It's Florence Nightingale's bicentenary, too

Kathryn Hughes discusses 'How Victorian artists saw Florence Nightingale' on Apollo.

Over the past few years several Victorians of distinction, including Dickens, Darwin, Ruskin, Charlotte and Emily Brontë and, indeed, the queen herself, have each celebrated their bicentenary with a dutiful round of exhibitions, broadcasts and books. The latest birthday girl, however, will require no such effortful acts of remembrance. For by some freakish accident, Florence Nightingale’s anniversary has arrived slap bang in the middle of a crisis which has invoked her name. In east London, and other sites around the country, huge temporary hospitals have been thrown up overnight to cope with the Covid-19 outbreak. They are to be called ‘Nightingale’ hospitals.

She could have mentioned that she shares a bicentenary with Anne Brontë, even if our Anne seems to have drawn the short straw (again).

The Telegraph and Argus reports on the results of a survey carried out by flatsharing site SpareRoom in which almost 4,000 flatsharers were asked about their desert island book.

The eight novels that received the most votes were: Pride and Prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Shantaram, The Alchemist, Jane Eyre, The Hobbit and The Great Gatsby. (Mark Stanford)

Stuff (New Zealand) reviews The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox.

Knox’s hero, Taryn Cornick, is a bibliophile. Following the accidental death of her sister, she sets about discovering why her killer did so. The book thus begins as a crime thriller. [...]
As befits a librarian, Taryn wants a “book with scholarly heroes and hidden treasure”. And this is exactly what Knox sets out to provide. Her novel is rich in literary reference, particularly to Jane Eyre and Dante’s Divine Comedy. There are also a few medieval romances thrown in for good measure. (Steve Walker)

Entertainment Weekly reviews the latest romance novels such as The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham which apparently

has a strong Gothic flavor with its craggy, stormy Cornwall setting and interrogation of themes worthy of the Bronte sisters. (Maureen Lee Lenker)

A contributor to Cody Enterprise quotes from Jane Eyre in an article about spring.

So why the new look? It’s simple really: It’s spring. And when spring comes, I’m renewed. I’m refreshed. I’m a new person. The transformation is the mettle of muse, the veracity of verse, the legend of literature.
“Spring drew on,” Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) wrote in her epic Jane Eyre, “… and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”
See what I mean? You’ll be talking this way, too, once you stand on your porch and take a whiff of that new-mown grass or the delicate smell of lilacs and crabapple trees, just days from blooming. Then, listen to the chirpy chatter of the birds at dusk and immediately begin to wax poetic. (Marguerite House)

While a contributor to The New Yorker writes about 'The Enduring Romance of the Night Train'.

Having commandeered the upper berth, I lay there, reading “Wuthering Heights,” drifting off, and lurching awake, bereft of my bearings, whenever the train paused. I recall tugging the edge of the blind, peering out into first light, and seeing an old woman, quite still, with a bundle of sticks on her back. It was as if we had taken a branch line into the world of Brueghel. (Anthony Lane)

According to the Daily Mail, 'book clubs have become the ultimate status symbol'.

In Derbyshire, the queen of book clubs is Lady Edward Manners, who once described her group as the 'scariest in England'.
When it is her turn to host, Lady Edward invites her guests to Haddon Hall, the 11th century country pile she shares with her husband Lord Edward and their twin sons.
The home has featured featured in several film adaptations of Jane Eyre, as well as Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice, The Other Boleyn Girl and the Princess Diaries.
Lord Edward inherited the property on the death of his father Charles Manners, 10th Duke of Rutland, in 1999. His older brother David Manners, 11th Duke of Rutland, is father of 'the Manners sisters', Lady Violet, Lady Eliza and Lady Alice, and lives at the family seat of Belvoir Castle. 
Speaking on gaining membership to her book club, Lady Edward told Tatler: 'It's one in, one out'. Members are also expected to dress up for the occasion. 'It's a heels and lipstick affair,' she added. (Stephanie Linning)

According to The Irish Times, writer Gerald Murnane is a fan of Wuthering Heights. Escola Educaçao (Brazil) recommends 15 feel-good movies on Netflix, one of which is Jane Eyre 2011.