Podcasts

  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
    11 hours ago

Friday, May 15, 2020

Stylist has asked 'authors, publishers, book lovers and beyond to nominate their favourite women writers' in order to compile a list of the '107 female authors everyone should have on their bookshelf'.
106. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) by author Sharon Bolton
“Don’t be fooled by the parsonages and the prim bonnets; this bitch’s novels throb with sex. Throughout the Cinderella-creepiness of Jane Eyre (1847), the subversive isolation of Villette (1853) or the feminist polemic that is Shirley (1849), the frustrated howling of the author rings in our ears. Brontë was a woman born too soon, constrained by her upbringing and whose only outlet for her passion and fierce intelligence was her pen. Charlotte Brontë remains the undisputed queen of the romantic thriller.” [...]
100. Emily Brontë(1818-1848) by author and women's prize for fiction co-founder, Kate Mosse
“It’s not a question of having a ‘favourite’ novelist, but rather about someone having written a book that means more than any other. That novel, for me, is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It’s a story of violence and obsession; it’s a ghost story; or it’s a celebration of the timelessness of the land and the power of nature; or it’s an attack on the Victorian hypocrisies of race, sex, marriage and class. Brontë proved that what matters in a writer is imagination, not personal experience – that it’s the ability to tell a story, to create imagined worlds, that makes a writer – for all this passion came from the pen of a solitary young woman who rarely left her home in Haworth, Yorkshire. Her literary legacy is astonishing.” (Francesca Brown)
We'll make that 108 and add Anne Brontë.

The Times comments on Alfred Hitchcock's film Suspicion.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the film today is how fully Hitchcock roots it, from its first shot to its last, in Fontaine’s point of view: the “only mistake [Grant] made on Suspicion was not realising that the part of Lina was the major role”, said Fontaine, who won the Oscar for her performance, essentially a repeat of her role in Rebecca, but still remarkable for her ability to make timidity and fear play as qualities of an imagination heightened by love. She would have made a great Brontë. (Tom Shone)
She did play Jane Eyre.

ScreenRant recommends the 1943 film I Walked with a Zombie,
a classic chiller that's basically a zombie take on Jane Eyre. (Padraig Cotter)
Daily Hampshire Gazette has asked several local writer about what they are reading during lockdown.
Debra Jo Immergut, author of the 2018 mystery “The Captives” and the forthcoming “You Again
[...]
“I’m also catching up on classics I’ve missed, such as ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, an early example of fan fiction, since it is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre.’ (Steve Pfarrer)
According to a columnist from The Altamonte Enterprise,
A common plot in British and American literature is the tempestuous romance that erupts between a beautiful, wealthy, cultivated woman and a handsome proletarian dude with no money or life prospects whatsoever. Think of the notorious Lady Chatterley, Cathy with her Heathcliff, and other wildly romantic British pairs, Faulkner’s Miss Emily and Homer Barron — or most recently Jack and Rose, the ill-fated lovers in the film “Titanic.”
Eurogamer claims that 'Torchlight 2 still has the best names in all of video games'.
Beautiful stuff. So evocative! Bleak Spirit! Lost Crewman! Suddenly we're off with the Brontë sisters, with Stevenson, with Lord Dunsany and all that lot. Names are where these games become expansive and romantic, where they become properly transporting. The right creature name can land you on the moors, can thrust you into the creepy curlicued woods of Sleepy Hollow, can take you to the Arabia of the 1001 nights. (Christian Donlan)
Yorkshire Life recommends '5 literary-themed breaks to take in Yorkshire'. The first of which is
Haworth
Literary connection
The Brontës; The Railway Children; Ted Hughes
No literary pilgrimage to Haworth would be complete without a look around the Brontë Parsonage Museum (bronte.‌org.‌uk), where Emily, Charlotte and Anne wrote their famous novels. There’s a year-long exhibition looking at Anne’s life and work. From there, head to Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (kwvr.‌co.‌uk), which featured in the film of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children. 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the making of the film, and a programme of celebratory events was planned. The railway has launched an appeal to help survive the current hardships. Finally, for those inspired to pick up a pen themselves, book a place on a writer’s retreat at nearby Lumb Bank, Hebden Bridge (arvon.‌org). The 18th century mill-owner’s house was once owned by poet Ted Hughes and now houses an Arvon creative writing centre. Courses run throughout the year.
Where better than Ted’s House (cottages.com), the sensitively restored childhood home of Ted Hughes, in Mytholmroyd? Meanwhile, Ashmount Country House in Haworth (ashmounthaworth.co.uk) boasts a connection to the Brontës: it was owned by Dr Amos Ingham, who was the family’s doctor. Sykes Cottages (sykescottages.co.uk) offers several quirky self-catering options, from Moor Skies, a cosy shepherd’s hut in Oxenhope to the pretty and romantic Curiosity Cottage in Oakworth. The Dairy in Haworth, comes complete with purple Aga.
‘He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors.’ Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë.

0 comments:

Post a Comment