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Saturday, June 26, 2021

Saturday, June 26, 2021 11:05 am by Cristina in , , , , , , ,    2 comments
It's Branwell's 204th birthday today and The Yorkshire Post features Michael Stewart's book Walking the Invisible, which has included him in his walks.
"It’s a book about the north of England as well as a book about the Brontës because I compare then with now,” said Dr Stewart, the university’s course leader in creative writing.
“Scarborough, where Anne went to die in 1849, was at that point an up and coming spa town, very prosperous and where the London gentry went to experience the baths. The contrast is extreme.
“I walked from Haworth to Liverpool, recreating the fictional walk of Mr Earnshaw in ‘Wuthering Heights’ when he returns with Heathcliff.
“Again, it is a case of a place that very different now. I look at how Liverpool was the centre of the European slave trade as around 80 per cent of the country’s income was from slavery, and I look at the likelihood of people being a slave or the child of a slave at that time.” [...]
Dr Stewart’s new book also covers the travels of Branwell, the only son of the Brontë parents. A painter and writer, Branwell found work as a tutor in Broughton-in-Furness, Lancashire.
"The differences are not as marked as with Scarborough," said Dr Stewart. "The pubs are there, the streets are cobbled – it’s fairly unspoiled so the comparison is not as stark.
“William Wordsworth also wrote about the nearby hill Black Combe and the landscape around Broughton. Branwell wrote to Wordsworth because he was obsessed with him, but Wordsworth never wrote back to him.”
The book also covers a visit to North Lees Hall in Derbyshire, the likely inspiration for Thornfield Hall in ‘Jane Eyre’, as well as the Luddite Trail near Huddersfield.
To coincide with ‘Walking the Invisible’, Dr Stewart will host a walking tour around Haworth, ‘In the footsteps of the Brontë’s, on Sunday, July 4 as part of the Bradford Literature Festival. (Ruby Kitchen)
Kiwi has 'A love letter to… the UK'.
What’s the book you took with you to read at the pub? A spot of lightweight melodrama? Jane Austen or one of the Brontës perhaps? [...]
There are scores of places that have a thriving trade based around literary tourism. Haworth in Yorkshire is a mecca for fans of the Brontë sisters, being the place where they grew up and indulged in healthful thrashes across the surrounding moors, giving rise to the windswept romance of Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. (David Szmidt)
The Guardian discusses 'The rise of BookTok'.
In August 2020, Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old from Shrewsbury, posted on the social media video platform TikTok a series of quotes from books she had read, “that say I love you, without actually saying I love you”. Set to a melancholy soundtrack, the short video plays out as Wilson, an A-level student, holds up copies of the books with the quotes superimposed over them. “You have been the last dream of my soul,” from A Tale of Two Cities. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” from Wuthering Heights. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own,” from Jane Eyre. It has been viewed more than 1.2m times. (Alison Flood)
According to Vogue, Wuthering Heights is one of '30 Books to Read Before You’re 30'.
Like most people, I first encountered the Brontë sisters in a high school classroom. The spell Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847) cast on me has strengthened with every passing year. The book’s famous romance (the quasi-incestuous bond between the violent Heathcliff and the vain Catherine Earnshaw) actually constitutes less than half of the novel. The greater and more difficult story―the one that draws me to the text over and over―is a meditation on generations: a study of how human faults pass from parents to children and of how we might outlive the sins of the past. Shortly after the book was published, Emily Brontë died at 30 years old. At 25, I’m closer to that age than to the teenage lovers―or to who I was when I first learned of them. The author’s wisdom, to quote her doomed heroine, has run “through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.” (Ian Malone)
Refinery29 looks at what's coming to Netflix Canada in July 2021, including
Jane Eyre (2011)
Cary Fukunaga's adapation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name is the sexiest one by far — all steamy chemistry and gazes full of longing and repressed tension. Mia Wasikowska plays the titular Jane, who arrives at Thornfield Hall as a governess. There, she must contend with the moody owner, Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender), whose broody facade conceals a dark secret within. (Ineye Komonibo)
Derbyshire Times reports that 
Hathersage has been voted the top hidden gem among villages in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty around England [...]
Famous author Charlotte Brontë was so taken with the Peak District village that when she wrote Jane Eyre she based Thornfield Hall on North Lees Hall and Milton on Hathersage. (Gay Bolton)

2 comments:

  1. By "Milton," does the Derbyshire Times mean Moor House?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They might mean Morton? Well spotted, though.

      Delete