other parts of an article that doesn't seem particularly reliable or worthy of space) hear the voices of their characters speaking to them. And then the article goes on to make up the fact that Charlotte Brontë didn't create the 'I am no bird' speech but merely 'transcribed' it.

En “Jane Eyre”, la célebre novela de Charlotte Brontë, el personaje central le aseguraba al señor Rochester: “No soy ningún pájaro, y no hay nido que me atrape. ¡Soy un ser humano libre, con una voluntad independiente!“. Un buen discurso, sin duda. Sin embargo, según el 63 por ciento de los escritores, esta frase no la escribió Brontë, sino que simplemente la transcribió. ¿Cuál es la diferencia? Que la escritora no la inventó, sino que se lo dijo directamente Jane Eyre. Porque el 63 por ciento de los escritores asegura que los personajes les hablan. (Carlos Sala) (Translation)

Clearly lockdown is playing tricks with the minds of some journalists. They will hopefully be able to go out soon and stop making things up.

For International Workers' Day, El País (Spain) listed what many writers and artists did for a living apart from writing.

Las hermanas Brontë: institutrices
Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) y Anne (1820–1849) son conocidas como escritoras de clásicos absolutos tan contundentes como Cumbres borrascosas (Emily) o Jane Eyre (Charlotte), pero en la Inglaterra victoriana la idea de que una mujer escribiera novelas no acababa de encajar del todo. Así que buena parte de la producción literaria de esta familia tan prolífica tuvo que ser publicada bajo seudónimos masculinos, mientras las hermanas Brontë se ganaban la vida como maestras e institutrices en distintas escuelas. La primera fue la que su padre, el reverendo Patrick Brontë, había construido en su Haworth natal y que hoy es lugar de peregrinación para lectores de todo el mundo. Por cierto, hay todo un ensayo sobre el valor emancipador del trabajo en Jane Eyre, una novela protagonizada por una institutriz para la que el empleo no solo es el camino a la independencia económica, sino también vital. (Carlos Primo) (Translation)

Soompi takes a look behind the scenes of the TV show Born Again.

KBS 2TV’s “Born Again” released a new behind-the-scenes look at the drama!
The making-of video begins with Jin Se Yeon introducing the secondhand bookstore run by her character. She explains, “There used to be ‘Wuthering Heights’ here. This is the place where I hand Hyung Bin [Lee Soo Hyuk] the book, and it’s the first scene in which we feel something between us.” (S. Nam)

Den of Geek discusses 'The History of the Real People' in Netflix's Hollywood.

Vivien Leigh
[...] She was 13 by the time of her first success on the London West End stage and continued to have early triumphs, including when she met the love of her life, Laurence Olivier, at the age of 23 in 1937. Beginning an affair with the fellow thespian while acting in the play Fire Over England, the pair seemed semi-charmed, except for the small matter of each being married to someone else. No matter!
Their marital status became a problem for both of them, however, when they reached Hollywood, with Samuel Goldwyn’s PR team needing to disguise the bohemian lifestyle of their new Heathcliff leading man in Wuthering Heights (1939). Leigh came to Los Angeles to be with Larry but refused director William Wyler’s offer to play a supporting role in the film—she wanted to be Cathy or no dice. (David Crow)

Unapologetic Writer posts about Jane Eyre.