Such a strange mélange of good and evil

The New York Times looks into the origins of bad boys.

It’s all Byron’s fault. Before James Dean and Gary Cooper and Heathcliff and Rochester — all the real and fictional men lounging at the center of the Venn diagram of “bad boys” and “sad boys” — Byron made such a career of drinking, lusting and gallivanting that he became a type. The Byronic hero: temperamental, hedonistic and romantic. “I am such a strange mélange of good and evil,” the poet once wrote of himself, “that it would be difficult to describe me.” Save it for your Tinder profile, bro. (Maya Phillips)

Evening Standard features the life and work of author Shirley Jackson.

The way Jackson explores women’s struggles through horror has earned her comparisons to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, and Jane Eyre’s character Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s violently disturbed wife whom he keeps in the attic. (Susannah Butter)

While City Journal recommends the 1961 adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents, as 'tough to beat for a Halloween film choice'.

James originally conceived the governess as a sheltered 20-year-old further primed for suggestibility by a habit of reading romance novels. The first-person narrative of The Turn of the Screw is peppered with references to Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Brontë, Henry Fielding, and fairy tales, giving the novella a metafictional veneer appropriate for its theme of interpretation and misinterpretation. (Carlos Acevedo)

The Herald reviews This Haunted Land, the latest episode of the Words and Music series on Radio 3 .

"My fingers closed on the fingers of a little ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me. I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in. Let me in.'"

There were more than a few ghosts haunting the corners of the radio schedule this week. The prospect of Hallowe'en will do that, I guess. The most enjoyable was This Haunted Land, the latest episode of the Words and Music series on Radio 3 on Sunday evening.

There were readings from the likes of MR James, Emily Brontë (quoted above, but you knew that, right?), Algernon Blackwood, John Donne and Thomas Hardy (all read with a nervous intensity by Tim McInnerny, above, and Ayesha Antoine). These were interspersed with musical selections that stretched from Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary to Goblin's soundtrack for Dario Argento's Italian horror masterpiece Suspiria. Together, they conjured up an enveloping, misty atmosphere. (Teddy Jamieson)

On her list of scary books for El País (Spain), writer Mariana Enríquez mentions Jane Eyre.

Encontré a los encerrados por locos o por enfermos de Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë, y El jardín secreto, de Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Translation)

The Guardian wonders whether 'love and isolation make Bartók’s Bluebeard the opera for our times'.

We all know Bluebeard. From Jane Eyre to Kubrick’s The Shining, his castle has become shorthand for a place where dark secrets lurk behind locked doors, and the man himself has become a synonym for evil. Today’s Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Bluebeard as “a man who marries and kills one wife after another”. (Karen Cargill)

Your Story Weekender interviews writer Alka Joshi.

YSW: What kind of books do you enjoy reading and what are some of your current favourites? 

AJ: I love reading historical fiction, mysteries, and books that take place in other cultures/other countries. Over the years, I’ve read so many books by amazing authors. At this very moment, Rabindranath Tagore, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Charlotte Brontë, Alice Walker, Tracy Chevalier, Jamaica Kincaid, Tana French, Anthony Doerr, Min Jin Lee, and Ha Jin come to mind. (Asha Chowdary)

The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times interviews another writer, Juliet Greenwood.

6. Who/what are YOUR favourite authors/ books?

I still love Jane Eyre, which was the first book I read as a teenager that really told a story from a female point of view. It was a revelation. (Nicola Adam)