The Honresfeld Collection in New York

Several sites continue reporting the delay of the Honresfeld Collection auction and the tremendous efforts to try and save it for the nation: BBC News, The Art Newspaper, University of Leeds, Infobae (in Spanish), etc.

Also The Brontë Sisters has a lovely account with pictures by our friend Anne Lloyd of a visit to the Sotheby's exhibition of the Honresfeld Collection in New York. Don't miss it!

Shemazing invites readers to take up 'The ‘well-read’ book challenge: Ticking off the classics'. The selection includes:

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

This one is probably my favourite, for the pure gothic, stormy romance of it all. A social drama with a hint of the supernatural, the tale of two houses at war is slowly uncovered from the darkness of the past.

Marooned overnight in a lonely home on the Yorkshire moors, Lockwood dreams of a wraith locked out in the snow. Gradually he learns the violent history of the house's owner, the fierce, saturnine Heathcliff and the thwarted love that has led him to exact terrible revenge on the two families that have sought to oppose him. [...]

‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë

Another gothic and atmospheric read (can you tell I love them?), this is a staple of the classics and one I would recommend to anyone. After you read this, go find ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, which has an alternative telling of the story form an unexpected perspective.

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again? (Fiona Murphy)

The Canberra Times reviews Rachel Cusk's novel Second Place.

Tony, the narrator's partner is like a sentinel in the work - tall, dark, unflappable and practical, he is grounded in the wild landscape in a way that reminded me instantly of Brontë's Heathcliff. (Christine Kearney)

Publisher's Weekly looks into the autumn poetry releases such as this one:

Love Is Enough by Andrea Zanatelli (Dec. 28, $16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5248-6308-1) combines Zanatelli’s detailed digital collages with a selection of classical love poems by Anne Brontë, William Blake, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Dickinson, Percy Shelley, and others. (Maya Popa)

Belfast Telegraph celebrates 100 years of Northern Irish literature and even more than that.

We even can claim a Brontë! Patrick Brunty, later known as Brontë, was father to three daughters: Emily, Charlotte and Anne. Maybe you’ve heard of them… (Aine Toner)

Apollo magazine discusses country houses.

Museum spaces could also be used to tame the ghosts of fictional houses, from Brideshead to Bridgerton’s Clyvden Castle. Much could be done in an exhibition space to connect the facts of country house life and collections, with the literary and television fictions that have been read and watched by millions. The paper houses of Howards End, Wuthering Heights, Manderley and Pemberley have been just as significant as their bricks-and-mortar inspirations in shaping our image of the country house as an enclosed setting for interpersonal dramas. A starting point for this future exhibition could be Virginia Woolf’s manuscript for Orlando, part of the National Trust’s collections at Knole, where the time-travelling and gender-changing protagonist moves through the sedimented layers of country house space. (Oliver Cox)

The Derby Telegraph recommends walks in the area.

Derbyshire has been centre-stage in the so-called "battle of the bodices", providing narrative settings in the Hope Valley for Brontë's Jane Eyre and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. (Lynette Pinchess)

Diario de Sevilla (Spain) celebrates 20 years of a local bookshop and mentions that novels like Jane Eyre can be found inside.