Another bookish girl in love with Heathcliff?

The Guardian talks about gender and writing:

And for a long time, in literature, there has been “a gender for fiction”, and that gender has been male. At least since Charlotte Brontë called herself Currer Bell, and Mary Ann Evans settled on George Eliot, female writers have taken male pen names in hopes that they will be taken more seriously by the reading public. In more recent times, the trend has been for successful authors to go genderless. Two of the world’s top-earning authors happen to be female and both go by their initials – JK Rowling and EL James.

As a matter of fact the names Currer, Ellis and Acton were chosen by the Brontës not to be obviously male, but to be ambiguous.

The Daily Mail presents one of the Brontë books for this August, Nelly Dean by Alison Case:

It's a brave author who strays into Brontë country, but American scholar Case has thrown herself wholeheartedly into her companion piece to Wuthering Heights.
Nelly Dean was housekeeper at the Heights and the novel's main narrator. Here, she sets about filling the gaps left by her original account of events, weaving 'a homespun grey yarn... among the bright-dyed and glossy dark threads of the Earnshaws and Lintons'.
This isn't false modesty, since Cathy and Heathcliffe are little more than bit players for much of the novel and their fireworks largely offstage.
Instead, the focus is on Nelly herself, her doomed love for her childhood sweetheart, Hindley, and her devotion to his son, Hareton, to whom she is nothing short of a mother.
There are a couple of daring twists along the way, but the tendency of Case's characters to talk in paragraphs makes for rather slow going.
Given that Nelly's tale extends to nearly 400 pages, you could be forgiven for feeling that a little more glossy darkness would perhaps not have gone amiss. (Stephanie Cross)

A charity walker in The Darlington & Stockton Times:

He will also be joined by friends and family for different stints of the journey which will see him walk along the Pennine Way and visit the home of the Brontë sisters before finishing the challenge with a drink in second Strathmore Arms with his wife, Maggie and children Amy and James. (Katie Richardson)

Keighley News informs that the Vintage Bus Tours are working all the summer (July & August) Sundays:

The Summer is here so we are now running steam trains every day until September.
The holiday period also marks the return of our vintage bus service, which connects Haworth station with Main Street, as well as to Oxenhope and Ingrow.
We know that our passengers really enjoy using the Rover tickets to travel on the tour, so this year we are running both a service on weekdays during the summer as well as tours around the Worth Valley linking Oxenhope station, Haworth village and Haworth station on summer Sundays.
Every Sunday in July and August, Vintage Bus Tours will operate between the three stops, the first service departing Haworth at 11.25am giving six round trips in all.
In addition, the Summer Orange timetable comes into operation for our weekday service when Vintage Bus Tours will operate throughout the week between Oxenhope, Haworth and Ingrow stations.
As well as the bus service included in the price of a railway Rover ticket, we are very pleased to announce that we are working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum to offer a discount for our passengers. (David Knights)

TES has published a top 100 list with the "fiction books all children should read before leaving secondary school – according to teachers":

13. Jane Eyre
15. Wuthering Heights

The Huffington Post gives reasons to read Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman:

Modern writers have struck gold taking classics like Gone with the Wind,Rebecca, Wuthering Heights and Little Women in improbable directions, one even garnering a Pulitzer. They've killed characters, taken liberties with everything from setting to sexual orientation and too often, though not always, embellished these tales with pedestrian plotting and insipid prose. (Loretta Bolger Wish)

The Sydney Morning Herald interviews Emma Stone about her role in the latest Woody Allen film, Irrational Man:

"I think maybe my thought for Jill's life is that she's grown up in this middle-class, very clean-cut family," she says. "It's almost like there is this craving for some toxic energy to come into her life because she so desperately doesn't want to be, you know, like everyone else in her town."
Isn't she just another bookish girl in love with Heathcliff? "The dark, quiet man you believe you can save? Yeah, but when somebody tells you they're crazy, you should probably believe them." As Oprah says, she adds. (Stephanie Bunbury)

The Gulf Today (UAE) talks about sacrifice and individualism and quotes from Wuthering Heights:

Therefore, the universal search for unity to ensure peace goes against the grain of human nature as we just found out. Yesterday was the birth anniversary of Emily Brontë whose protagonist Heathcliff powerfully underlines the primacy of the individual when he says, “God shall not get the satisfaction I will.”
Well, at same time we need peace and what is the solution?
Well, sacrifice. Your individual desires, your dreams, your pride, all need to be sacrificed in the larger interest of humanity. (Shaadaab S. Bakht)

Onislam talks about muslim education and quotes Jane Eyre:

Away from his widowed mother, his beloved grandfather, and his honorable family, he was left, far in the desert with a poor family to learn his language skills from their purest origins.
That was the first childhood memories of our prophet Muhammad-may the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, which has always sounded harsh to me as harsh as when little Jane Eyre was sent to Lowood Institution, and when Oliver Twist was misplaced in the workhouse. (Julunar)

Portadown Times announces the Chapterhouse Theatre's performances of Jane Eyre in Banbridge; Just Olga posts about the Brontës and briefly talks about the two Luccia Gray's Eyre Hall novels published so far.  Mousin' About publishes an original Jane Eyre illustration by Alison Mutton. Novel Conversations reviews Re Jane by Patricia Park. BookNotes and FootMarks has not enjoyed Jane Eyre as much as she expected.

Frock Flicks publishes a quite comprehensive post on Costumes in Wuthering Heights Movie & TV Adaptions

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Calligraphic Covers

Manuela Cappon is an Italian illustrator who recently sent us some examples of her work. Like these two covers she designed for Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildell Hall:

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One Ring to bring her at Thornfield and in the darkness marry her

Alice Spawls in the London Review of Books has a strong opinion about the recent claim that this photograph represents the Brontës:

Apart from anything else, it looks nothing like them. When Anne was four she told her father she wanted ‘age and experience’ but the women in the photograph are closer to middle age than the sisters would have been (Anne was 28 when she died). They’re too cross-looking, too – the Brontës weren’t called pretty but were ‘of pleasing appearance’ and would have worn their hair in spaniel curls, defying the likes of Mr Brocklehurst, who in Jane Eyre threatens to have Julia Severn’s naturally curly hair cut off for ‘conforming to the world so openly’. They were too young (and unmarried) to have donned a cap for the occasion like the woman on the far left, and would have worn their finest dresses – a wide-necked gown with a pelerine or collar for modesty perhaps. In the painting by Branwell known as the Gun Group Portrait, of which only one figure remains, they went bare-shouldered, though later engravers added chemisettes. 

Incidentally, Keighley News also published again Ann Dinsdale's opinion on the subject:

 “When Emily died no one knew who she was, so why would anyone take pictures of three obscure clergymen’s daughters?
“And why would they want to have their photos taken? Charlotte was very shy about her appearance. She sat for a portrait in 1850, and it’s clear it was an ordeal for her.
“A photograph would have been such a big thing because it was so unusual. It would have been documented somewhere.”
Ann said the women in the photograph did not resemble those in Branwell’s famous portrait, which is believed to show a good likeness to the real-life Charlotte, Anne and Emily.
Ann added: “We have three portraits of Anne painted by Charlotte and they all show a woman with small, sharp features and curly hair, and it’s not a likeness to the women in the picture.
“In my years at the Parsonage, I’ve lost count of how the pictures we’ve received that purported to be of one or more of the Brontës.” (David Knights)

The Brooklyn Rail reviews Caryl Phillips's The Lost Child:

Most students of literature know Emily Brontë, or at least we think we do: brilliant, passionate, undisciplined, even feral, yet at the same time wan, reclusive, depressive, diminished. Her sister Charlotte wrote that Emily’s sole novelWuthering Heights “was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials.” Though she credits Emily with a greater mastery, Virginia Woolf’s praise for the novel infers a similarly alien energy: “It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.” Elizabeth Hardwick confidently conjures a familiar portrait of all three Brontë sisters in the single sentence, “They are very serious, wounded, longing women, conscious of all the romance of literature and of their own fragility and suffering.”
Or perhaps we simply accept how little of substance we can hope to know of her. In the same essay Hardwick backpedals, “No one and no amount of fact can give flesh to Emily Brontë's character. She is almost impossible to come to terms with, to visualize.” She is one of literature’s great unknowables. How incredible, then, that when she appears midway through Caryl Phillips’s new novel The Lost Child, she is at once bracingly unfamiliar—that is to say, human—and unquestionably alive. Sickly and introspective, yes, but also alternately stolid, independent, tender, ambivalent. Like all of Phillips’s characters, she is in and of the world: “Again she lifted her head to the skies. Let those who need shelter seek it out. She whispered,Go, seek it out.”
Though the book jacket frames his novel as a reworking of Wuthering Heights“written in the tradition of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea,” Phillips has undertaken no neat retelling. The overt engagements with Brontë and her masterpiece are brief interludes, though they do much to establish the themes and tone of the novel as a whole. (Read more) (Sam Huber)

The Daily Mail has an article about a Lord of the Rings themed wedding. Curiously enough it seems that the couple a few days ago celebrated the 'legal' wedding and it was Brontë-related:

On July 10 the couple had their legal wedding which channelled the Emily Brontë novel, Wuthering Heights.
Amy [the bride] added: 'I'm not originally a Lord of the Rings fan that was Will's day.
'I love reading Thomas Hardy, Daphne Du Maurier and authors like that so Friday was more the day for me.
'But both weddings followed a literary theme.' (Sadie Whitelocks)

Which links quite bizarrely with this other piece of news. Maybe you have read about this Little Women project (reboot, rewrite, re...wtf?). The Washington Post gives more ideas for this new wtf-rewriting genre:

Writer: No um. Look. I can’t be like “so i’m adapting ‘Jane Eyre’ . . . there’s a girl named Jane and she meets a guy named Mr. Rochester, and they’re both wizards fighting a dark power that rises in the east and is threatening to draw all the rings of power unto itself, and there is another wizard named St. John who is lame.”
Exec: You are a fountain of great ideas. (Alexandra Petri)

100 Swoon-worthy romances on NPR Books:

Jane Eyre
A poor, mistreated heroine, a dour, misunderstood hero, and a mad wife locked in the attic — if that's not romance, we don't know what is! Reader, she did indeed marry him, and they lived happily ever after. 

Another list in the Manchester Evening News. This one is an introduction to Gothic fiction:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Heathcliffe (sic)!!! Who doesn't know this dark and desperate love story - a battle of class, survival, prejudice and, ultimately, the heart? If not, it's time to get Brontë's 1847 novel in your life - published a year before Emily's untimely death and later re-edited by her sister Charlotte. (Sarah Walters)

And BlogHer has another one. "Ten fictions worth seeing as much as they are worth reading":

Jane Eyre (2011)— This passionate, chilling and charmingly British film is based on Charlotte Brontë’s autobiographical tale of woe. The film explores every emotion to the depth by spinning the story line on a wheel of anticipation. (Alesya Izoita)

Tri-City News has also something to say about adaptations of novels:

If your tastes are more English, there seems to be a recent mini-industry in making films based on Jane Austin’s romantic fictions about the landed gentry of 19th century England; check out Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, or Emma. A more wildly romantic treatment of English life can be found in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and also in any of the movie adaptations based on Jane’s love for the tragic Mr. Rochester.

It's always a good idea to recover this Brontës meet Power Rangers 1998 video. ActuaLitté does is and adds something more. Do you remembered that it was directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord?

Des années avant de réaliser The Lego Movie, Chris Miller et Phil Lord jouaient déjà avec des personnages de plastique. Pour cette parodie publicitaire de 1998, les compères se sont emparés des sœurs Brontë — Charlotte, Emily et Anne — pour en faire des sortes de Power Rangers féministes.
Aidées par les fillettes, elles devront lutter contre les abominables phallocrates, qui refusent de concevoir qu'un livre, et plusieurs encore moins, puisse être écrit par une femme. À l'époque, les ouvrages des trois sœurs, et notamment Les Hauts de Hurlevent, de Charlotte Brontë, avaient largement participé à la disparition de certains tabous littéraires.
La vidéo faisait partie d'une série de fausses publicités, qui mettaient toutes en scène des personnages réels sous forme de jouets fictifs, mais cette courte série ne fut finalement jamais diffusée. (Antoine Oury) (Translation)

Jane Eyre 2006 is going to be available on the Korean video streaming service DramaFever and Miaoaoao presents the cast here. The New York Times has an article on buying properties in Yorkshire (and Brontë country, of course);  shihtzubookreviews fancasts Wuthering Heights; Dresses and Travels visits Haworth; David Johnson uploads to Flickr pictures of North Lees Hall; Surgabukuku posts about some new Jane Eyre additions to his/her book collection.

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Happy 197st, Emily!

Emily Jane Brontë was born on a day like today and 197 years after that she continues to impress, amaze and interest readers all over the world. Her intriguing personality, her mastery of poetry and prose make her a very prominent figure in 2015. Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, fascinates readers and gains one new adaptation after another, thereby living endless new lives and touching different lives.

We still wonder what Emily- the so-called sphinx of English literature would make of all that. We do, however, know that we are very happy for her.

This is the premiere performance of Ola Gjeilo's "No Coward Soul is Mine." (2011).
This piece was commissioned by the Mercersburg chorus for their 35th anniversary. 

(Text Originally posted in 2009)

EDIT: Check also this other posts and articles: Biographile, Ziua News (Romania), ABC (Spain), Andina (Perú), WCSH Portland, Surviving Translation, Museo LoPiù, Time Magazine, Il Post (Italy), Redecorating Middle-earth in Early Lovecraft, trombone com vara (in Portuguese), The Eclectic Atma, The Paris Review, Surviving Transition...

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Motivation? He's hot as hell

The Daily Express lists curiosities about tigers (today is, apparently, International Tiger Day). Including a Brontë reference:

5. Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, had a cat called Tiger. (William Hartston)

The Telegraph makes a case for Agatha Christie's Devon:

With Emily Brontë, it’s easy. You tick off Wuthering Heights and Haworth. With Jane Austen, there’s Chawton and Bath. Even Dickens’s ghost is easy to locate in and around London.
But to pay homage to Agatha Christie, where do you go? (Chris Moss)

The Independent explores the works of the novelist Shirley Jackson:

Much of the golden thread of Gothic and uncanny fiction in English passes through a female line – from Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë to Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter, Susan Hill and Donna Tartt. But Jackson, more than most of her sisters in mystery, lived in and through the vast abyss between untamed imagination and domestic routine. (Boyd Tonkin)

Jezebel is not so much exploring but obsessed with the works of Mary Stewart:

Then there are all the literary touches. Nine Coaches Waiting might as well be titled Jane Eyre, But If It Was in France, With More Attempted Murder. This Rough Magic, set on Corfu, is practically a tribute to The Tempest. Every chapter in her books begins with some quote from literature. (Kelly Faircloth) 

Flagpole (Athens, Georgia) publishes a profiel of the new director of the local library:

She now owns a Nook and counts among her favorite works Jane Eyre and Their Eyes Were Watching God, plus the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. (Rebecca McCarthy)

Camille Paglia is interviewed on Salon. She says a couple of controversial things about Hillary Clinton:

Fifteen years later, that’s still the sad role left for her to play. (David Daley)
Yes, it’s like something out of “Wuthering Heights” or “Great Expectations”–some Victorian novel, where a woman turns into this mourning widow who mopes on and on over a man who abused or abandoned her. Hillary has a lot to answer for, because she took an antagonistic and demeaning position toward her husband’s accusers. So it’s hard for me to understand how the generation of Lena Dunham would or could tolerate the actual facts of Hillary’s history.

Francine Prose tries to answer an impossible question (what is canon and who should be in there) in The New York Times:

I do think that there are works that everyone should read because they tell us who we are as human beings living in history. I would start with the Bible, the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad,” the works of Sophocles, Chaucer, Shakespeare. I think everyone should read “David Copperfield,” “Middlemarch,” “Wuthering Heights,” the essays of Virginia Woolf, not only because they will — by a sort of osmosis — improve one’s prose style, but because they can also sharpen one’s ability to think logically, to follow an argument and understand a complex sentence.

The Los Angeles Review of Books reviews The Antinomies of Realism by Fredric Jameson:

“Motivation” names, for instance, the entire gamut of Marxism’s relation to the working class. It is something we should not lose, whether in the sense of an entirely de-motivated, lazy affectlessness, or in the sense of demographically automatic “studies show ...” explanations. But motivation was also the achievement and domain of realism. Why does Isabel Archer go back to Rome and her toxic marriage to Osmond at the end of The Portrait of a Lady? Why does Heathcliff, so virile and menacing, fade into a crepuscular shade in Wuthering Heights?  (Ben Parker)

Forbes India has an article about something totally unusal (irony intended): writers with just one novel:

Emily Brontë
Writing under the pen name Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë was the third of four siblings. Her novel Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1847, led many to believe that it was written by a man, given its powerful language, imagery and sexual passion. Brontë died in 1848, and though it was believed that she was working on a second novel, its manuscript was never found. (Jasodhara Banerjee)

Consequence of Sound talks about a Titus Andronicus opera rock project:

Literature tells us that human suffering knows no bounds. We read Plath’s The Bell Jar, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Brontë’s Villette and come face to face with Orpheus-like characters using art as a means to negate pain. (Lior Phillips)

What your literary crushes says about your taste in men? Elite Daily unveils the enigma:

Mr. Rochester is basically the dude with more skeletons in his closet than ties. He’s the kind of guy you date for six months without knowing his last name, occupation or hometown. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter because he’s hot as hell and the sex is unbeatable.
Tread lightly — trying to weed out information from him will leave you with even more questions, like why he always keeps the guest bedroom door locked. Also, be wary of his crazy-as-f*ck ex. (Izabella Zayndenberg)

China Daily briefly mentions the Patrick De Bana Jane Eyre choreography for the Shanghai Ballet:

He's no stranger to Shanghai Ballet, which invited him to create a dance-theater productionof Jane Eyre in 2012. The result: a particularly impressive presentation of Bertha, the madwife of Rochester, Jane's employer and lover, in the course of the dramatic entanglementbetween the three lead characters. (Zhang Kun)

Judith Barrow interviews the writer Carol Lovekin:

Who are your favorite authors and what is it that you love about their work?
(...) Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle has the best fictional opening line ever and I reread Jane Eyre every few years.

El Periódico (Spain) recommends summer reading:

Un clásico para recuperar
Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë. Cuando encuentro a una chica muy lectora de 13 o 14 años y que ya ha agotado todos los libros de fantasía que hay en el mercado lo recomiendo y en el 75% de los casos tengo éxito. (Xon Pagès) (Translation)

Siglo XXI (Spain) interviews the writer Teresa Viejo:

En la manera tuya de narrar, ¿sientes que se esconde algo de realismo mágico? (Herme Cerezo)
Un comentario de este tipo me abruma. Yo no busco ese efecto, lo digo con la mano en el corazón. El lenguaje me sale así porque soy una persona que he leído mucho y, si no has leído, no puedes tener un estilo propio. Durante mis veranos, mi única ocupación era leer. Leía cuatro libros a la semana y por mis manos pasaron las colecciones enteras de los Cinco o de Agatha Christie y muchos otros títulos como ‘Cumbres borrascosas’. (Translation)

Mia Wasikowska made a "quietly potent impression" as Jane Eyre in the 2011 film according to Ken Eisner on Georgia Straight; this reader of the Darlington & Stockton Times visited Norton Conyers and shares his opinion.

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Imagine there's no ... oh, no, not again

Ok, we have to report this. We suppose that there are people out there who really believe this stuff. We are not one of them. And this is all we have to say. It's less painful when it's quick.

John Lennon and the Brontë Connection 
by Jewelle St. James
St James Publisher
Paperback – July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0973275261
(A reworking with new 'findings' of The Lennon-Brontë Connection (2011)).

Is ex-Beatle John Lennon the reincarnation of the troubled Branwell Brontë, brother to England's most literary sisters? Did Branwell Brontë write part, or all, of Wuthering Heights? The untimely death of John Lennon in 1980 prompted Jewelle St. James to investigate life after death and other spiritual phenomena. Research spanning three decades, and ten journeys to England, from Canada, was necessary to uncover past-life mysteries and their often surprising connections.

The John Lennon Examiner has a priceless review:

The similarities between Branwell and Lennon are striking, in appearance, personality and life story. Both were artists of course--both loved to write stories and do drawings. But that's just the beginning. The focus of the story is still more heavily weighted on Branwell than Emily; but if Jewelle St. James really is the reincarnation of Emily, she is following a soul trait. Biographical sources describe Emily as shy, forever in the background, never one to toot her own horn. So it is with this book, as Jewelle becomes more accepting of the notion that she might have been Emily, but still reticent, by the end of the book. (Shelley Germeaux)

Reticent. Oook. *grin*

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Walking Phallic Symbol loves Valencia Instagram Filter

BT picks some short walks, including Top Withins and the Brontë Bridge from Haworth:

The Moors of Wuthering Heights and the family home of the Brontës are right here in the gorgeous little town of Haworth. And you want a taste of the tragic yet inspiring lives of the Brontë family, this is the walk for you.
Park in the car park close to the Brontë Parsonage and make your way to the church and take the path that runs to its right to pass the Parsonage Museum. Follow the path signed to Haworth Moor which leads you onto a road. Turn left along the road and bear left at the first junction. (...)
The ruined farmhouse of Top Withins is said by some to be the actual Wuthering Heights but this is strongly disputed by experts. The scenery is superb and although most people turn back for Haworth at this point it is worth pressing on for another half mile or so to reach the relative solitude of the less visited moors beyond the ruins.
From High Withins retrace your route towards Haworth for about 200m and fork right along a path that heads in the direction of the Brontë Falls. The path descends through moorland with a stream to on your right.
Follow the signs for the Falls, crossing a number of walls over stiles. Reaching a kissing-gate, join the Brontë Way and descend to the Brontë bridge and falls. Reputed to be where the Brontë sisters spent some time the retrospective view is superb. (Emma Lazenby)

The Independent talks about QuickLit and imagines what could be Jane Eyre's high concept (à la Hollywood) in Twitter times:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: Plain virgin governess & chronic victim falls for walking phallic symbol with mad arsonist wife in attic and flash g/f in sitting-room. But e/thing okay when he goes blind. #spoiler #toolate (John Walsh)

After being accepted, Charlotte will have to write Jane Eyre not forgetting that mobiles could change substantially the plot. The Huffington Post gives details:

Jane Eyre
After being cyber-bullied through her adolescence, Jane has finally made a life for herself. She’s got a pretty stable job as a public school teacher -- tenure whaaaat? -- and her landlord, Ed, might seem a little cold and standoffish, but he’s become a pretty great pal. OK, so Jane has a huge crush on him. And sometimes she feels like he MUST be flirting with her, in that mean way guys do when they don’t know how to have adult relationships. But when she creeps his Instagram, she sees endless photos of him out clubbing with models, buying bottle service and taking cuddly selfies with one particular chick who seems to keep showing up in the comments to say things like “lol we r just too cute *kissy face*."
Jane tries to start her own Instagram to build up her self-esteem, but it only makes her feel more self-conscious about her appearance. If the Valencia filter can’t make her as cute as “blanchedbabe47,” what even is the point? Ed, who’s a bit over the whole Instagram party scene, bares his soul to Jane one day: He’s been secretly pining for her ever since she moved in! She’s blissfully happy. Plus, they already live together! Then, Jane sees a text on Ed’s phone while he’s making tacos for their "Hoarders" marathon. From his wife. Yes, Ed actually had his wife saved as “Wifey” in his phone (blech). He tries to deny it, but soon admits that yes, he has a wife, and a second home -- but it’s totally okay because his wife, blanchedbabe47, is a crazy bitch and he just wants Jane! Who nopes right on out of there, because she’s a smart girl.
She moves in with some sweet girls across town, even dates their brother John for a while, but there’s just no spark. Deep down, she still misses Ed, but come on, “my wife is a bitch” is the oldest excuse in the book. Months later, her phone vibrates. It’s a text from Ed. “Jane, I miss you,” it says. “I got a divorce. Please give me another chance.” Once she used public records to verify his divorce online, Jane decided to give things another shot. Reader, she married him, and thereafter checked Ashley Madison every month to make sure he was behaving. (Claire Fallon)

The Stage reviews the ChapterHouse outdoor touring production of Jane Eyre:

Laura Turner’s adaptation of of Charlotte Brontë’s romantic epic is given the Chapterhouse treatment, truncating the narrative without losing the power and purpose of the original novel. Turner avoids long conversations and monologues (although the ones that remain therefore have an added poignancy).
And Rebecca Gadsby’s direction takes us at a brisk pace through the narrative but without seeming overly hasty. She exhibits great clarity with excellent use of the small stage to depict such a vast tale. Pearl Constance’s costumes add to the authentic historical accuracy of the production; while Eliza Jade’s Jane is perfectly performed with a thick Yorkshire dialect throughout, as if at home in the Haworth moorlands. (...) (Rich Evons)

The Newcastle Chronicle celebrates the 45th anniversary of the shooting of the film Get Carter quoting a 1970 interview to Michael Caine:

“I had never witnessed misery like this in my own country,” Caine remarked after shooting on location in Newcastle. “It was like Charles Dickens meets Emily Brontë, written by Edgar Wallace.” (David Morton)

Bustle now lists feminist names for baby boys:

Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were the pseudonyms used by the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) when they published their novels and poetry in the 1840s and 50s. Charlotte Brontë is particularly famous for introducing the world to one of the most fascinating, complex women in literature in the form of Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë is most famous for her wild, fascinating novel Wuthering Heights; and Anne Brontë, who is less well-known than her incredibly famous sisters, shocked readers in the late 1840s when she wrote explicitly about domestic abuse and the injustice of marriage laws that stripped women of their independence, ability to own property, or gain custody of their children in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. (Lara Rutherford-Morrison)

On Chortle, Alice Winn talks about women on the improv scene:

There is a huge amount of pressure on women to be not only successful, but crucially, attractively successful. The idea of being ugly on a stage, in front of an audience, is the antithesis of what most women are taught—note (as Mallory Ortberg points out) that even when casting famously ugly or plain characters in films like Jane Eyre, beautiful women are chosen and made a little plainer.

SoFeminine selects 'literary loves we wish they were real'

Edward Rochester - Jane Eyre
The book might mention that he isn't particularly handsome, but honestly we refuse to believe it. His and Jane Eyre's love is of a shared soul, which is very sweet, but in a movie adaptation he's played by Michael Fassbender so it can't ALL be about the personality, right? (We realise we're terrible people). (Emmy Griffiths)

The Guardian discusses the possibility that HBO is planning a remake of All Creatures Great and Small with sarcasm:

Don’t say: Maybe the Brontës can come visit! SJP as Charlotte, Kim Cattrall as Emily and Cynthia Nixon as Anne! Awesome! Let’s roll!

The Boston Globe talks about the evolution of the network Lifetime:

Of course, that’s trotting Lifetime’s shiniest ponies in a row, and they still pool a large portion of their efforts into the original movie genre that airs the likes of the alarmingly real Wuthering High School , a contemporary remake of Emily Brontë’s classic ... in Malibu. (Rachel Raczka)

Los Angeles Magazine interviews the minds behind the perfumerie Regime des Fleurs:

How do you go about translating a specific historical, visual reference (i.e. a Paul Gaugin painting) into scent form? [Alia] Raza: We do everything we can, from making moodboards to watching specific movies and listening to certain music to put us into a particular space. We’ll talk about [the concept], nonstop, for days or weeks. I’ll say, ‘If we’re going to make this tropical jungle floral scent, we have to read excerpts from Wide Sargasso Sea, because the whole book is so feverish and humid it’s like the smell of gardenias,” and then Ezra might say, “You know what that reminds me of?” and he’ll tell me about a couture collection from 40 years ago. And these images or discussions or movies or books remind us of certain ingredients and smells. And then we start creating a formula. Each scent gets adjusted many, many times. (Alexandra Malmed)

Kashmir Life visits a leprosy colony in Bahrar:

Tanveer, 19, student at Amar Singh College is often seen with a book. He is the lover of English literature. His father Shareef Din and his mother Zareefa are the patients. He wants to do Phd in literature and talks confidently about the history of the place where he has been since childhood. Tanveer loves to read books. (...) Leprosy is not communicable disease but earlier it was considered to be. See my hands, everything is fine with me,” says Tanveer flashing a half read Jane Eyre book in his hands.

Terrafemina (France) on fan fiction:

Enfin, pour elle comme pour Sébastien François, il faut aussi peut-être arrêter de décrier la fanfiction et les romans qui en découlent. Ces histoires ne seraient au final rien de plus que des relectures des grands classiques de la littérature romantique du 19e siècle (Jane Austen, les soeurs Brontë...). (Anaïs Orieul) (Translation)

The Brontë Parsonage Blog reviews The Brontë Cabinet; also on the same blog a curious entry with a poem (author unknown) inspired by the Stonegappe House governess experience of Charlotte Brontë in 1839; The Book Bunnies posts about Shaggy Muses by Maureen Adams; Plain Old Maria Jane uploads a painting inspired by Jane Eyre.

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Jane for Teens

An alert from Newton, Kansas:

Newton Public Library
Teen Books Talks
July 28 at 2:00pm
720 N. Oak, Newton, Kansas 67114

If you are in Honors or AP English, these are for you! We'll discuss your required summer readings. Today's discussion: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

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Wild flights of fictional magic

The Washington Times reviews Writers' House: Where Great Books Began by Nick Channer

In the early 1970s, one of my English Literature professors liked to use “Describe the houses in the novels we have read this semester and their significance” as an exam question. There was plenty to write about the eponymous “Wuthering Heights” and “Bleak House,” “Pride and Prejudice’s” Netherfield Park and Pemberley, plus so many other dwellings that loomed large symbolically in the various texts. (...)
The handsome Italianate dwelling of Elizabeth Gaskell in a suburb on the outskirts of Manchester perfectly suits her oeuvre which encompassed rural and urban alike, while the windswept parsonage of her great friend Charlotte Brontë and her sisters seems nothing less than essential to their wild flights of fictional magic. (Martin Rubin)

Today, July 27, in BBC Two:

The Pennine Way (BBC2, 7pm)
Adventurer Paul Rose pulls on his hiking boots to explore the 268-mile Pennine Way, to mark the 50th anniversary of Britain's first national trail being officially opened. His first leg takes him from Edale to Calderdale, and along the way he tells the story of Tom Stephenson, who fought landowners and governments to win public access to the full route. He also meets author and Northern Broadsides director Barrie Rutter, who recalls some of the literary greats who have lived nearby, including Ted Hughes and the Brontës. (Viv Hardwick in The Northern Echo)

The Independent (Ireland) summarizes the previous week:

Another black and white picture emerged last week of three Victorian women looking as miserable as sin which collector Seamus Molloy claims are the Brontës, based partly on the fact that there's three of them and they look miserable as sin. Experts and historians dispute this claim. The Queen is not a Nazi, those lassies are probably not the Brontës and the camera rarely stops lying. (Julia Molony)

Nilly Hall posts about a recent visit to Norton Conyers.

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The Enduring Romance Of Cathy & Heathcliff

This sounds like a very intriguing proposal. Tomorrow, July 28, in Birmingham (part of the  Birmingham Festival:

The Enduring Romance Of Cathy & Heathcliff
Written and Directed by Rebecca Newman
Date(s) - 28/07/2015 at 7pm
The Old Joint Stock Pub &Theatre

‘You see, once you have entwined your life around a person never seeing them again can become quite the ch
allenge.’

It is the 1950’s and Cathy is in love with Heathcliff, the make believe man. Any man she meets pales in comparison, particularly the stranger she meets one day who insults her beloved book. But the laws of attraction are tricky and the two begin their unlikely, and not altogether willing, lives together.
‘The Enduring Romance of Cathy and Heathcliff’ is a touching, romantic comedy that follows the lives of Cathy and John, as John tries to prove to Cathy that he can be her ideal man, he can be her Heathcliff. Featuring some of the best music from the 50’s and 60’s.
Written and directed by Rebecca Newman. This is her debut play.

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Thornton Hall and a Broken Ankle

One of the contenders for being Thornfield Hall's inspiration in Jane Eyre (in close competition with High Sunderland Hall in Halifax or North Lees Hall in Hathersage) is Thornton Hall, who happens to be featured today in the Daily Mail on Sunday:

Thornton Hall, which dates from medieval times, has been lived in by the Whitaker family since the early 1980s – and Barry Whitaker, the retired boss of a textile machinery firm, has made it his business to be a custodian of the house’s long and illustrious history.
In the 16th Century, the hall was owned by Sir Richard Tempest, a knight of Henry VIII, and by the late 19th Century, when the neighbouring Brontës had come and gone, it was the residence of Bradford textile magnate John Foster. He substantially rebuilt parts of the house that had fallen into disrepair.
‘Thornton is very important to the Brontës and, as the sisters used to look out on Thornton Hall from their home in the village, it has been said that it must have influenced Charlotte when she came to write Jane Eyre,’ Barry says. (...)
Approaching the house along a tree-lined drive, a modern visitor could really feel they had been transported back in time to the days of the Brontës; indeed, Brontë Society members have been regular visitors over the years. And there are reminders of the house’s even longer history – a set of stocks dated 1638 are in the grounds, and the garden walls sport four ‘bee boles’, cavities to hold beehives. (David Barnett)

Well, if you have £850,000 in your savings account, you know where you can invest them.

A rescue operation in the Brontë waterfalls. We read about it in Grough:

A woman was rescued after breaking her ankle when she fell into water at a West Yorkshire beauty spot.
Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team was called out to Brontë Waterfalls after being alerted to the incident by ambulance staff. (John McHale)

Outlook India lists songs to 'celebrate the rains':

 Saawan Aaye Ya Na Aaye (Dil Diya Dard Liya, 1966)
The film Dil Diya Dard Liya was loosely based on  Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. This song, set in raga Sarang, is picturised on one of the best romantic couples on the silver  screen, Waheeda Rehman and Dilip Kumar, who played Catherine and  Heathcliff respectively, doing full justice to the tale of deep and abiding love, passion and betrayal. Composed by Naushad, with lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni. (Nirupama Kotru)

Alt Film Guide talks about TCM's showing films with Paul Henreid. Including:

Devotion (made in 1943, released in 1946), about the Brontë sisters, is chiefly of interest as the last Warner Bros. movie starring Olivia de Havilland (who, by the way, turned 97 yesterday). Devotion was released nearly three years after de Havilland sued the studio – eventually winning a landmark court case. Of note: Ida Lupino is the one who gets top billing in the film. (Andre Soares)

Paul Henreid was ArthurBell Nicholls in the film.

Longview Daily News asks the writer Lyndsay Faye by her next novel:

For her upcoming novel, Lehner [née Faye] is sticking with evildoing. “Jane Steele,” which is due out next spring, is about a female serial killer. Lehner drew inspiration from one classic novel and another contemporary thriller series. “It’s ‘Jane Eyre’ meets ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter,’ ” she said. “It’s Jane Eyre with a much higher body count.” (Tom Paulu)

The Express Tribune (Pakistan) reviews Far from the Madding Crowd 2015:

The movie is well-worth seeing, particularly for those lovers who adore film adaptations of classic literature such as Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Sense and Sensibility and Great Expectations. (Tanveer Khadim)

On NPR Rachel Martin speaks with author Jean Kwok about Patricia Park's novel Re Jane; Book Lovers' Sanctuary reviews The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde; Nut Free Nerd posts about Jane Eyre.

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Me Tarzan, You Eyre

Two new Jane Eyre-related poems by Rita Maria Martinez, author of Jane-in-a-box, have been published on the Notre Dame Review (Summer/Fall 2015, Issue 40). You can read them here, but this is their description by the author herself:

Marsh End Priestess

I compiled individual lines for the cento “Marsh End Priestess.” The poem was written by the members of Special Topics: Trends in Contemporary Poetry — Literary Collaboration and Collage, a graduate seminar taught by Denise Duhamel at Florida International University in 2001. Mitch Alderman, Terri Carrion, Andreé Conrad, Kendra Dwelley Guimaraes, Wayne Loshusan,  Abigail Martin, Estee Mazor, Astrid Parrish, Stacy Richardson, Sandy Rodriguez, Jay Snodgrass, Richard Toumey, George Tucker, Jennifer Welch, William Whitehurst, and I wrote individual lines. This cento is also  one of my  Jane Eyre poems. Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel briefly discusses Jane’s art.
I’ve always wanted to “see” more of Jane’s watercolors and sketches. Compiling  Marsh End Priestess provided an opportunity to create a new Jane poem and a new “Jane painting”. In Brontë’s novel, Jane seeks refuge at Marsh End or Moor House, the home of her three cousins, the Rivers.

Jane Eyre Thinks of Tarzan’s Jane at Canton's

I’ m a classic film buff. One of the exhibits in Our America : The Latino Presence in American Art is a striking altar by Amelia Mesa - Bains titled An Ofrenda for Dolores del Río . The exhibit keeps the Mexican actress’ legacy alive and incorporates photos from some of her films. Jane Eyre Dreams of Tarzan’s Jane at Canton’s also borrows from America’ s cinematic history. I’m a fan of actress Maureen O'Hara, who played Jane in many Tarzan movies. Featuring two different Janes in one poem was great fun. I’m also a fan of New York School poet Frank O’Hara, so allusions to various ac tors reflects my esteem for his work. The phrase “that green menace” originally appears in Jean Rhys’ s postcolonial novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), considered a prequel to Jane Eyre,

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An Excellent Tale

Broadway World announces the 2015-16 season of the L.A. Theatre Works which includes

Christina Calvit's adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre plays December 10-13, directed by Marsha Mason and starring Jared Harris. Charlotte Brontë's landmark novel is brought to life in this illuminating adaptation by Christina Calvit. Orphaned Jane journeys from a harsh childhood to become the loving caregiver of a child at the mysterious manor of Mr. Rochester. She is drawn to her enigmatic employer, but when their dark pasts catch up with them, Jane must choose between her newfound security and her yearning for love and peace.

PBS NewsHour lists eight female authors you should know in honor of the 200th birthday of Jane Austen’s “Emma” this year:

3. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) – Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet and was the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become English literature classics.
Most famous work: “Jane Eyre” (1847)
Fun Fact: She first published her works under the pseudonym “Currer Bell.”
4. Emily Brontë (1818-1848) – Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet who wrote only one novel, which is now considered a classic of English literature.
Most famous work: “Wuthering Heights” (1847)
Fun Fact: When “Wuthering Heights” was first published, it was met with mixed reviews because it challenged many Victorian ideals of the time, such as morality, social classes and gender inequality. (Gabbi Shacknay) 

Closer on the 'most romantic' books ever written. Wuthering Heights is on the list:

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
The only novel from this Brontë sister, Wuthering Heights is a dark romantic tale set on the moors. After becoming friends during childhood, Catherine and Heathcliff are seperated by social status and education, with the latter eventually being forced from the Wuthering Heights estate. Several moons and marriages later, the two are reunited, and the strength of their love is revealed. But this is ultimately a tragic tale, where two lovers are inevitably separated by society. (Ellie Hooper)

Jordan Travis in The Alpena News fins Jane Eyre indispensable:

 "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
When my college girlfriend presented this as a gift, I scratched my head. After getting lost in its soul-crushing introductory chapters, I shelved it for several years. Having finally read it I can say it's an engrossing read. The imagery is a bonus, especially since I tend to mentally visualize everything I read anyway. My copy had plenty of footnotes explaining some of the subtext, cultural references and historical tie-ins, but even without these it's an excellent tale.

The Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press review Patricia Park's Re Jane:

Debut novelist Patricia Park pays homage to Jane Eyre with her novel Re Jane, and her approach is fresh and wise. Jane Re is a half-Korean, half-American orphan who is raised by a strict uncle. She toils away at his grocery store while he focuses on fostering good manners and adherence to outmoded ways of thinking, rather than giving her any sort of affection. She’s desperate to get out of Flushing, Queens, and so she’s thrilled to accept a job as an au pair for two Brooklyn English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter. Jane quickly falls in love with the family – quite literally; she begins an affair with the father, Ed Farley. But their forbidden love is interrupted by a death in the family and Jane is required to travel to Seoul, where her heritage – and some key life lessons about love and New York, lessons that can only be learned from a distance – await. The Bronte references help paint an important portrait of a struggle with cultural identity juxtaposed against the struggle that all young people face as they come of age, fall in love and make mistakes that are necessary to personal growth but still incredibly painful. (Marissa Stapley)

Re Jane is a must-read for lovers of Victorian literature. Despite Jane Re's very modern context, Park stays in constant conversation with both Brontë and current scholarship on the Gothic novel.
Brontë was concerned with the webs between love, power and independence. Park updates Brontë's themes: her heroine grapples with issues of financial and social independence, but also with questions of race and identity. Half-American, Jane does not fit in a totally Korean context. Half-Korean, she applies a principal of nunchi (good manners, obligation, emotional intelligence) to western settings, with mixed results.
For many critics, Jane Eyre's "mad wife in the attic" forms that novel's most problematic element. Notably, Jean Rhys' 1966 postcolonial novel Wide Sargasso Sea interpreted Jane Eyre's "mad wife" as a Jamaican Creole assimilated into an oppressive marriage with Mr. Rochester. (Julienne Isaacs)

Al Alvarez cooses his five best for the Wall Street Journal:

Wide Sargasso Sea
By Jean Rhys (1966)
4. To my mind, Jean Rhys is, quite simply, one of the great English novelists of the second half of the 20th century. In her best novels, she knows every detail of the shabby world she creates. She knows precisely how much to leave out—surprisingly much—and precisely how to modulate the voice that controls it all, at once casual and poignant. It is the voice of the loser who refuses, though neither she nor God knows why, to give up. “Wide Sargasso Sea” is a hallucinatory novel, as detailed, abrupt and undeniable as a dream, and with a dream’s irresistible logic. It is also the final triumph of Rhys’s artistic control. Despite the exotic setting and the famous, abused heroine (the first Mrs. Rochester from “Jane Eyre”), there is no melodrama. The prose is unemphatic, precise and yet alive with feeling, as though the whole world she so coolly describes were shimmering with foreboding.

The Daily Record aks Joanne Harris her literary preferences:

My favourite writers are...Victor Hugo, Emily Brontë and Ray Bradbury. (Shari Low)

The Commercial Appeal reviews Heroes are my Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips:

“Heroes Are My Weakness” by best-selling romance novelist Susan Elizabeth Phillips reads like a Brontë novel crossed with a Led Zeppelin song. (Sarah Norris)

Nuala O'Connor, author of Miss Emily, lists her favourite Emily Dickinson poems in Publishers Weekly, including:

6. "'Hope' is the thing with feathers"
This is my favourite Emily Dickinson poem. Its warmth and positivity speak to my gut every time. I always pause on the inverted commas around the word ‘hope’ – and wonder why Dickinson felt the need for them. Was she qualifying hope in some private way? Dickinson was a fan of Emily Brontë – she chose the English writer’s ‘No coward soul is mine’ to be read at her funeral. Was ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’ influenced by Brontë’s poem ‘Hope’, within which hope ‘stretched her wings and soared to Heaven’? If so, Dickinson chose to make her poem life-affirming, a counterpoint to Brontë’s more downbeat verses on the same theme.

Fiona Wilson reviews The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud in The Times:

Some stories don’t finish at the end. Jean Rhys read Jane Eyre and couldn’t help but wonder about the madwoman in the attic’s back story and we got Wide Sargasso Sea; Jane Smiley took King Lear and set it in present-day Iowa in A Thousand Acres; EL James saw Twilight’s lovesick teenaged vampires and thought “what if this was an S&M fantasy?” 

Firstpost (India) asks for the return of several literary figures:

Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
He is, without a doubt, one of literature’s most enigmatic characters and a hero who has been making readers’ pulses flutter for generations. Uncouth, mysterious, passionate and wild, Heathcliff is literature’s baddest boy. While his adolescence and some of his adult years are described in full detail by Brontë, we know nothing about his beginnings. More importantly, there are three and a half years when Heathcliff is all grown-up, far away from Wuthering Heights, and making his fortune of which there's no detail whatsoever.
Where did he go? What did he do? Who and what did he encounter? Did he try to forget Catherine? Were there villains whom he crushed? There are so many questions that swirl around Heathcliff. Despite being the hero of Wuthering Heights and occupying much of the author's and readers' attention, he never loses that air of delicious mystery. Someone just bring him back to life already. (Arunima Mazumdar and Deepanjana Pal)

The authors seem to ignore that they are plenty of Heathcliff sequels.

These other authors put the Brontës in a clearly wrong category (the quoted link addressed the juvenilia and the world of playing as one of the potential sources of inspiration by the Brontës) in The Huffington Post:

This principle from quantum theory manifests when we daydream and let our minds meander. They can even lead to that long-sought-after "Eureka" moment.  History records that some of the greatest scientific discoveries and recognized works of art, music and literature were a result of individual's diving into the mind's "quantum field of potentiality." (...) Even the world's celebrated writers and musicians daydreamed their works into creation from Paul McCartney's famous melody "Yesterday" to the treasured novels of the Brontë sisters. (Menas C. Kafatos and Jay Kumar)

Also in The Huffington Post an interview with the author Jenny Milchman:

What are some of your favorite books, who were some of your favorite authors, and why? (David Henry Sterry)
JM: (...)I studied the Victorians in college and all three Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and Henry James were great favorites of mine.

The Dutch branch of the Brussels Brontë Group met in Dordrecht and the Brussels Brontë Blog posts about it; Luccia Gray, author of the Eyre Hall trilogy, posts on Rereading Jane Eyre about the moon in Thornfield Hall.

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Shh, come into the house

Today, a short story antology which contains a Brontë-related one:

Come into the House: Tales of secrets, history and mystery
by Kathryn Burke , Jan Halstead , Stephen Edwards, Jo Roberts , Nemma Wollenfang, Jasmina Svenne , James Rose , Elizabeth Hopkinson , Melanie Whipman , Pauline Clooney
July 2015
Corazon Books
ISBN-13: 978-1909752184

A new short story anthology which celebrates the “secrets, history and mystery” of historic houses. An old woman sits on a bench with Dracula, opposite Bram Stoker’s house in Dublin. But her companion from Romania is not all he seems. Sarah is mesmerised by the trompe l’oeil at a modern art exhibition. But is it really a trick of the eye? An old country house is the setting for a locked room mystery in the grand tradition of the golden age of crime fiction. As a group of visitors are shown around a stately home there is one person who disagrees with the stories told by the tour guide. Hear the voice of the tiny spark at the baker’s house on Pudding Lane which grew to be the Great Fire of London in 1666. A young girl’s visit to elderly Miss Tyrell at the Grange reveals long-kept secrets. A brash couple have big plans for an old country pile. But the house has other ideas. A woman’s view of motherhood is affected by the tragedies that befall her and her family. Young Charlie can see his mother under the fig tree in their garden. But Charlie’s mother has died. A trip to the Brontë Parsonage leaves a woman questioning what is and isn’t real. These ten tales, inspired by or set in a historic house, are the winning entries of the Historic House short story competition run by Corazon Books in partnership with the Historic Houses Association. Stories to thrill, chill and entertain. Also includes a bonus extract of The Property of a Gentleman by Catherine Gaskin, set in a fictional earl's ancestral home, in the dramatic landscape of England's Lake District, and information about the Historic Houses Association and the historic house Levens Hall in Cumbria.

The story is Shh and is written by Pauline Clooney. There is also a story by Elizabeth Hopkins , The Yorkshire Defiance, inspired by Shibden Hall in Halifax.

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Brontë Airport

We read about an intriguing proposal in Keighley News:

The Brontës may have been around long before international air travel, but that hasn’t deterred Yorkshire residents from suggesting renaming Leeds Bradford Airport in their honour.
One in six respondents recommended renaming the regional airport "Brontë Airport" in a survey involving more than 1,000 local people. (...)
The Brontës of Haworth family achieved the number one position in the poll for Leeds Bradford Airport - indicating that Yorkshire people view the family name as being most likely to persuade overseas visitors to fly directly into the county.
Ant Clarke Cowell, communications director at Holiday Extras, said: (...)
”It’s amazing to see the Brontës are the number one choice for residents in Yorkshire. Their legacy is already a huge driver for tourism in the region and it’s great to see this recognised in this survey.” (Miran Rahman)

Evan Rail from the New York Times is touring Yorkshire looking for the best pubs and beers. In Haworth he finds that and something more:

The long hike across the West Yorkshire moors passed over hills peppered with scrubby grass, through fields of heather and over jagged rocks and gurgling streams. Along the way I’d been severely scolded by more than one chattering red grouse, and ignored by innumerable flocks of grazing sheep. Eventually I’d made it all the way to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse whose setting was said to have been the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” Sunburned and tired after the long walk, I needed refreshment.
I found it in the Fleece, an old pub in the Brontës’ Yorkshire hometown, Haworth: a half-pint (9.6 ounces) of Golden Best, a mild ale from the local brewer Timothy Taylor. (...)
I’d found Haworth almost impossibly pretty, both in my walks on the surrounding moors and in the village itself. Like much of the area, it has quieted down since its Victorian-era heyday, when textile mills flourished in Yorkshire. Since then, Haworth has become a storybook vacation destination, best known for its connection to the Brontës, its old stone cottages and pubs like the Fleece.

The Telegraph's My favourite books section continues questioning writers about their... favourite books: Sue Townsend chooses Jane Eyre and Jeanette Winterson chooses Wuthering Heights.

The Independent interviews the writer Namwali Serpell:

Which fictional character most resembles you?
Physically, Micah Wilkins from Justine Larbalestier's Liar; emotionally, Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility; spiritually, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre; and also, unfortunately, Briony Tallis from Ian McEwan's Atonement.

Bucks Free Press lists several Gothic literature classics:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
A passionate story about the wild, uncontrollable love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. But if you're expecting a happy ending, well, as Tyrion Lannister says, you've come to the wrong place.
The setting becomes another character in this novel, the brooding moors and dark, stormy skies reflecting the troubling inner emotions of the protagonists. This book is often compared to Jane Austen’s novels, but Brontë’s is so much better, with so much more passion and fire than anything Austen ever wrote. Characters are brooding and mysterious, and the intriguing tale unfolds with fantastic suspense and tragic consequences. (Kelly Pells)

Slough & South Buck Observer reviews the play Hetty Feather at Theatre Royal Windsor, London:

Meanwhile, Phoebe Thomas’ endearing portrayal of the charismatic Hetty bears a striking resemblance to a young Jane Eyre, displaying much of the courage, hope and feistiness that made Jane such a memorable character. (Amy Horsfield)

Exhibition News on the rise of the geeks, zombie subculture:

This has been helped by the likes of The Walking Dead and other zombie programmes that people like to sink their teeth into. Have you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? How about Alice in Zombieland or Wuthering Heights and a Werewolf? There’s even the Zombie Survival Guide. (Annie Byrne)

PopMatters publishes an excerpt of Unbuttoning America. A Biography of Peyton Place by Ardis Cameron:

Sex upped the ante. “Reading, dear reader, is a sexual and sexually divided practice,” the literary scholar Cora Kaplan writes as she sets out to probe her compulsive reading habits when, as a teenager in the 1950s, fiction became an especially powerful force in her life and “narrative pleasure lost its innocence.” She confesses, “Peyton Place, Jane Eyre, Bleak House, Nana: in my teens, they were all the same to me, part of my sexual and emotional initiation, confirming, constructing my femininity, making plain the psychic form of sexual difference.”

Blueinartinfo interviews the author Sophie McManus:

We loved “The Unfortunates” because it’s in many ways a big, juicy, so-called “social novel” about The Way We Live Now — or at least, you know, the way Some People Live Now... but it’s also tremendously entertaining and imminently readable. What are some other books you might recommend we tackle next this summer that might strike a similar balance?
Have you read “Bleak House”? “Middlemarch”? I haven’t. I am ashamed. One of the greatest social novels of all time (though slim, lonely, weird, not at all big in the usual sense) is “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys. I based a good part of my book on Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth.” I am very excited to read “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty.

Margaret Locke talks with the writer Phyllis Duncan:

What’s your favorite romance novel of all time, and why?
(...) My all-time favorite romance is, without question, Jane Eyre. My parents sent me to a Christian school for a couple of years which reminded me of Lowood (and I’m not being figurative), so I identified with the young Jane’s tribulations deeply. (Hmm, perhaps the start of my interest in reversing injustice?) That unlikely love story between Jane and Rochester is timeless and gives you hope for a happy-ever-after. A lot of what I write doesn’t have a happy ending, so I always go back to Jane Eyre. I’ve probably re-read it a dozen or more times in my life, and I’m sure there are more re-readings of it to come.

Orlando Books Examiner interviews another author, E.S. Renfield:

Michael Pang: (...) Who are your favorite authors and how have they influenced your writing?
Elizabeth: My favorite authors include Anne and Charlotte Brontë, John Green, and Felix Palma. What I liked about Anne and Charlotte were their strong female leads and I think every book that I write seems to have a strong female lead.

And one more author, Kay Kendall (not the actress, of course) on Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers:

What’s the best book you’ve ever read?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I don’t often reread books, but that is one I’ve read countless times and have watched every cinematic version of it ever made.

The Starving Artist reviews Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë; The World of my Green Heart posts about Re Jane by Patricia Park; Age of the Diary is reading (with some problems) Jane Eyre.

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The (Chinese) Madwoman

Gilbert & Grubar's seminal work The Madwoman in the Attic has been translated and published in China:

阁楼上的疯女人 (The Madwoman in the Attic)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
Translator: 杨立新 (Yang Lixin)
Publisher: 世纪文景/上海人民出版社 (Shanghai People's Publishing House)
ISBN: 9787208125537
2015

当简•爱和罗切斯特跨越身份地位的差异，终于站在神父面前要宣誓结合时，一个疯女人的出现粉碎了简•爱的一切梦想，这个疯女人就是罗切斯特的妻子——伯莎。这个疯女人毁掉了庄园，弄瞎了罗切斯特，自己也葬身火海，但也因此成全了简•爱与罗切斯特的姻缘。
本书问世前，大多数读者对伯莎这 个疯女人并不太重视，自从有了本书，人们忽而重新发现了一个类别。这些疯女人公然无视“妇道”，花枝招展、野心勃勃、作恶多端、自取灭亡……但本书作者桑德拉•吉尔伯特和苏珊•古芭告诉我们，每个温顺善良的女人背后，都或多或少拖着一个癫狂的影子。她们将这个疯女人从阁楼上请下来，就是为了抨击父权主义文化对女性的精神束缚。
《阁楼上的疯女人》被誉为20世纪女性主义文学批评的《圣经》，也是当代美国文论中的经典。在这部著作中，作者重读了19世纪著名女作家如简•奥斯汀、玛丽•雪莱、勃朗特姐妹、艾米莉•狄金森等人的作品，打破了民族、地域与时间等多方面限制的疆界，将19世纪的英美女性文学视为一个整体进行了综合研究，梳理并归纳了构成19世纪英美女性文学传统中一系列重要的意象、象征与隐喻，如天使、魔鬼、月光、水、面纱、蛛网等等。
此书自问世以来，以其激进的批评姿态和对19世纪英美女性文学的全新阐释，对西方文学与文化研究产生了深远的影响。

(Via Women of China)

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Wonderfully Mundane

Manchester Evening News talks about the Gaskell 'outing' at the University of Manchester:

Highlights in this unique digital archive include a ‘warts and all version’ of her biography of Brontë - unedited, and complete - plus the original handwritten manuscript of Wives and Daughters which Gaskell was working on until her death on November 12, 1865. (Sarah Walters)

A lovely article (for parents, for sure, but not only) in the Huffington Post contains a Brontë reference:

There is a woman wearing my guilt ring's pair. A woman who is sitting at home doing something wonderfully mundane, like reading Jane Eyre for the 137th time, or cooking kale and lentil soup with the burner on high and way too much cumin. She is a woman connected to me by years of love and awkwardly unspoken distances. A woman humming a Lucy Kaplansky song to herself while her husband floats through a blinking, shrieking Neverland with his fairy girl. (John Metta)

Franklin Favorite describes Wuthering Heights:

Perhaps one of the most infamous tales in literature, Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" tells the story of a young love and betrayal. (...)
Brontë tells the story through flashbacks guided by old diary entries. Despite being published in 1847 the piece of literature is regarded as an unforgettable novel. This book is an engrossing read with hauntingly beautiful characters. (Megan Purazrang)

The Times publishes the obituary of the Russian librarian Ekaterina Genieva who

She boldly specialised in the work of James Joyce, who was widely banned in Soviet cultural life, and later worked on bibliographies, edited editions and criticism of authorsincluding Dickens, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf. She eventually published more than 150 works.

Also in The Times, the Daily Quiz contains a Brontë-related question.

Audio Media International publishes a profile of the AIR Studios:

Among the sessions at AIR, [Dave] Harries has fond memories of many – including a young Kate Bush recording what would become her debut album. “Jon Kelly was the engineer and Andrew Powell was the producer and arranger. They were in Studio 2 next to my office when I heard this wonderful sound. It was Kate doing the guide vocal for Wuthering Heights. My hair stood on end. I said at the time it would be massive – and it was. (Matthew Fellows)

The Worksop Guardian offers free tickets to see the Chapterhouse production of Jane Eyre in Gainsborough:

Charlotte Brontë’s classic love story Jane Eyre at Trinity Arts Centre in Gainsborough next month.
And we have a pair of tickets to give away for the event.
Young governess Jane Eyre arrives at the mysterious Thornfield Hall deep in the Yorkshire moors and meets the enigmatic Mr Rochester.
And so begins this most unforgettable of love stories.
When a secret from the past returns to haunt them, can Jane and Rochester’s passion survive the forces that might tear them apart forever?
The production is the latest offering from Chapterhouse, who have been touring the country presenting their productions of classic novels and plays since 1999.
Their Gainsborough performance is on 21st August at 7.30pm.

Bustle lists several 'feminist' names you can give your kid. Among them:

 Jane (Austen) (Eyre) (Addams)
While we can’t know if Jane Austen would have described herself as a feminist, we do know that she wrote novels about funny, independent, thinking women who are unwilling to settle for anything less than husbands who love and respect them. Another “Jane” inspiration could be the fictional Jane Eyre, who declares, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” If that’s not enough awesome Jane-ness, check out Jane Addams, a philanthropist and women’s rights activist who, from 1919 to 1929, was president of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1931, she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (Lara Rutherford-Morrison)

New Times quotes music conductor Scott Yoo talking about J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor:

“In a great way, I feel like an ant when I study this music,” Yoo said. “When it comes to Bach’s music, I just cannot comprehend that someone wrote this. My brain can’t get around this fact. It’s just too good for someone to have written it down.”
Think Yoo’s being a little overly dramatic? Just consider your own favorite album, book, or movie—the classics that have been around since well before you were born. Doesn’t it just feel like that piece of art has—I don’t know—always been there? Like Brontë’s Jane Eyre or the black and white masterpiece Casablanca: It didn’t simply spring from the ether. Someone had to create it. (Hayley Thomas)

According to The Mirror, Branwell Brontë was one of the contenders for being in portrayed in the £20 banknotes:

Branwell Brontë (1817-1848)
A painter and poet less famous as his author sisters. He was home-schooled by his father but was the first Brontë to get into print. His life dissolved into drink and debt soon afterwards. (Emily Retter & Emma Pietras)

Il Post (Italy) has an article about the (in)famous Daily Mail picture but as the title says, the alleged picture is most probably not authentic but it's a good excuse to talk about the Brontës and Giulia Siviero covers most of the usual Brontë suspects:

La storia delle sorelle Brontë è sicuramente straordinaria e giustifica in parte il grande interesse che può nascere dalla fragile ipotesi di una loro fotografia: tre donne nate e cresciute in condizioni piuttosto difficili che pubblicarono lo stesso anno tre romanzi, due dei quali ebbero subito un grande successo ed entrarono nella storia della letteratura. (Translation)

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