The kind of guy who might read Wuthering Heights and decide it needed amping up a little

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A lovely project to celebrate the links with the Brontës is being carried out in Thornton as reported by The Telegraph and Argus.

The Brontë Zines - quaint booklets packed with facts and puzzles about the literary sisters’ lives and work - have been created by local artist Rosie McAndrew and are being distributed in Thornton, where the world-famous family lived before Haworth.

The project is part of a cultural programme promoting Thornton as the Brontes’ birthplace. In March 2020 South Square Centre in the village received National Lottery Heritage funding for a capital refurbishment and a three-year programme of activities highlighting local industrial heritage, the Bronte birthplace and South Square’s history as a grassroots arts centre.

Rosie worked with the centre on creating the Bronte Zines, initially released in the first lockdown. Now, to celebrate Charlotte Bronte’s 205th birthday today, they are re-launched.

“We originally created them in the first lockdown of March 2020; we distributed them around the village to care homes and residential living as a way to keep connected with our community,” said the centre’s programme manager Alice Withers. “We have re-launched them this month to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday and the gradual re-opening of the centre to the public.”

Added Rosie: “A Zine is basically a publication of original or appropriated texts and images. They usually have a very small circulation and are works with minority interest - obviously the Brontes have a world-wide interest so these were a delight to create. The project combined my love of pop culture and illustration with heritage and education - knowing what we know about Charlotte we’re pretty sure she’d approve!”

The Zines will also be available at the centre when it re-opens with exhibitions on June 4. (Emma Clayton)

Several sites mourn the death of songwriter Jim Steinman. From The Guardian:

In 1989, the NME interviewed Jim Steinman. The late journalist Steven Wells found him on fine, very Jim Steinman-ish form. He was presiding over a video shoot for a single by his new project Pandora’s Box, directed by Ken Russell, a man who shared Steinman’s zero-tolerance policy towards subtlety and good taste. Amid Russell’s exploding motorbikes, white horses surrounded by fire, and S&M gear-clad dancers gyrating on top of a tomb, Steinman offered his thoughts on current rock (U2 were “the most boring group in the world”) and dished scandalous gossip about the artists he’d worked with. He also announced that the Pandora’s Box album had been inspired by a scene in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights where Heathcliffe [sic] exhumed Cathy’s corpse and “danced with it on the beach in the cold moonlight”. It should be added that this scene seems to have existed entirely in Steinman’s head – nothing like it happens in Brontë’s book. But then, Jim Steinman seemed very much the kind of guy who might read Wuthering Heights and decide it needed amping up a little. (Alexis Petridis)

Music Radar quotes Steinman's take on the whole thing, which is obviously priceless.

"This isn't the Wuthering Heights of Kate Bush—that little fanciful Wuthering Heights," Steinman said of the original, somewhat grim inspiration for the song. "The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight and on the beach with it. I think you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. 

"I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life," Steinman reasoned. "I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it. (Rob Laing)

The best bit is where he says 'the scene they always cut out'. Yeah, even Emily Brontë cut it out, go figure!

The Grammy Awards recommends 10 of his songs and describes It's All Coming Back to Me Now as follows:

The song's thundering lyrics inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights and over-the-top production, including the sound of clattering drums, is classic Steinman: boisterous and bubbling with passion. "I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life," Steinman wrote about the song. "I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love and about the extraordinary ability to be resurrected by it once dead." (Rob LeDonne)

A contributor to Jezebel can't understand what all the fuss is about in the whole 'let's alter the displays at Jane Austen’s House to reflect the ‘colonial context’' controversy in the UK and cautions critics not to read Jane Eyre.

I would beseech any and all UK tabloid writers or readers outraged at this shocking Austen revelation to either never read Jane Eyre or close the book when you get to the part where Jane leaves Lowood because you are going to be fucking livid when you find out what Rochester’s got in that attic. (Emily Alford)

We don't really see her point, though, because the post-colonial readings of Jane Eyre are not exactly marginal, not particularly new.

Spoiler (in Spanish) lists some adaptations based on the Brontë novels. Libreriamo (Italy) features Jane Eyre. The Sisters' Room shares '7 facts about Charlotte Brontë'.

Finally, a reminder from the Brontë Parsonage Museum on Twitter:

Last chance to buy tickets for tonight's online Brontë Lounge event with Moira Buffini, the screenwriter behind 2011's "Jane Eyre" film, starring Michael Fassbender, Mia Wasikowska & Brontë Society President Dame Judi Dench. £6, starting at 7.30pm https://t.co/O6y8ACyQJU

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 22, 2021