Patty Duke. In Memoriam

Many newspapers and magazines have covered the recent death of Patty Duke (1946-2016). Of course, she is best remembered by her Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (both in theatre and film), her TV show and several other roles (since Valley of the Dolls to her Glee appearance in 2013). But she also had a small Brontë character in her CV.  In 1958, four years before playing Helen Keller with Anne Bancroft, she played Young Cathy in a Wuthering Heights live broadcast TV production which had Richard Burton as Heathcliff:

The DuPont Show of the Month
Wuthering Heights (1958)
9 May 1958
Directed by  Daniel Petrie.

This is how Patty Duke remembered her experience in Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (1987):

The next year came something even better, "Wuthering Heights," starring Richard Burton and Rosemary Harris. Even today, the romance of that story is really transporting. If I watch the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version on late night TV, I can't go out of the house the next day because my eyes are so red. And Richard Burton was, well, Burton, bigger than life and exciting to look at. I played Cathy as a child and even though I was crazy about Rosemary Harris, who was the older Cathy, I also resented it when it was time for her to take over. I wanted to do those love scenes with Richard Burton.
Besides Burton, what I really enjoyed about "Wuthering Heights" was the rain. Heathcliff kept running away, I'd follow him, and it would rain and rain on the moors during our preteen love scenes. (p.36)

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No, dear reader, there are two governesses

Craven Herald reports that this year's Settle Stories festival (1st-3rd April) will include something connected to Charlotte Brontë.

Meanwhile Settle Library will host stories on the inspiration behind Charlotte Brontë's novels and the adventures of Jack and the Beanstalk, as told by Gary Cordingley. (Lindsey Moore)

According to Bustle, Jane Eyre is the number one 'Inspiring Book To Read When You're Feeling Lonely And Need Some Cheering Up'.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is one of my all time favorite characters. Orphaned at a young age and forced into a cruel upbringing, Jane's lonely spirit doesn't break. Instead, she only gains strength. While on the search for a better life in a world that doesn't always offer it, Jane begins to learn who she is on her own, a monumental lesson everyone can benefit from. If you've been searching for a motivating character you can relate to, Jane Eyre is the woman for you. (Alex Weiss)

Stuff (New Zealand), however, mentions the negative influence of Jane Eyre on The Shadow Hour by Kate Riordan.

I must confess, you have surprised me, Miss Riordan. I hardly know what to say. I fear that you have been led astray by Charlotte Brontë, and not in a good way.
Behold the evidence. Dare I suggest that in a sly move, you have purloined a governess, a crumbling old house, a handsome but reclusive widower, a relative stashed away in the attic… where, pray, have I heard this narrative before?
I fear the conflagration that burnt the Rochester house to a cinder is the only plot device you have not seen fit to boldly appropriate.
Well, Miss Riordan, if Helen Fielding can take Pride and Prejudice and turn its sober and sensible heroine Elizabeth Bennet into that flibbertigibbet of a girl Bridget Jones, I suspect you thought you were entitled to take the pale and nervous Jane of Bronte's classic and turn her into the understated (but for all that, they say, surprisingly attractive) red-haired orphan Grace.
And perchance you may have succeeded. But no, for there the similarities with one of the great works of English literature cease.
For there is not one governess. No, dear reader, there are two. One lived at the house in its heyday and one is her granddaughter. One is called Harriet and the other is called Grace and be damned if I could remember which of the two servants we were reading about at any given time.
In both eras, the master of the house develops an inordinate fondness for the governess who has fallen on hard times; Harriet, or Grace, as the chapter may be.
There are enough freakish sons confined to their rooms, dastardly brothers trying to seduce our heroine(s) and upstairs/downstairs action (oh, my word) to satisfy (sic) any Brontë fan.
'Tis a well enough written tale, but I fear it has been done better before. In fact, 169 years before. (Brenda Ward)

Papel en blanco (Spain) interviews writers Merche Murillo and Fátima Embark who both write under the pseudonym of Wendy Davies.

¿Cuáles son vuestros autores favoritos? ¿Quién os inspira a coger la pluma? Más que autores favoritos, tenemos libros favoritos. Somos dos inconformistas en busca de esas historias que nadie ha escrito y siempre hemos pensado que los libros que leemos son, en gran parte, la suma de lo que escribimos. No un libro, no un autor, sino todo el conjunto. Es la pasión de Jane Eyre . . . (Sarah Manzano) (Translation) 

The Telegraph mourns the death of actress Patty Duke, who once

was a young Cathy to Richard Burton’s Heathcliff in a television production of Wuthering Heights.

Fragments of Life interviews Christy Lenzi, author of the new YA Wuthering Heights retelling, Stone Field. Muse recommends Lyndsay Faye's Jane Steele. Literary Portal talks about the original Jane Eyre. RNE-Radio3 (Spain) broadcasts a Charlotte Brontë programme:

Hoy Empieza Todo con Marta Echevarría
Charlotte Brontë
Nos anticipamos al segundo centenario del nacimiento de la novelista británica Charlotte Brontë. Una ocasión elegida por Jorge Barriuso para celebrar el talento, el valor y la influencia de la autora de Jane Eyre, y también de sus hermanas Emily y Anne Brontë.

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161 years without Charlotte Brontë

Not that Charlotte Brontë's afterlife has been a quiet one. Much to her husband's distress when it came to personal matters (not when it came to 'professional' matters, though), her popularity started even before she died on March 31st, 1855. And it has only got bigger and bigger ever since. These days, she and her Jane Eyre are quite the buzz words, bringing new people to her world every day.

We know that Charlotte once wished 'to be for ever known' ('careful what you wish for', would have surely been Arthur Bell Nicholls's advice) but we do think her current popularity - and not just for the Jane Eyre film, but for the rest of smaller-scale projects too - would surpass even her wildest dreams. Shy as she undoubtedly was, we do think that she'd be quite unable to hide a smile and a blush at all this. But oh would she be proud!

The picture is from the manuscript of the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre (27 December 1847) which is located at the Rosenbach Museum and Library (Pennsylvania). Rosen-blog contains a few more pictures of the manuscript and a comment about the Thackeray-mad-woman-in-the-attic-controversy.

(First published in 2011)

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'This isn't a novel that will sit quietly in its classic status and not disturb anyone'

2paragraphs interviews Claire Harman about her Charlotte Brontë biography in, well, two paragraphs.

2paragraphs: Why do you think your book is connecting with people?
Claire Harman: It's not just that it's the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë's birth this April, though that does focus people's minds in a particular way. Jane Eyre has never been out of print; it's been read by countless people and made familiar to even more people through films, adaptations, etc. But that sort of fame forms a carapace around a book, and I think when people are asked to look at the text afresh, and think about the author behind it, a lot of surprising things come out.
When it was first published, Jane Eyre scandalized readers with its revolutionary views, voiced by a plain and unfortunate young woman. Jane's fieriness of spirit seems to belong more to our own times than to hers, but what she talks about is still unachieved, and I think my book might have alerted some people to that fact. This isn't a novel that will sit quietly in its classic status and not disturb anyone. Jane's ardor comes straight from her author, and Charlotte Brontë intended us to keep listening.

A couple of stage projects for the autumn: Chicago Tribune reports that The Hypocrites has announced its 2016-17 season, which marks the company's 20th anniversary.

The season begins in the fall with "You On the Moors Now" (Sept. 9-Oct. 30) by Jaclyn Backhaus. Devon de Mayo will direct the Chicago premiere in which the heroines from novels by Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters reject their suitors who then, in retaliation, wage war. (Morgan Greene)

And Broadway World Montana announces the Educational Outreach Tour of Brontë to the Future!.

Montana Repertory Theatre presents the 2016 Educational Outreach Tour of Brontë To the Future! by Laramie Dean.
The Brontë sisters, Emily and Charlotte, having told their most well-known tales-Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, respectively-now want to leave the past behind and explore a future time in order to see what will happen to their characters in a more contemporary setting. Brontë to the Future! is a mashup that places the Brontës' beloved Jane and Rochester and Catherine and Heathcliff in the world of today-and possibly tomorrow-while retaining all the romance and Gothic splendor of the original stories.

Investor's Business Daily has an article on Agatha Christie:

“Agatha liked arithmetic and had a natural aptitude for music,” wrote Janet Morgan in “Agatha Christie: A Biography.” “She read voraciously, (with a library that included) compendia of general knowledge and books of lists and questions and answers, Jules Verne’s science fiction and … novels by Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Rudyard Kipling and the Brontë sisters.” (Scott S. Smith)

Los Angeles Times argues that the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is fan fiction and so is Wide Sargasso Sea. Reading Teen reviews a new YA Wuthering Heights retelling: Stone Field by Christy Lenzi. Stories of Scarborough reposts Claire Mason's Anne Brontë: Scarborough Connections – Part I.

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Lyndsay Faye's Tour and more

Several alerts for today, March 29, and tomorrow, March 30:

Lyndsay Faye is promoting Jane Steele across the US. Today she will be in Alameda, CA and tomorrow in Portland, OR:

And in Columbia, SC:

Richland Library Literary Resident Howard Burnham brings his unique flair for personifying and illuminating classic literary figures in two upcoming performances:

No Coward Spirits: the Reverend Patrick Brontë recalls his children

It is 1856 and the aging vicar of Haworth gives an interview in which he recalls his own remarkable life, as well as those of his extraordinarily talented children. A Charlotte Brontë bicentennial performance, 1916-2016.

7:00 p.m., Thursday, March 31st
Richland Library Northeast | 7490 Parklane Road, Columbia, SC 29223

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Bullet-stopping books by Charlotte Brontë

In today's newsround we will be visiting many of the places associated with the Brontës. Starting with Brussels, as Lyndall Gordon writes about Charlotte's infatuation with Constantin Heger in New Statesman.

In the run-up to the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth on 21 April 1816, there has been a renewed surge of wonder at this young woman who speaks so intimately across time – “Reader, I married him” – that she binds “Reader” to her. Jane Austen became the prime literary celebrity a few years ago, but in recent years that kind of glory has shifted to Charlotte, whose anniversary is being celebrated with new biographies and a collection of stories inspired by Jane Eyre; exhibitions in New York, London and Haworth; and television and radio programmes, including a Radio 3 series ­acknowledging Charlotte as not only a novelist but also one of the great letter-writers in our language.
Brussels has emerged as a current site of inspection. Charlotte went there, accompanied by her younger sister Emily, in 1842 and she returned alone for a second year in 1843. The idea was to improve her French and German with a view to opening a school at the parsonage in Haworth, but a stronger motive was to travel. (Read more)

The Telegraph and Argus reports that Thornton is launching a series of celebrations as Charlotte Brontë's birthday approaches.

An arts centre in Thornton will celebrate one of the village's most famous figures by holding an exhibition dedicated to women in the arts later this week.
Next month, Thornton is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, the oldest of the literary Bronteësisters, who were all born in the village.
To mark the occasion, and in recognition of how the sisters paved the way for women in the arts, all of South Square Centre’s exhibitors from April to the end of May will be women. And during the exhibition, called I'm No Bird, visitors will be asked to nominate who they feel is the most influential woman in Bradford's history.
There will also be a range of artworks, events and activities in response to the celebrations, starting with a launch event on Friday. [...]
South Square has commissioned Yorkshire Film Archive to create a short film, weaving together images of women recorded on film over the decades of the twentieth century, engaging in a variety of activities from politics, engineering, education and sports.
The film will be accompanied by a soundtrack by Todmorden-based musician Magpahi, aka Alison Cooper.
Yvonne Carmichael, Artistic Programmer for the gallery, said: "We are really excited to be working with Yorkshire Film Archive as well as numerous female local musicians, artists and DJs to celebrate the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth.
"It is funny how it often gets forgotten that the sisters were born here. I don't know if it's because we don't shout out about it. It's great that with this anniversary there are now some key people talking about Thornton.
"We've taken this upcoming anniversary as inspiration to have this exhibition and to have a great party."
Visitors will be asked to nominate their pick of a Bradford born or based pioneering woman from the time of the Brontë’s to the present day.
The launch event takes place between 7-9pm on Friday and will be followed by an after party at The New Inn featuring DJ sets by Lucy Barker and Kirsty Taylor. Everyone is invited to bring along their own five-song DJ-sets showcasing their favourite female musicians on mp3 players to add to the nights soundtrack. Staff from Emily's, the bistro based in the Brontë's former, will be providing food
Limited edition risographed posters of the event by artist Anna Peaker will also be available.
The exhibition, which features work by artists such as Jane Fairhurst, June Russell and Patricia Calver, runs from April 2 - May 29 with the gallery open Tuesday - Saturday between noon and 3pm. (Chris Young)

Condé Nast Traveler has an article on Norton Conyers.

Famed writer Charlotte Brontë once visited a North Yorkshire home and heard a legend there about a mad woman who had lived in the attic. That story ended up inspiring the character of Bertha Rochester in Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, one of the classics of British literature. Now, that home—the Norton Conyers manor house in Wensleydale—is open to the public following a decade-long refurbishment. [...]
Beyond its connection to a beloved novel, Norton Conyers is a Grade II-listed property, meaning it has been recognized as "having special interest" to the United Kingdom. Two kings, Charles I and James II, both spent the night here, and many of its 18th-century furnishings, including paintings, have been well-preserved. Hardcore Brontë fans will also be excited to hear that the walled garden and orangery are also available for weddings. As for the attic? Local historians are going through documents discovered during the renovation to try and learn the identity of the woman who inspired one of literature's most memorable characters.
If you want to build a fuller Brontë-themed itinerary in England, drive about an hour and a half to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in nearby Haworth, West Yorkshire, where Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell grew up. (Lilit Marcus)

A reader of The Irish Times writes about who he considers key in the 'revival' of Patrick Brontë's Irish origins.

Sir, – While the family of Co Down-born Patrick Brontë is synonymous with the Yorkshire moors, as Frank McNally writes (“An Irishman’s Diary”, March 26th), the Irish connection was revived in 1921 by the appointment of New Zealand-born James Brontë Gatenby, a descendant of Patrick’s brother, as professor of zoology in Trinity College Dublin.
James’s son, Peter Barry Brontë Gatenby, who died last year, became professor of medicine at Trinity College in 1960.– Yours, etc,
Dr John Doherty
Vienna.

Still in Ireland, The Belfast Telegraph has politician Mike Nesbitt share some of his favourite things.

My best book
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I like it because a woman, who as far as we know was a country spinster, wrote the best love story ever, just from her instinct and imagination. (Kerry McKittrick)

Unexpectedly, Charlotte Brontë helped the Republican troops during the Civil War in Spain (1936-1939), as highlighted by The Christian Science Monitor's review of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Adam Hichschild.

In 1936, opposing armies occupied different sectors of the campus of the University in Madrid. At one point the Republican troops fortified their positions in the lecture halls by sheltering behind ramparts built from the thickest books they could find: Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Pascal, Thomas De Quincy, Charlotte Brontë, and sturdy encyclopedias. They learned that a bullet would typically pierce 350 pages before stopping.

The Guardian has an obituary on Asa Briggs and recalls that he

had a powerful sense of place. He was proud to hail from the heart of Brontë country. The pioneering quality of his books on the Victorian era came from their attunement to regions and communities, to particular cities and social groups, as well as from his ease in moving between literary sources and more conventional historical ones. (Jonathan Bate)

The Chicago Tribune features a local stage adaptation of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.

The literary world comes to life in the latest production at Valparaiso University.
Set in an alternate 1985, "The Eyre Affair" runs April 1-10 at the school's Center for the Arts in Valparaiso.
"Thursday Next is our heroine. She's a literary detective. This is a world in which there's an alternate universe. Crime and war are still going on, airships are the preferred mode of travel, and novels and authors are the rock 'n' roll stars of this world," said Austin Tichenor, director of "The Eyre Affair."
"I'm a lover of literature myself. I also love Jasper Fforde's novels. They operate on so many levels. They are, at once, a novel steeped in the tradition of the 19th century but also filled with science fiction and elements of time travel and vaudeville comedy." [...]
When: 8 p.m. April 1 and 8; 2 p.m. April 2-3 and 9-10
Where: Valparaiso University Center for the Arts, 1709 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso
Tickets: $15 adults; $10 seniors and non-Valparaiso University students; free Valpo students, faculty and staff
Information: 219-464-5162 or www.valpo.edu/theatre (Jessi Virtusio)

Daily Corinthian recommends Catherine Lowell's The Madwoman Upstairs.

In Catherine Lowell’s “The Madwoman Upstairs,” the last living descendant of Charlotte Brontë’s family must go on a literary scavenger hunt to uncover the secrets of her past. Lowell’s first book, this novel opens at the death of Samantha’s father, when she discovers that she is the heir to a wealth of literary memorabilia stretching back to the famed literary family.
Samantha is at first skeptical, but after enrolling at Oxford University, the facts and the fiction begin to merge. With the help of a young English professor, she must dive into the world of literature, as well as her own life. A fast-paced read, this will delight fans of “Special Topic in Calamity Physics” and “The Weird Sisters". (Cody Daniel)

San Francisco Examiner recommends an interesting event featuring two writers of recently-released Brontë-related novels: Catherine Lowell and Lyndsay Faye.

Tuesday, March 29
Catherine Lowell: The author discusses her debut novel “The Madwoman Upstairs,” about a descendent of the Brontë family who embarks on a modern-day literary treasure hunt, along with Lyndsay Faye, author of “Jane Steele,” a bold and brilliant re-casting of Charlotte Brontë’s classic “Jane Eyre.” [7 p.m., Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera]

Apparently, this is how the staff at TV Fanatic celebrate things:

Grab your copy of Wuthering Heights, your lollipops, and let's celebrate! (Christine Laskodi)

Which is totally fine by us even if Wuthering Heights is not much of a party-inducing sort of book.

Now seriously. if you're as mystified as we are by the reference, Fusion clarifies why. It has to do with TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Source

 This musical tribute to “Heavy Boobs,” from the episode that will air tonight. [...]
At least big boobs know how to make themselves useful. The characteristically witty lyrics enumerate various objects that Rebecca can hold under her chest, a list that includes both a paperback copy of Arabian Nights and a hardback copy of Wuthering Heights. (Molly Fitzpatrick) 

Finally, and on a more serious note, AnneBrontë.org celebrates Easter with Anne Brontë. The Silver Petticoat Review posts about Wuthering Heights 1992. The Plus Ones reviews the Shake & Stir performances of Wuthering Heights in Sydney.

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Easter Holiday at the Parsonage

Alerts from the Brontë Parsonage Musuem for the coming days:

Easter Holiday Activities

Talks, costumed interpretation and Hands on History sessions.
Visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum over the Easter break and look out for our special family activities!

Costumed Interpretation and Hands on History
On Tuesdays (29 March and 5 April), look out for a visit from Charlotte Brontë's great friend Ellen Nussey and get your hands on some original 19th century artefacts in a Hands-on-History session that will tell you a little bit more about life in the Parsonage.

Wednesday Workshops -Wild Wednesday! 

Wednesday 30 March - Marvellous Miniatures - Little Books!

Visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum this Easter and marvel at the miniatures on display! When the Brontës were children they made wonderful, tiny miniature books. Have a go at making your own beautiful book to take home with you, using concertina folding, old book pages and fabric.

Wednesday 6 April - Marvellous Miniatures - Pocket Brontës!

Drop into our family workshop and explore the world of the Brontës' novels by making tiny characters - all fashioned from bits and bobs such as the Brontë sisters might have had in their sewing baskets! Who will you make? Jane Eyre, the Professor, Shirley or even Charlotte herself!

Thursday Talks
On Thursdays (31 March and 7 April), come along to our short talks (approx 30 mins) which give a brief but lively introduction to Charlotte Brontë and her great work Jane Eyre. The talks take place in our Education Space and the churchyard at 11.30am and 2pm.

All activities are free with admission to the Museum.

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Drewe Henley. In Memoriam

The Times reports the dead, some weeks ago, of Drewe Hemley (1940-2016). His relatively short career as an actor (prematurely ended because of his bipolar condition) is mainly remembered for his roles as Red Leader in Star Wars 1977 or Khaku in When Dinosaurs Rule the Earth 1970.

But on this blog we want to remember him for his tall and blond Edgar Linton in the BBC 1967 adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

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Easter with the Brontës

Two programmes about the Brontës have been broadcast this past weekend - Being the Brontës and The Brontës at the BBC - and a couple of sites mention them. The Times gave 3 stars out of 5 to Being the Brontës and this is how Radio Times described The Brontës at the BBC:

It’s turning out to be Easter with the Brontës, what with last night’s revealing documentary about Charlotte, Emily and Anne and this round-up of clips from BBC dramatisations of the sisters’ novels.
Brontës at the BBC is a look back at how the books have been interpreted – very widely, as it turns out – in dramas and documentaries during the past 60 years. Along with various faintly outlandish reimaginings, there have been some sturdy classics. Anne Brontë’s tremendous Gothic masterpiece The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with Tara FitzGerald in the title role hit the spot in 1996, while Ruth Wilson was the perfect Jane Eyre in the smashing 2006 version with Toby Stephens as tortured Mr Rochester. [...]
A look back at how the Brontë sisters' novels have been portrayed on TV over the last 60 years, as each generation of writers and directors has put their spin on the characters. The heroines of the novels have been portrayed in various ways, from 1950s housewives to empowered modern women, while their male counterparts have appeared as prigs, wife beaters and brooding rock stars. (Alison Graham)

Radio Times also announces that an interview with Sally Wainwright is forthcoming and we are hoping she will discuss her Brontë project: To Walk Invisible.

Besides, she has other things to do, such as write a drama about the Brontë sisters for BBC1 later this year. (Watch out for my interview with Wainwright in an upcoming RT.) (Alison Graham)

A couple of Brontë adaptations make it onto Female First's list of  'Top 5 ultimate literary adaptations'.

Wuthering Heights (1939)
Eight-time Academy Award nominated, Wuthering Heights, tells the passionate love story between Catherine and Heathcliff, two unlikely lovers. The movie is filled with intense passion, love and desire. How do we choose who to love? Is it based off desire, or what we are told is right?  [...]
Jane Eyre (2011)
Set in the 19th century, Jane Eyre tells the powerful story of heartache, loss and love. When Jane starts falling in love with Mr. Rochester, the master of the house, she discovers that he has a terrible secret. Will she accept it or run away? Watch to find out!

The Chronicle of Higher Education recommends Claire Harman's biography of Charlotte Brontë among many other books.

Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman (Alfred A. Knopf; 462 pages; $30). Draws on previously unavailable letters in a biography of the Jane Eyre writer that explores how internal torment, including her one-sided passion for Constantin Heger, spurred her ambition. (Nina C. Ayoub)

While ValueWalk includes Villette among other novels set in Belgium.

Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Brontë set two of her novels in Belgium — Villette, published in 1853, and The Professor, published posthumously in 1857. Both books are based on the experiences she and her sister, Emily, had at a boarding school in Brussels in the early 1840s.
In Villette, the author of Jane Eyre takes her protagonist Lucy Snowe from England to Belgium, where she teaches at a girl’s school in the French-speaking town of Villette. In Villette, her fourth novel, Brontë goes beyond the standard romance/adventure themes of the day to explore isolation and subversion and the impact these events have on Lucy’s psyche.
Favorite quote: "Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation." (Tricia Drevets)

This columnist from The Huffington Post tells about how she has always felt the need to defend poetry:

Mainly because I always felt it needed defending. Opting for John Clare's melancholic poems of solitude and pain always seemed to lose out to Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights (though I do adore both) at school and at university. And there was just something refreshing and raw in an emotionally charged poem comprised of 12 lines that a detail-obsessive could really grapple with. (Clare Dyckhoff)

Libération (France) mourns the recent death of writer Jim Harrison.

Son héros de fiction était Heathcliff des Hauts de Hurlevent, mais aussi Dalva qu’il avait créée. (Matthieu Ecoiffier) (Translation)

Spanish writer Toni Hill speaks about his novel Los ángeles de hielo in El País (Spain)

Esos elementos, admite el autor, beben directamente de clásicos victorianos, como Otra vuelta de tuerca, de Henry James, o la Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë, que el mismo Hill tradujo del inglés. (Anna Pazos) (Translation)

Wuthering Heights is one of this columnist's favourite books. From Viceversa (Venezuela):

Uno de mis libros favoritos es Cumbres Borrascosas -al igual que todos los demás libros de las hermanas Brontë-. Las razones son muchas y una de ellas es the moor, el páramo. El paisaje es en Cumbres Borrascosas otro personaje -tal vez el más fuerte de todos-, traducción geográfica del ánimus y ánima de los protagonistas. Heathcliff y Cathy son también un páramo. Uno más frío, seco, doloroso, oscuro; distinto al que los turistas ven en las postales. (Brisa Montoya) (Translation)

The Yorkshire Post has a fascinating article on Yorkshire's treasure trove of archives.

These wills are just a tiny fraction of those held by the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York. Some of the wills housed in the archive, which includes those of the Brontë sisters, date as far back as the 14th Century. “The is the main archive for wills for the whole of Yorkshire and we think there’s about 350,000 individuals represented,” says Chris, Keeper of Archives at the Borthwick. (Chris Bond)

Except for the fact that the only Brontë sister to leave a will was Charlotte. But Patrick's and Aunt Branwell's may also be there of course.

Cannonball Read 8 and YA Romantics post about Jane Steele. The Book Jotter reviews The Madwoman Upstairs. Thoughts in Purple talks about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

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Wuthering Heights in wrong hands

John Hawkins, from the blog Wrong Hands, has recently published a series of cartoons with (serious) abridgment of books. This is Wuthering Heights in wrong hands:

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The Brontës Hypnotise Us

Sarah Hughes writes in The Guardian about 'Why those subversive Brontë sisters still hypnotise us':

They are beloved by everyone from misunderstood teens and fools for love to the serious-minded middle-aged and those of a critical bent. Now the Brontë sisters are taking centre stage again as the bicentenary of Charlotte’s birth next month brings a host of events at their Yorkshire home and elsewhere. (...)
So why exactly do the Brontë sisters, these rural curate’s daughters with only a handful of novels between them, continue to fascinate us? From the moment Jane Eyre was published in 1847 they have exerted an almost hypnotic pull: where other literary sensations flash bright, then fade to earth, the Brontës endure, their stories adapted again and again for both stage and screen Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.“I think a lot of it is that we’re fascinated by the idea that these three women living in a cold, cramped house in Yorkshire wrote these extraordinary novels about the most intense human experiences,” says author and playwright Samantha Ellis, whose book, Take Courage, about Anne Brontë, will be published early next year. (...)
Indeed, the most striking thing about the Brontë novels is how subversive they are. On the surface these might seem like tales of love lost and won, of happy endings and reader, I married him, but they are also strange and spiky tales. “There’s a lot of wanting and yearning, not all of it romantic,” says Ellis. “These are difficult books to contain. They’re over-egged and weird and often troubling.” Thus Jane takes Rochester once he has been crippled and blinded, unable to exert his male power. Wuthering Heights is less the story of wild romantic love as much as a tale of abuse, madness and unfettered rage, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is more concerned with the act that frees Helen, her slamming of the door against her drunken husband, than it is with her conventional end. (...)
Nor is it just women who respond to their work. “I know lots of men who love the Brontës,” says Ellis. “There’s a bit of myth that they’re writers for women, that it’s all about Heathcliff and Rochester, but more men read them than you’d think.”
Yet whoever is reading them, they’ll always have one sister they think of as “theirs”. “Definitely,” says Ellis. “You’re either Charlotte, Emily or Anne and you can tell a lot by which book someone claims as their own. I was doing a reading in London last year about Jane Eyre versus Wuthering Heights and a teenage girl came up to me afterwards and said to me, ‘I will never give up Cathy and Heathcliff, not now, not when I am 40.’ And that’s how it should be. Your passions are your own.”

The Telegraph reviews Being the Brontës:

Conceptually it felt hammy. When striding together across the moors or gathering in the sisters’ writing room, Kearney did a lot of the talking. Oyeyemi was shy and wide-eyed. Mangan played the “unwuthering” pragmatist to Kearney’s airy (Eyrey?) romantic. In the hallowed parsonage at Haworth the latter felt that they were somehow communing with the sisters. “Nonsense,” said Mangan, not getting into the spirit at all. (...)
Aficionados of Wuthering Heights  or Jane Eyre might not have learned  a great deal new (no attention was paid to the question of Heathcliff’s ethnicity, for instance), but Anne was  another matter. It was a stretch to describe the structurally gauche  Agnes Grey as “one of the greatest novels in the English language”, but Mangan’s tour of the governess’s  world it describes was deftly done.  In fact, it persuaded me that the book is ripe for adaptation. A compelling Victorian take on the iniquities of  the wealth gap. No one could say it wouldn’t be timely. (Jasper Rees)

Grough describes a walk that many Brontëites around the world have taken some time or another. From Haworth Parish Church to Top Withins:

The moors around the Pennine village of Haworth provided inspiration for the settlement’s most famous family, the literary Brontë sisters, and 200 years after the birth of the celebrated writers, latter-day visitors can still revel in the bleak beauty of the hills that provided the setting for novels such as Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s the Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
This walk takes the visitor to Top Withins, the ruined farmhouse which many believe to be the setting, if not the building, which inspired Emily’s best known book. (Bob Smith)

USA Today recommends both Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye and The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell:

On the 200th birthday of Charlotte Brontë, two clever new novels riff on Jane Eyre, her much-loved classic about a mistreated orphan who becomes a governess and falls in love with her boss, the unattainable Mr. Rochester. It’s a love story that has launched dozens of films, plays and blog postings, not to mention myriad romantic fantasies. (...)
There’s no need to know Jane Eyre before reading these novels, but Steele and Madwoman could inspire you to seek out the self-empowering girl who inspired them. (Patty Rhule)

The Denver Post reviews Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë A Fiery Heart:

Do we need another Bronte bio, given: the dozen or so captivating meditations that have followed Elizabeth Gaskell's brilliant and gossipy pioneer study, published in 1857? Of course we do. Harman's story is about how writers write. Her subjects are not accidental geniuses, rather women with time. Yes, the sisters are socially isolated in Haworth. Yes, they are burdened by a pompous, needy father who places his faith in his fragile son. Yes, they endure their brother's drug addiction and craziness — and use it in their books. Branwell set fire to his bed, and five minutes later, Bertha Mason did the same in the attic of Charlotte's fictional Thornfield Hall. (Laurie Stone)

The Sunday Times reviews Lyndsay Faye's Jane Steele:

Lyndsay Faye gleefully parodies Jane Eyre in a heady mix of pastiche and thriller. (Nick Rennison)

Culturopoing reviews André Téchiné's Quand on a 17 ans:

Téchiné conserve des dimensions baroque et romantique, bien assumées. Il traite même son intrigue avec une relative abstraction, rythmique, colorée et picturale, au risque d’aboutages très singuliers et de ruptures intrigantes. A travers Tom, inspiré du personnage d’Heatcliff, c’est à nouveau Emily Brontë qui est convoquée avec « Les Hauts de Hurlevent ». (William Lurson) (Translation)

Le Bien Public (France) interviews Guillaume Musso:

Comment passe-t-on de prof à écrivain ?(Thierry Meissirel)
J’étais un lecteur de BD et un téléphage. Et un jour, chez mon grand-père à Antibes, à l’âge de 11 ans, il y a eu une panne d’électricité, alors j’ai pris un livre, et c’était Les Hauts de Hurlevent d’Emily Brontë. Ça a été un point de départ : grâce à ma mère qui était bibliothécaire, j’ai autant lu les classiques que les romans populaires… Ensuite, j’ai commencé à penser à des sujets de roman. J’ai publié un premier livre qui n’a pas vraiment marché. Puis j’ai eu un grave accident de voiture, qui m’a donné le point dedépart du suivant, Et après, qui a vraiment fonctionné au-delà de mes espérances.  (Translation)

ABC (Spain) has an article about the dangers of the political correctness censorship, particularly in the college campus:

La profesora Joanna Williams, de la Universidad de Kent, en el Sureste de Inglaterra, es la autora del libro «Libertad académica en la era de la conformidad: el miedo al conocimiento». Parte de la obra evoca su intento de estudiar literatura inglesa cuando tenía 19 años y se encontró con que todo iba de «feminismo, historicismo, posmodernismo, marxismo, estructuralismo y posestructuralismo». Cuando llegaron a la novela «Jane Eyre», le pidieron un ensayo explicándola desde «una perspectiva feminista». Su diagnóstico de lo que está ocurriendo es sencillo: «En lugar de fomentar la solidez intelectual para cuestionar y debatir, se está diciendo que las palabras pueden ejercer la violencia y deben ser censuradas». (Luis Ventoso) (Translation)

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New Italian Translation of Juvenilia

A new bilingual (Italian/English) translation by Maddalena De Leo of Brontë juvenilia has just been published:

Storie di Geni e di Fate
by Charlotte Brontë
Edited and translated by Maddalena De Leo
L’ArgoLibro - La Penna dello Scrittore
ISBN: 978-88-98558-68-1

A great publishing initiative, that of "The ArgoLibro" which presents - for the first time translated into Italian – the following tales " An Adventure", "The Pursuit of Happiness" and "The Adventures of Ernest Alembert"  written by Charlotte Brontë when she was a teenager.
The translator, Professor Maddalena De Leo, took care of every detail of the publication, which occurs parallel English text and therefore particularly suitable for those who wish to compare the original and the translated version.
We are at the beginning of a special five-year period for the Brontë family, for various occasions, including in 2016 right the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte, born on 21st April 1816 in Thornton, even if she lived in Haworth in Yorkshire.
Maddalena De Leo is a scholar particularly suitable for the care of this publication. A member of the Brontë Society since 1975, she is the representative of the Italian Section of the Brontë Society as well as editorial consultant for Italy of the literary magazine Brontë Studies.
Leafing through this book, we will enjoy the fascinating world "constructed" by the imagination of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell, with the Young Men as protagonists, that’s to say the twelve soldiers given away a few years earlier by their father. It is definitely amazing, as pointed out by the same curator, that the mind of a fourteen year old could have imagined adventures so complex and rich in detail.
The second of the three stories brings, along with the main character, to seek and define the concept of happiness, something simple and within reach instead often go looking far away, while the third story makes us go on an exciting journey that brings between genes and fairies projecting us into a dream world. 

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Kindled in the Brontës

Lucy Mangan, who copresents the docudrama Being the Brontës (tonight on BBC Two) publishes a couple of articles in The Guardian and Radio Times:

If the Brontës hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent them. The story is too good not to have in our extra-literary canon. A family of isolated eccentrics, touched somehow by the hand of genius, burning with fire and fury in the middle of the Yorkshire moors!
Spinsters oppressed by the Victorian patriarchy, pouring all their frustrations out onto foolscap, transmuting silent suffering into art to echo down the ages!
A saint, a seer and a third, quieter one sitting somewhere in the shadows. And a brother getting spectacularly drunk in the village and trailing clouds of scandal behind him whenever he returned from further afield! (...)
The thing is, of course, we did invent that story – or at least large parts of it. Digging into the Brontës’ lives and roaming Haworth and the parsonage in which they lived and – very much – died in preparation for the making of the BBC documentary Being the Brontës, showing tonight, had me peeling onionskins of fiction away from fact away from fiction…sometimes it seemed like it was onion skin all the way down. (...)
Within the parsonage, the Brontë sisters were also not ruled with a rod of iron by their father, Patrick Brontë. Though his hopes – at least at first – rested decidedly with his son, all his children were given free rein over the household’s books, which included Shakespeare, Byron and Scott, and magazines.
They were all encouraged to talk about literature and politics at mealtimes with him. You can never explain the spark of genius – but I certainly saw how it was kindled in the Brontës.
They were encouraged and they encouraged each other. They were competitive but supportive. They had the moors behind them, just begging to be filled with wild, sweeping stories but they also had Haworth before them, the two extremes whetting their imaginative edges.
They knew enough of the world – from the village and from working elsewhere – to write about it but were protected enough from it to burst forth with voices and passions untainted by imitation and undimmed by fear.
That these different elements somehow combined in the perfect proportions to cradle the three sisters safely until they were ready to change literary history is magical enough. No need to print the legend.

 We do some filming in and around Haworth, the small village built in stone quarried from the moors themselves, where the Brontë sisters’ father held the position of perpetual curate at the local church.
I say how brave and brilliant Anne was, while Helen goes in to bat for Emily, even though in my highly informed opinion Emily was clearly insane and Wuthering Heights madder still. We would come to blows, but it’s too cold to take our hands out of our pockets.
Martha eventually arrives safely and we gather in the parsonage library, where the sisters wrote their masterpieces, to look at some of the famous tiny books the Brontës (including Branwell, their brother, in just about his first and last contribution to his family’s happiness) wrote about their imaginary lands of Gondal and Angria. In minuscule handwriting, the sagas play out across the years. It’s where, really, the sisters learnt the craft that would ally with their natural talent and eventually produce their famous works. (Read more)

The show is also highlighted in another section of The Guardian:

It is one of the most extraordinary backstories in all of literature – the concurrent authorship of three enduring novels by three sisters sharing the same Yorkshire home. This documentary sees Martha Kearney, Lucy Mangan and Helen Oyeyemi visiting Haworth and attempting to reimagine the period in the mid-1840s in which Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey were written. See also The Brontës At The BBC, on BBC4 at 8pm on Sunday, a new series reflecting on decades of BBC adaptations of Brontë novels. (Andrew Mueller)

And in The National (Scotland):

Charlotte called her pupils fat-headed oafs and Anne tied hers to a table leg. Emily stayed at home to keep house and bake bread, occasionally breaking off to fire her dad’s gun in the garden and get involved in dog fights.
The latter is my favourite anecdote about Emily Brontë. Her bulldog was attacked by local mutts and she jumped in to break up the fight, getting bitten in the process. Fearing rabies – although did Emily “fear” anything? Let’s say she didn’t want to be inconvenienced by it – she went into the kitchen, put a poker into the fire then sizzled it against her arm to sear and cleanse the wound.
These were not your typical Victorian ladies and they wrote spectacular novels which scandalised and engrossed Victorian society and yet we still think of them as timid, shy, Victorian spinsters, wandering on the moors.
This documentary tries to tell the true story of the Brontë sisters who were fearless and bold in some ways and yet stricken by paralysing shyness. (Julie McDowall)

By the way, Helen Oyeyemi's (Brontë-inspired) short story 'Interesting about E and A' which was published in the Spring issue of The New Statesman is now digitally available.

International Business Times highlights The Brontës at the BBC, tomorrow on BBC4 Four:

We could think of worse families to spend our Easter Sunday with. (Ahem, the Kardashians). The Brontës at the BBC is a fascinating look into how the books have been interpreted – which so happens to be very widely, in dramas and documentaries over the past 60 years. The documentary marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte's birth, and doesn't she deserve it after writing Jane Eyre? The novel gave the world a kick up the backside in terms of fierce literary feminism – while her sister Emily blessed us with the one and only Wuthering Heights, which is basically the 19th Century's version of Sex and the City. [wtf?] Well, almost. A fascinating recap of a family that reshaped literature forever. (Lucia Binding)

Herts & Essex Observer looks into Jane Eyre 2011 tonight also on BBC Two:

Elegantly adapted for the screen by Moira Buffini, Cary Joji Fukunaga's colour-bleached film condenses the source novel into two hours of yearning and regret.

The Irish Times looks back to the Irish origins of Patrick Brontë:

Certain events in Dublin aside, Easter 1916 was also an extraordinarily busy time for major literary anniversaries. There was of course the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death on April 23rd – the day before the Rising – and a similar milestone for Miguel de Cervantes, on the 22nd. But there was also the centenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, on Good Friday 1916, April 21st.
It was not as big an event, I’m sure, as next month’s bicentenary will be. Even so, I notice that 100 years ago this weekend, she featured in this paper’s “coming events” column (no, there was no mention of anything in the GPO), which advertised a National Literary Society talk on the Brontës, chaired by Dr George Sigerson.
The sisters are now and forever synonymous with the Yorkshire moors, but Ireland can claim a share in their fame too, via their father, Patrick, born the son of a farm labourer in Co Down on the 17th of March (no less), 1777.
If nothing else, he was responsible for the rebranding exercise that gave his children their exotic surname, without which they might have gone down in history by the somehow much less glamorous moniker of “Brunty”. (...)
Still, he brought a bit of Ulster with him, in speech at least, and it may have leaked into his daughter’s work. I’m told by those who know that some of the linguistic idiosyncrasies of Jane Eyre are pure Down – for example, the bit where she tells Mr Rochester “I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water”; or “There, sir, you are redd up and made decent.”
To modern ears, “redd up” sounds like the past participle of “read up”. But in this context, apparently, it means “tidied” or (of hair) “combed”. It’s an old English term, and so I suppose might have survived independently in Yorkshire, although I’m assured you’re more likely to hear it now in the north of Ireland, or Scotland.
The spelling of Brunty, by the way, was and remains interchangeable with “Prunty”, their common ancestor being Ó Pronntaigh – said, interestingly, to have originated with a well-known bardic family from Fermanagh. So maybe the Brontës’ literary fame was inevitable, under any spelling. (Frank McNally)

Keighley News talks about an upcoming exhibition in Halifax (opening next April 16):

Charlotte Brontë’s 200th anniversary is being celebrated by the Bankfield Museum in Halifax.
The free-entry museum has joined the year-long festival, which is being masterminded by the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.
The Halifax contribution is entitled Splendid Shreds Of Silk And Satin: A Celebration Of Charlotte Brontë In Quilts.
Yorkshire quilters have responded to a Brontë Quilt Challenge, devised by novelist Tracy Chevalier, herself a quilter, and sponsored by the Quilters’ Guild Of The British Isles and the Brontë Society.
The submitted quilts will be displayed at Bankfield Museum as part of the Splendid Shreds exhibition, along with the patchwork quilt worked on by the Brontë sisters and their Aunt Branwell.
Rarely displayed due to its size and fragile nature, the quilt is unfinished and was hand-sewn by the Brontë sisters from patches of silk, taffeta, velvet and cotton, and has a calico backing.
The exhibition will also be complemented by a new version of the Brontë quilt, which has been lovingly created by three members of the Totley Brook Quilters from Sheffield. (David Knights)

BBC York & North Yorkshire and Jezebel also mention Norton Conyers reopening:

A medieval manor house said to be the inspiration for Jane Eyre is to reopen after 10 years of restoration.
Norton Conyers, in North Yorkshire, inspired the classic novel after Charlotte Brontë visited and heard the legend of a mad woman confined in the attic.
It is said it is where she came up with the idea for Jane Eyre's Mrs Rochester.
A collection of documents and items from the attic have been given to the North Yorkshire County Records Office.
The house is due to reopen to visitors from 14:00 GMT on Friday [March 25].
Items from the attic, where a woman is said to have been incarcerated, have been donated to archivists
Norton Conyers has belonged to the Graham family since 1624.
Lady Graham said: "When the public come they will see all the main public rooms and some areas which have not been seen before.
"This includes the staircase which Charlotte Brontë described so well in Jane Eyre."
Archivists are working to establish who the woman in the attic might have been from the documents found during the renovation.

Publishers Weekly informs of another Jane Eyre retelling in the works:

Sarah Shoemaker's Mr. Rochester, pitched as a reimagining of Brontë's classic Jane Eyre through the eyes of its mysterious and mercurial romantic hero, beginning with Edward Rochester's lonely childhood at Thornfield Hall, through his tumultuous years in Jamaica and ill-fated marriage to Bertha, to his fateful encounter with the young governess who would change his life forever, to Millicent Bennett in her first acquisition at Grand Central, on exclusive submission, by Jennifer Weltz at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency (World English).

Also in Publishers Weekly, a review of We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge:

The book’s opening finds the Freemans diving that new Volvo from Boston to the imposing and unnerving Toneybee campus. It’s as expertly mysterious an opening chapter as any you’d find in a great gothic novel or a thriller (Jane Eyre and The Haunting of Hill House come to mind), but the mysteries and horrors to be found at Toneybee aren’t supernatural; they’re social and—you guessed it—historical. (Nate Brown)

NPR reviews Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye:

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye is that book. While the story's eponymous heroine lives in Victorian England, is orphaned and sent to a boarding school and then winds up as a governess on a grand estate, her similarities to, say, Jane Eyre stop at the name. Faye hasn't embarked on a retelling of Brontë's masterwork, or anyone else's, for that matter. Her novel pays homage to the greats, yet offers a heroine whose murky past and murderous present remind us that some female behavior in other eras never made it into print. (Bethanne Patrick)

Penfield Post on a novel by a local writer:

Lynn Rosen, 84, of Rochester, will make her literary debut with “A Man of Genius” in April.
The gothic suspense novel is being compared by book critics to Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Emily Brontë's “Wuthering Heights.”

Bustle lists terrible literary couples which would not survive IRL:

Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering HeightsOk, to be fair Cathy and Heathcliff don't exactly "stay together" in Wuthering Heights. But there's no denying that they both spend their whole lives being in love with each other... and there's no way that would last in real life. They're a mess. Sure, some childhood friends might end up together in the real world, but these two are just plain mean to each other and everyone else around them. Cathy claims to love Heathcliff, but she won't marry him because it would hurt her social station. In actuality, Heathcliff would probably take the hint and move on, instead of dedicating the rest of his life to revenge.

Rochester and Bertha in Jane EyreJane Eyre gives us another controlling Edward. I'm all for Jane and Rochester, but it's a little hard to forgive Rochester for hiding his insane first wife in the attic and not telling Jane about it. There's no way that would have worked out well in reality. Rochester married Bertha in Jamaica, but soon after their marriage he discovered that she was mentally ill and prone to violent outbursts. Rather than deal with it, Rochester chose to lock her in an attic... and do nothing else. Divorce might have been a more realistic option. (Charlotte Ahlin)

Le Soir (Belgium) talks about foreign writers living or exiled in Brussels:

Des femmes célèbres qui font le voyage de Bruxelles? Il y en a deux et elles sont sœurs. Charlotte et Emily Brontë séjournent dans notre capitale en 1842 et 1843 pour être prises en charge par le célèbre pensionnat créé par Zoé et Constantin Héger. Elles y apprennent le français tout en dispensant des cours d’anglais et de musique. Les deux filles, suite au décès de leur tante, regagnent l’Angleterre mais Charlotte, l’auteure de Jane Eyre reviendra aussitôt à Bruxelles en proie à un amour sans doute platonique pour son professeur Constantin Héger qui le lui rend bien dans un courrier abondant arrivé jusqu’à nous. Son roman Le professeur, édité après sa mort, s’en serait inspiré. (Hervé Gérard) (Translation)

La Voix du Nord (France) interviews the actress Adelaïde Leroux:

Si j’étais un roman ? (Virginie Dubois)
« Difficile de choisir ! Mais, je suis une romantique, j’aime beaucoup les romans de la fin du XIXe siècle. Hugo, Flaubert, Dumas, Sand… mais puisqu’il faut n’en choisir qu’un, ce sera Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Le portrait d’une jeune femme fragile et forte à la fois, que la vie a malmenée et qui trouvera son salut dans l’amour. Sa douceur et son entièreté ne sont pas sans me rappeler Aurélie, le personnage que j’incarne dans Le Chant du merle de Frédéric Pelle. » (Translation)

Badische Zeitung (Germany) sees Brontë landscapes even in Antigua (in the Caribbean):

Eigentlich eine raue nordenglische Kulisse wie im Roman "Sturmhöhe" von Emily Brontë. Eigentlich. Wäre da nicht dieses wohlige Gefühl auf der Haut, erzeugt von der warmen karibischen Brise. (Martin Cyris) (Translation)

International Business Times thinks that if you like Wuthering Heights, you'll probably like the film Chocolat. Eesti Päevaleht (Estonia) has an article about the Brontës, beginning with Jane Austen (not sure if Charlotte Brontë would agree with that). La Stampa (Italy) mentions the National Portrait Gallery's Charlotte Brontë exhibition. A short story by Kristien Hemmerechts (written in 2006) with a brief Brontë reference is published in Vrej Nederland (in Dutch). Popcorn TV (Italy) lists the best films of William Hurt, including Jane Eyre 1996. De Standaard (Belgium) has an article on the Brontës in its weekly magazine.

AnneBronte.org reproduces a Mail on Sunday very positive review of Nick Holland's new Anne Brontë biography:

Holland has enormous affection for Anne Bronte, and his excellent book is filled with passion and pathos. Its triumph is that Anne is given voice and is no longer swamped by her siblings — the angry and jealous Charlotte, the highly strung Emily, the frankly honkers Branwell. Steeped in his subject, Holland is knowledgeable about 19th-century social history as well as the literature and culture. And what an alarming world it was: the religious fervour, the diseases, the emotional claustrophobia (and sexual frustration) in the Haworth parsonage. 

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Being the Brontës at the BBC

A Brontë weekend on BBC:

Being the Brontës
BBC Two
March 26, 21.00 h
(except Scotland, 22.00 h)
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte's birth, Martha Kearney, novelist Helen Oyeyemi and journalist Lucy Mangan travel to Haworth Parsonage, the home of Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne, to discover the inspiration behind their classic novels Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.

Just two years before the books were published, prospects for the three unmarried sisters were bleak. Their brother was battling alcoholism, Charlotte was hopelessly in love with a married man and their father was going blind. But by 1848 they were a literary sensation. To find out how this extraordinary turnaround happened, Martha, Lucy and Helen each immerse themselves in the life of a Bronte sister. From everyday routines at the Parsonage to walks on windswept moors, from harsh schooldays to misadventures as governesses, the trio learn how the Brontës combined literary genius with real-life experience to create some of the best-loved novels in the English language.

Producer and Director ... Linda Sands
Series Producer ... John Das

The Brontës at the BBC
BBC Four
March 27, 20.00 h

An exploration of the BBC's long love affair with the lives and works of the Brontë sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. For over half a century, the ill-fated literary dynasty has proved irresistible to drama and documentary makers alike, keen to reinvent their novels for new audiences. So we get Brontë heroines reimagined for each emerging generation, first as classic 1950s housewife material, then wild child '60s 'chicks', Gothic waifs and, finally, empowered modern women. The Brontë males, meanwhile, are restyled as assorted prigs, wife-beaters, even brooding prog rockers and, of course, wouldn't you know it, new men. Wonderful stuff.

Narrator ... Tamsin Greig
Executive Producer ... Michael Poole
Series Producer ... William Naylor
Producer ... Rebecca Whyte

And:

BBC Two
10pm - 11:50pm
(Scotland 11pm)
Jane Eyre 2011

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Astonishing, Vivid, Angry and Visionary

Keighley News and New Statesman present Being the Brontës that will be broadcast tomorrow, March 25, on BBC2:

The BBC will this Saturday show a new documentary about how the Brontë sisters came to write their novels.
Being The Brontës will be screened at 9pm on BBC2 and features an in-depth visit to Haworth by three keen Brontë enthusiasts.
Journalist and broadcaster Martha Kearney, novelist Helen Oyeyemi and columnist and author Lucy Mangan travelled to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the home of the Brontë sisters, to discover the stories behind their classic novels Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. (David Knights)

 And Financial Times reviews it (3 of 5 stars): (Picture credit @Gareth Gatrell):

There is a moment in Being the Brontës (Saturday BBC2 9pm) that recalls an entertaining article by Muriel Spark that evoked the literary sisters’ careers as governesses from the point of view of their long-suffering employers. The film’s reference to the lady of the house unexpectedly entering to find her child tied to a table leg reinforces the suspicion that sympathy should not go all one way. (...)
In fact Being the Brontës is lightweight, even a bit giggly. With Lucy Mangan trying on a Victorian maid’s dress and windy moorland walks in the sisters’ footsteps, the programme is not without padding.
But if there are no revelations in Brontë scholarship, there are human details — Charlotte, we are reminded, was less than five feet tall and had an 18-and-a-half-inch waist; 40 per cent of children in the grim mill town of Haworth died before the age of six; the average lifespan was to the mid-twenties. (Martin Hoyle)

BBC North Ireland's The Arts Show (March 24) featured Charlotte Brontë and the Parsonage:

The Arts Show
Episode 9
On the 200th anniversary of her birth, an examination of Charlotte Brontë's impact as a trailblazer for female writers,

Chicago Tribune and Bookreporter review Reader, I Married Him, edited by Tracy Chevalier:

The 21 stories in this exemplary collection are written by some of today's best female writers. Each story is different, each features a love story that evokes the longings, loneliness and literary legacy of Jane Eyre, the penniless orphan whose life takes a sharp turn when she becomes a gove
rness at the foreboding Thornfield Hall.
In a forward written by Tracy Chevalier, the collection's editor, the author of "Girl With a Pearl Earring" talks about the feminist power of "Reader, I married him," and why the words have resonated with readers for nearly two centuries. Chevalier writes that "Reader, I married him" is "Jane's defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, 'Reader, he married me' — as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive — or even, 'Reader, we married.' Instead, Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of the narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester." (Read more) (Carol Memmott) 

Several of the stories feel far longer than their few pages. They are complex and complicated tales with fully formed characters that draw readers in from the first sentence. “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark,” about partnership, the devastating fragility of life and the joys of parental love, is Elizabeth McCracken’s contribution, and it’s marvelous. Likewise, “The Self-Seeding Sycamore” by Lionel Shriver explores love, in this instance a love that shakes a woman from grief to happiness. It does so in such a sophisticated way but with an enjoyable style.
In truth, all the stories here are very good. A few are really fantastic and worth a second read. Though each is inspired by Jane Eyre, that is just about the only thing connecting them. However, it is the variety of style, plot, setting and characters that make the collection so intriguing as readers search for threads of commonality and whispers of Brontë. Highly literary yet absorbing and entertaining, Reader, I Married Him is an inventive and a satisfying tribute to a great novel. (Jana Siciliano)

Broadway World reviews the shake & stir Australian Wuthering Heights tour: (Picture @Dylan Evans)

Shake & Stir Theatre Company has bought Emily Brontë's dark and twisted story of love and revenge into the 21st Century with its interpretation of Wuthering Heights. Adaptor and Director Nick Skubij has blended modern language, clean design and modern technology to create a work that is accessible to modern audiences whilst still retaining references to the story's old world setting.
The ominous mood is instantly set with the clap of thunder and flash of lighting that fills the minimalistic monochrome grand room of a stately manor. Voices lift out of the pages of a book a young man is frantically reading, blended with eerie sounds and screams before a piano melody with a melancholy undertone fills the room. (...)
Wuthering Heights is a well-constructed work that adopts modern theatre technology to make it accessible to new audiences that are used to multimedia expression. The pre-recorded projections allow for reinforcement of expressions and emotions that unfold through the dialogue and Nelly's narration. Jason Glenwright and Guy Webster's lighting and sound (respectively) adds to the mysterious mood that settles windswept moors, heightening the drama. (Jade Kops) 

The Guardian's month reading group will be Don Quixote or Jane Eyre:

April 2016 marks 400 years since the death of Miguel de Cervantes. It also marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth. You don’t need me to tell you about the importance of either writer.
Don Quixote is arguably the first modern novel. (Some even say it’s a crucial modernist text.) It’s also a book that is still read, still enjoyed and still able to baffle and bemuse. It has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Terry Gilliam via Henry Fielding and John Kennedy Toole. The world would be less colourful without it.
Jane Eyre, meanwhile, remains a central part of the English canon, an astonishing, vivid, angry and visionary masterpiece. A book that changed the way the English-speaking world thinks about fiction; not least because it demonstrated how well women can write it. Again, we’d all be diminished if we didn’t have it. (Sam Jordison)

The Yorkshire Post features once again Norton Conyers, and their owners Sir James and Lady Graham:

This year, the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, Sir James and Lady Graham are expecting renewed interest on the back of the house’s connection with the famous author who is believed to have visited in 1839 and heard the family legend of “Mad Mary” secretly confined to an end room in the attics.
The story goes that she was the inspiration for Edward Rochester’s Creole wife in her 1847 classic Jane Eyre.
The secret staircase leading to the attics can be seen, but is sadly too dangerous for the public to use.

The Irish Times reviews Lisa McInerney:

Who is your favourite fictional character? (Martin Doyle)
Heathcliff. Lord knows how such a triumphant reprobate ever became shorthand for “passionate romantic”. He’s a perfect villain: frightening both in his capacity for brutality and his intelligence but too vulnerable to dismiss as a monster. You’d cross the county to avoid him. And he’s got all the best lines.

 Popular fiction in the Daily Mail and The Sydney Morning Herald:

The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell
Perfectly timed for the Charlotte bicentenary, this Brontë-centred tale has American student Samantha Whipple as the famous family’s last surviving member. Problem is, she can’t stand their novels. This might not be a problem were she not reading English Literature at Oxford.
The other difficulty is the ever-present ghost of her dead father, a tricksy academic obsessed with the Brontës.
Throw into the mix a brooding tutor, a spooky tower room and various buried secrets and the result is a sort of Jane Eyre at Oxford.
It’s a super premise, stylishly written and the bits about the sisters are great. I found the bumptious, clever-clever heroine irritating, even so. (Wendy Holden) 

If you thought the rash of Austen and Brontë tributes, parodies, fanfics and other homages had finally cleared up, you will be disappointed to learn that people are still writing them. This one plays a pretty good game with the Brontës and their works, particularly Jane Eyre, as the last remaining descendant of the Brontë family – a fictional great-great-great-granddaughter of Patrick Brontë's brother – arrives at Oxford and is enveloped in a Brontë-related mystery while attempting to come to grips with her brilliant but overbearing tutor. This is an imaginative, intelligent, and often witty fanfic, using the genre to explore ideas about the Brontës and their work, as well as the contemporary fetishism about their belongings and their home. Catherine Lowell also uses the plot and characters of Jane Eyre quite subtly and adroitly to shape her own quite different tale of intrigue. (Kerryn Goldsworthy)

The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Emily Maguire's An Isolated Incident:

Maguire's favourite novel is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. She returns to it whenever she becomes stuck for words.

And one more review in the same newspaper. Now Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift:

Graham Swift steps out of character in Mothering Sunday. By contrast with the sombre tone and grisly plot of his best-known novel, Waterland, and the wry humour of Last Orders, this beguiling novella comes with an unexpected happy ending. Sunny weather, sexual delight, echoes of Jane Eyre and Downton Abbey: can this be Graham Swift? (Brenda Niall)

The Student Newspaper reviews the recent BBC Radio 4 Wide Sargasso Sea adaptation:

It is fascinating to hear the celebrated story from another perspective, from Antoinette and Rochester’s meeting, to their intense and tragic relationship, and culminating in her brutal imprisonment by Charlotte Brontë’s character Grace Poole. In the final scene, the two narratives meet, and so do two very different types of gothic. (Niamh Anderson)

The Telegraph lists the most valuable rare books in existence. Among them:

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847
Published in a poorly-printed edition of only 250 copies, its author disguised by the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights proved to be an extraordinary novel, written with a power and passion which baffled and disgusted contemporary critics.
A first edition commands £200,000 at auction.

Jacob Lambert in The Millions is not impressed. His loss:

A Modern Literary Glossary: Definitions for Our Ever-Changing Reading World. (...)
Wuthering Heights: A method of killing any nascent interest in reading that a high-school student may have. 

ITV mentions the exhibition Emma at 200: From English village to Global appeal in Chawton House Library, Hampshire:

To celebrate the bi-centenary, and examine the global appeal of Jane Austen, a new exhibition has just opened at Chawton House Library in Hampshire, curated by the University of Southampton.
Among the exhibits, first editions published in both France and America, and a scathing letter written by Charlotte Brontë, who was born in 1816, the year of Emma's publication.

A retired high school teacher complains about the current state of education in Wicked Local Newton:

What of the curriculum now taught? In the past decade public education has largely abandoned the core texts of my heyday. In English classes nationwide, fewer of the books are 19th and early 20th century classics. Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Emily Brontë? Not many classes study their novels anymore. Dickens’s shadow has diminished as well though “Great Expectations” and “A Tale of Two Cities” still have their adherents. Steinbeck has almost disappeared, for better or worse. In their place, contemporary writers of more diverse backgrounds have come to the fore, and it remains to be seen which of their works will stick. (Bob Jampol)

Quotable first lines on About Education:

In which classic novel does the following first line appear: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” Give up? Why, it’s Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), of course! The line might read like something out of Jane Austen, given Austen’s affinity for the use of walking as a narrative device; however, Brontë, too, explores the connection between physical and psychological freedoms and restraints. (Adam Burgess)

An alert for tomorrow, March 26, in Berlin:

Die Volkshochschule Offenbach lädt am Samstag,16. April von 10:00 bis 12:15 Uhr zum englischen Buchclub im Haus der Volkshochschule Offenbach, Berliner Straße 77 ein.
Der Buchclub bietet die Möglichkeit, die eigene Leseerfahrung und Meinung über einen Roman auszutauschen. An diesem Samstag wird der Klassiker der britischen Romanliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts „Wuthering Heights“ von Emily Bronte diskutiert. Es ist wichtig, dass der Roman davor gelesen wird, damit man sich an der Diskussion beteiligen kann. (Source)

After ranking Wuthering Heights meals in order of sadness, Mallory Ortberg now ranks Jane Eyre's in order of severity on The Toast. L'angolo di Annarita reviews The Brontës. Children of the Moors by Mick Manning and Brita Granström. Just Simply Delete It and Me in Blogland... reviews Wuthering Heights. Stil de Scriitor (in Romanian) posts about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Royal Reviews posts about Jane Steele.

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