'I identify with her because Charlotte Brontë allows you to enter her soul'

Even if tomorrow it's Samantha Ellis's turn in The Brontë Lounge, Keighley News is also looking to next Thursday's event featuring Tracy Chevalier.

Celebrated novelist Tracy Chevalier will be the second guest in the Brontë Lounge this month.
Tracy, writer of international bestseller Girl With A Pearl Earring, will speak about the enduring popularity of Jane Eyre.
The event, due to be streamed live online on Thursday July 23 at 7.30pm, is entitled Jane And Me and will focus on Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel.
The Brontë Society is organising the Brontë Lounge events as fundraisers while the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is closed due to Covid-19.
The new “digital space” is exploring the Brontes, their work and their legacy, through conversations with well-known writers and artists. [...]
Tracy will speak about what she discovered about Charlotte during her year at the Parsonage, and consider why Jane Eyre continues to feature in lists of people’s favourite books.
A spokesman said: “There will also be the opportunity for the audience to ask a question via the Zoom ‘chat’ function, so this promises to be an entertaining and informative evening not to be missed!” (David Knights)

The New York Times reviews the book A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch by Miles Harvey on James Jesse Strang, 'a real estate huckster with monarchic ambitions, a creative relationship to debt and a genius for mass media'.

His account of Strang’s rise and fall is littered with thumbnail histories of 19th-century cross-dressing, John Brown, John Deere, the Brontës, bloomers, the Underground Railroad, mesmerism, newspaper exchanges, the Illuminati and much else. (Chris Jennings)

Southern Living recommends the film version of Wide Sargasso Sea as one of '9 Summer Movies to Stream Before Labor Day'.

Wide Sargasso Sea
In this prequel to Jane Eyre, based on the fictional tome by Jean Rhys, you'll be captivated by the madwoman in the attic and 1830s Jamaica. See you in front of the TV screen for this nail-biting drama. (Perri Ormont Blumberg)

A contributor to High Country News has forgotten all about Wuthering Heights.

I can’t remember any of the term papers or projects we did for Bless Me, Ultima, but I do remember the class respected Mrs. Lafler after we were done with it. The book stuck with me in a way few others did from high school ever have. (Sorry, Wuthering Heights. (Gustavo Arellano)

The Yorkshire Post has talked to Dame Esther Rantzen.

“I used to love the Victorian books my grandmother had on her bookshelves. I particularly remember The Cuckoo Clock, a fantasy novel by Mary Louisa Molesworth, The Secret Garden and A Little Princess both by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
“They all featured little girls doing really well which, of course, appealed to me.”
As for literary characters, she says she most relates to is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
“She was plain, put-upon, ignored and generally bullied but she’s so brilliantly described that, even though my life has been the exact opposite of hers in every way, I identify with her because Charlotte Brontë allows you to enter her soul.” (Gabrielle Fagan)

The Oakland Press has added Jane Eyre to a list of summer reads to catch up on. Reading between the Dunes posts about Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia describing it as a 'Mexican Jane Eyre'.