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Saturday 12 May 2012

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Culture24 gives more details of the Brontë presence in the Writing Britain exhibition at the British Library:
In contrast the effects of the British industrial revolution are explored through the eyes of Charlotte Brontë, whose letter to Dickens sees her express concern over ‘vomiting mills’ and similarly, William Wordsworth, who wrote a sonnet to Prime Minister Gladstone objecting to the proposed Windermere railway.
Exploring Britain's wilder landscapes is the gothic Brontë tale, Wuthering Heights, which is displayed among other works that used the novel as a source of inspiration.
a black and white photo of a ruined house in a woodland
In 1961 Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath each wrote a poem in homage to the famous book based on their own experiences of the Yorkshire moors and visits to the Hughes' family home. (Ruth Hazard)
The Telegraph adds:
Not only are you bowled over by the treasures on show – the manuscripts of Lewis Carroll, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Auden, Brontes various, they go on and on… – but you also begin to see how, unwittingly, our views of Britain have been shaped by literature.  (Harry Mount)
And New Statesman:
“Dark Satanic Mills” charts a literary shift as the landscape of the north became increasingly industrialised. Some reviled it: Charlotte Brontë describes the Yorkshire of her 1849 novel Shirley as “smoke dark houses clustered around their soot vomiting mills”, while Dickens went even further, condemning the exhaust fumes over Coketown as “interminable serpents of smoke”. (...)
The exhibition continues on, through “Wild Spaces”, which features a heavy focus on windy moors as exemplified by Charlotte Bronte and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle[.] Plus there are original manuscripts of Wind in the Willows, Sweeny Todd, The Buddha of Suburbia, Jane Eyre, Middle March and much, much more. (Charlotte Simmonds)
More details too of the Brontë-inspired garden that will be recreated at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show in Keighley News:
The Brontës’ Yorkshire Garden”, which is being put together by tourism agency Welcome to Yorkshire, aims to transport the scenery that influenced the three novelist sisters to the world-famous show.
The garden will also help commemorate the 165th anniversary of the publication of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey, all of which appeared in print in 1847.
While working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum the garden’s designer, Tracy Foster, said she had discovered that although the Brontës were influenced by the landscape around them, they were not very good domestic gardeners.
She said: “I’ve taken inspiration from the unique Yorkshire landscape. It has a captivating tension between beauty and bleakness and I’m trying to reflect that in my garden.
“I hope to convey the emotional essence of the place that inspired these women to write such wonderful works of literature, and also to encourage more people to rediscover Haworth, the Brontës and Yorkshire for themselves.” (...)
Miss Foster’s garden will be based on a particular location, often visited by the sisters, where a bridge now known as The Brontë Bridge crosses a moorland stream.
The garden will feature a stream, a clapper bridge and other elements of the landscape characteristic of the windswept Pennine Moors. (Miran Rahman)
Show Business reviews the New York performances of William Luce's Brontë. A Portrait of Charlotte:
The vibrant Maxine Linehan stars in the one-woman play, which takes place on a single day in the sitting room of the Brontë home, two years after the publication of Jane Eyre. Charlotte’s sisters, Emily and Anne, and her brother, Branwell, have recently died, all from tuberculosis, and Charlotte is bereft and alone. On this particular day, Charlotte has seen “a rainbow of promise” in the sky, and she waits in anticipation for a visit from the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, whom she believes will offer her a proposal of marriage. (...)
Costume designer Camille Assaf dresses Linehan in a beautiful, jewel-tone gown befitting the era. Robin Vest’s scenic design is elegantly sparse with a few Victorian furniture pieces and four hanging frames. The howling wind, somber colors and the billowing fog at the start are appropriately desolate. (Andrea M. Meek)
Libération (France) talks about Charlotte Brontë's Brussels connections including the recent discovery of the manuscript of L' Ingratitude, the upcoming novel of Jolien Janzing and the work of the Brussels Brontë Group:
Charlotte Brontë (photo George Richmond. Vers 1850) était hantée par Bruxelles. Elle y avait vécu l’amour de sa vie, une passion malheureuse qui transpire dans ses romans. Voici qu’un siècle et demi plus tard, la ville est de nouveau hantée par la romancière anglaise. La découverte dans un musée du pays d’une rédaction que la jeune fille avait rédigée en français lors de son séjour belge, fait resurgir sa vie bruxelloise, longtemps occultée par l’opprobre d’une relation interdite. L’Ingratitude, devoir écrit à la demande de son professeur de français, homme marié dont elle était éprise, a été retrouvé en février par Brian Bracken. Cet archiviste d’origine irlandaise fait partie du cercle qui œuvre, depuis quelques années, pour que Bruxelles n’oublie pas la mémoire de l’auteure de Jane Eyre. (Frédérique Rousel) (Read more) (Translation)
The Yorkshire Post looks at the artists who haved found inspiration up on the moors:
This year is the 60th anniversary of the North York Moors becoming a National Park. Nick Ahad discovers that artists and their work are at the centre of the celebrations. (...)
While the roughly hewn West Yorkshire moors have inspired writers from Emily Brontë to Ted Hughes, Simon Armitage has found inspiration over towards the Pennines, and the landscape of the south of the county seems to have brought the muse out for musicians, North Yorkshire appears to get the creative juices of a different sort of artist flowing.
The Times reviews Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: the Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale
No wonder diaries became such a popular literary device for novelists from Anne Brontë to Wilkie Collins.
The recent study by  the Lindeman's Wine and Book Club about reading habits is commented on by Marie Claire:
The study found less than half of Britons correctly identified Emily Brontë as the author of Wuthering Heights, many believing it to be Charles Dickens or the fictitious character Jane Eyre.  (Hannah Thomas)
Not the first time that Florence Welch from Florence + The Machine is compared to the Brontës:
Front person/singer/songwriter Florence Welch comes off as a heroine lifted from the pages of a Brontë novel or an image from a Waterhouse painting, but with one difference – her towering voice and offbeat electric presence.  (Dean Gordon-Smith on the Vernon Morning Star)
Financial Times discusses the current problems of the Bradford & Bingley's Aire Valley UK RMBS master trust:
Aire Valley is in what’s called Brontë Country in the UK’s Pennine hills, home to the towns of Bradford and Bingley.
Bucolic.
Whereas – in case you missed it – the Aire Valley master trust, a massive UK RMBS created by the buy-to-let lender Bradford & Bingley (and since “orphaned” after B&B’s government rescue) breached a non-asset trigger on Friday. Assets have fallen below the £10.7bn which Aire Valley was supposed to maintain until April 2013. (Joseph Cotterill)
New Statesman interviews Labour MP Bridget Philipson:
Name three dream dinner-party guests.
Emily Brontë, George Orwell and Simon Cowell.  (Samira Shackle)
The New Republic celebrates the figure of Maurice Sendak:
Sendak’s romantic imagination was never given fuller rein than in the illustrations for Pierre, where unruly passions take on a heraldic power in scenes that bear comparison with Balthus’s illustrations for Wuthering Heights.  (Jed Perl)
The Wigan Observer talks about the local artist Candace Rose Davies:
“But then I remember travelling back north, and really appreciating the contrast in the landscape, all very Wuthering Heights rugged and impressive with these fantastic skies above.
The Daily Mail says about the latest episode of the soap opera Emmerdale,
Having done his Wuthering Heights impression on the moors and found himself in hospital, on Sunday Zak tries to leave. (Jaci Stephen)
Wuthering Heights 2011 opens in Portugal and several local news outlets talk about the film: c7nema (interviews Andrea Arnold) and review, Correio da Manhã, Publico, Jornal Hardmusica

The Brussels Brontë Blog reports on a recent talk about the young Brontës and art. The Insider's Guide to Tween Pop Culture posts about Jane EyreFifty/Fifty . . . Really? writes briefly about Romancing Miss BrontëReveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two features the poetry of Charlotte and Anne Brontë. Movienewz (Netherlands) gives away a DVD of Jane Eyre 2011 (deadline, May 24).

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