The little Brontës as book-devouring, consistently inventive, inseparable siblings

Huddersfield Hub picks up the story about Kirklees Council now wanting to get rid of Mary Taylor's Red House.

Cash-strapped Kirklees Council wants to offload four more major buildings including a gym club’s base, a community sports centre and a Grade II* mansion with links to the Brontës.

The council is reviewing all its land and property and has found four more buildings it wants to either sell or hand over to community organisations, saving a combined £240,000 a year in running costs.

The council has to slash £47 million off its budget by February ahead of the start of the next financial year or could face bankruptcy.

A report to Cabinet on Tuesday November 14 lists four buildings the council sees as surplus to requirements. They are: [...]

Red House in Oxford Road, Gomersal, near Cleckheaton. The Grade II*-listed former Red House Museum closed in 2016. The council scrapped plans to turn it into an events venue and holiday accommodation. The council wants to sell it but the building is registered as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) which gives it some legal protection and the community must be given time to bid for it. The ACV listing expires in October 2024. Red House dates back to 1660 and was the home of Mary Taylor, a friend of Charlotte Brontë. (Martin Shaw)

Quill & Quire reviews The Little Books of the Little Brontës by Sara O’Leary and Briony May Smith.

Opening with an introduction to a young Charlotte Brontë and her sister Anne, who live with their family in a house “on the edge of the wild moors,” readers are beckoned closer to see Charlotte in the midst of crafting a little book – full of big, happy ideas – for her littlest sibling. While the four Brontë children and their father have experienced the unimaginable pain of losing their mother and two older sisters to devastating illnesses, the remaining siblings – Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and brother Branwell – still have each other. They also have their aunt, their housekeeper, and many animal friends; they have their lessons and their time playing in the moors. But, perhaps most significantly, they have their love of books and stories. In a key moment, when their father brings home an assortment of toys, the Brontës are all immediately enraptured with a box of small wooden soldiers; so much so that they create miniature books for the soldiers, with “handwriting so small” that none of the adults in their lives are able to decipher the stories. 

While the heart of the picture book focuses on the lives of the little Brontës as book-devouring, consistently inventive, inseparable siblings, O’Leary and Smith also show bittersweet future glimpses of the quartet as young adults who are never far from books or writing paper. Readers learn that “while their lives will not be long,” Charlotte, Emily, and Anne will all famously write acclaimed and beloved-to-this-day novels. We also catch sight of Branwell, a painter and writer, as he paints an iconic portrait of the four together. The Little Books of the Little Brontës is, in a word, gorgeous. A sublime blend of tender and thoughtfully playful writing by O’Leary, and bucolic, rosy-cheeked mixed media illustrations by Smith, this is an exceptional picture book.  Be sure not to miss the back matter that includes a guide on “How to Make Your Own Little Book,” an author’s note, and more. (Michelle Callaghan)

LitHub interviews 2023 National Book Award finalist Evie Shockley.

Which book(s) do you reread?

I used to reread a ton! All the books and series mentioned above I’ve read probably four or five times (or more). Some more mature novels that I’ve read and returned to just for the joy of it include: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë; Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen; Bleak House, Charles Dickens; Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston; many of Octavia Butler’s novels, and Mama Day, Gloria Naylor. (Emily Temple)

Also on LitHub, a discussion of twinship throughout History, mythology, and Literature.

The idea of ideal love as a terrestrial twin was driven underground by Christianity—human hearts were meant to find their rest in God—but resurfaced and reached its peak in nineteenth-century Romanticism. Shelley described a couple in love as “one soul of interwoven flame,” and in Wuthering Heights Cathy exclaims to her nanny, “Surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you…Nelly, I am Heathcliff!” The core features of our contemporary ideal of romantic love were born in this period: the ideas that love between romantic partners, at its truest and best, is unconditional, selfless, and eternal, a haven of peace, a source of ultimate meaning, a guarantee of perfect happiness, and a redemption of all life’s sufferings. If romance subs for God in each of these ways, it also promises us the closest thing to immortality we skeptics can now hope for, by extending each lover beyond the bounds of their own mortal frame. “What were the use of my creation,” Cathy asks, “if I were entirely contained here?” (Helena de Bres)

Deadline features director Susanna White and The Buccaneers.

Just as Swift is the musical voice of a generation, White said each iteration of period drama has to speak to the audience of the day. “There have been something like 30 films versions of Jane Eyre and when it came to my version the question was how I could speak to the young women of the time,” she said. “It has to be truthful for the period you’re shooting in.

“What The Buccaneers has done is tap into the social anxiety young women are experiencing right now, often through social media. We’ve tapped into that particular zeitgeist, but hopefully we provide and fun and escape at the same time. I don’t know what’s around the corner but I always try to say something that feels real and truthful and speaks to the time I’m making it in.” (Jesse Whittock)

Vogue (Italy) Tate Britain's exhibition Women in Revolt!

Sessant'anni fa nel suo libro La mistica della femminilità Betty Friedan descriveva minuziosamente l'immagine di casalinghe frustrate che in tutto il mondo, la sera, scioglievano pillole di tranquillanti nell'acqua per anestetizzare i loro sentimenti e tutto quello che ribolliva dentro. Bisognava sopprimere tutto perché urlare, scalciare, provare rabbia non ti rendeva una donna appetibile agli uomini. Virginia Woolf, una cinquantina di anni prima, scriveva su una rivista alcune considerazioni sul personaggio di Jane Eyre e la definiva una donna la cui rabbia la corrodeva dentro: «Percepiamo l'acidità femminile come risultato dell'oppressione, una sofferenza nascosta che brucia nella sua passione». Ad accodarsi all'esigenza di esprimere la rabbia femminile è arrivata anche l'istituzione britannica del Tate Britain che il 7 novembre ha inaugurato una mostra intitolata Women in Revolt! focalizzata sull'arte femminista che ha invaso il Regno Unito tra gli anni settanta e novanta (in mostra fino al 7 aprile). Appartengono a cento artiste donne o collettivi le opere che sono esposte e che esistono in conversazione tra di loro per esprimere le idee radicali e ribelli che queste donne hanno espresso all'interno della cultura inglese. (Francesca Faccani) (Translation)