Closing Again

The Brontë Parsonage Museum announces that:

The Museum is closed with immediate effect until 2 December. All visitors who have purchased tickets for November will be contacted in the coming days. We will continue to monitor the situation and updates will be posted at http://bronte.org.uk/visit-us. Thank you for your understanding and support.
Our online shop will remain open at http://bronte.org.uk/bronte-shop, but deliveries may take a little longer than usual.

We have some Halloween-related Brontë mentions today (but not so scary as the real world nowadays, we should add).

The Telegraph & Argus looks for ghosts in local pubs

Branwell Brontë was no stranger to Haworth’s pubs and he remains a regular at the Black Bull, where his spirit, with dishevelled red hair and wild eyes, is said to have appeared. (Emma Clayton)

and a particularly gruesome murder in Keighley:

The story of her death and its aftermath is among those included in Bloody Yorkshire: Volume 2, the second book by author Wendy Rhodes, which continues to document Yorkshire’s most unsavoury crimes.
Barbara and John suffered tragedy in their lives, losing nine children, all before the age of four. All are buried in Haworth churchyard not far from the Bronte Parsonage.
It was a mystery to everyone as to why they left a decent home in Cullingworth take on their roles at the workhouse. (Helen Mead)

her (Ireland) recommends books for this month:

The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis

It's Christmas 1846 and Haworth is in the grip of a freezing winter. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rather losing interest in detecting until they hear of a shocking discovery: the bones of a child have been found interred within the walls of a local house, Top Withens Hall, home to the scandalous and brutish Bradshaw family. 

When the sisters set off to find out more, they are confronted with an increasingly complex and sinister case, which leads them into the dark world of orphanages, and onto the trail of other lost, and likely murdered children. After another local boy goes missing, Charlotte, Emily and Anne vow to find him before it's too late. (Keeley Ryan)

Yorkshire Life looks into its archive for November-related walks:

Haworth

November 2019 issue

This walk covers some of the places and landscapes most associated with the Brontë family, explore the quaint streets of Haworth and the surrounding wild moors.

The Guardian reviews a recent production of Béla Bartók's opera A kékszakállú herceg vára (Bluebeard's Castle):

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 Gargill)

Micky quotes from The Gifts of Reading: Essays on the Joys of Reading, Giving and Receiving Books curated by Jennie Orchard:

Reading showed me what the world could be. My life told me what the world was. It was not Jane Eyre or Lizzie Bennet or even Nancy Drew that opened my life to the possibility of a better existence. It was Ann M. Martin and her Baby-Sitters Club. That children should get paid was a crazy idea, that they should get paid for babysitting even more audacious. (Alice Pung)

The Sunday Times tries to raise our spirits in view of the new lockdown:

If a new lockdown seems just too depressing, take heart from Tony Mortimer, lead singer of the chart-topping 1990s boy band East 17.
Before the coronavirus, he was too busy writing hip-hop lyrics to have time for books. He thought about reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, but watched the film “because it was quicker”.
Until April he had never finished a novel. Then lockdown changed his life. Since then he has read 65 books and begun to write a novel with the help of a how-to guide written by Stephen King, the bestselling American author. (Grant Tucker)

El País (Spain) traces a profile (almost a hagiography) of Nicole Kidman:

Ella creció encerrada en su habitación como su ídolo, Jane Eyre, y acomplejada por su altura, su pelo naranja y una piel tan pálida que le impedía ponerse al sol. “Mis recuerdos de infancia son las risas de los demás niños en la piscina de al lado. Me pasaba horas leyendo y soñando con ser Natacha de Guerra y paz, Dorothea de Middlemarch o Catherine de Cumbres borrascosas. Recibí mi primer beso sobre el escenario de un teatro. Vivía mi vida a través del arte”, recordó en una entrevista en Vanity Fair. (Juan Sanguino) (Translation)

Halloween recommendations by Politiken (Denmark):

Tre gange Jane Eyre? (Anne Serre: Les Gouvernantes, 1992). I Anne Serres eventyr 'Les Gouvernantes' er der ikke kun én, men hele tre lærerinder. (Benedicte Gui de Thurah Huang) (Translation)

Soria Noticias (Spain) recommends the compilation Damas Oscuras (Victorian Ghost Stories by Eminent Women Writers)

Mob Magazine (Italy) interviews the writer Linda Tumbarello, a Brontëite:

Un vero capolavoro. Non posso scordare: “Cime tempestose”. Stavo per farlo e mi sono morsa il labbro. Non si può non leggerla quest’opera meravigliosa; questo capolavoro che va dritto al cuore fino a far piangere. L’ho letto e riletto non so quante volte. Celebre la frase: Se tutto il resto perisse e lui restasse, io continuerei ad essere; e, se tutto persistesse e lui venisse annientato, l’universo mi sarebbe estraneo… (Andrea Giostra) (Translation)

A very nice story in The Providence Journal, with a passing Jane Eyre mention in it. Lotus Writing Therapy posts about Halloween reads, specifically the Brontës and Daphne du Maurier. Markal Vinligaya posts about Wuthering Heights. Teresan kirjablogi (in Finnish) reviews Agnes Grey.

 Zerkalo Spettacolo (Italy) interviews the singer Serena Rigacci who is about to read Wuthering Heights. Finally, we read in Republic World or San Diego Union Tribune the obituary of the Peruvian actor Ricardo Blume (1933-2020) who played Heathcliff in a Peruvian 1963 Wuthering Heights TV adaptation.