The Telegraph & Argus publishes the monthly account of the Brontë Parsonage activities:
We have a treat in store for young fans of the Brontës at our late-night Thursday on September 21.
The authors of the beautifully-illustrated children’s book The Brontës – Children of the Moors, Mick Manning and Brita Granström, will be visiting the museum to chat about their book, and there will be the chance for little ones to try their hand at drawing.
Mick and Brita will be with us from 5.30pm, when entry is free to local visitors who live in the BD22, BD21 and BD20 postcode areas and Thornton.
Following our late-night Thursday is our annual Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing which takes place from Friday, September 22 and runs through to Sunday, September 24.
The festival kicks off with a free event in Cobbles and Clay on Main Street on the Friday evening, focusing on self-publishing and self-promotion.
For any budding writers, who might be feeling slightly nervous about dipping toes into the world of self-publishing, this is a great opportunity to get some advice on alternative methods of publishing in an informal, relaxed setting.
On the afternoon of Saturday September 23, the matter of adapting the Brontës is centre-stage, as bestselling author Rachel Joyce and playwright Deborah McAndrew will be discussing the challenges of adapting the Brontë novels for stage and radio.
Rachel is the author of bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and has adapted Brontë novels for BBC Radio 4 – most recently Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey.
Deborah’s WW1 drama An August Bank Holiday Lark won both the UK Theatre Award and Manchester Theatre Award for Best New Play in 2014.
For those readers of a certain age, you might recognise Deborah from Coronation Street circa 1990s, when she played street resident Angie Freeman!
Rachel and Deborah will be discussing their experiences of adapting Brontë classics in West Lane Baptist Centre at 2.30pm, and then both are leading workshops on Sunday, September 24 in the charming setting of Ponden Hall, Stanbury.
On Sunday morning, Deborah will lead a workshop on writing for the stage, and in the afternoon, Rachel will lead a workshop on writing for radio.
Both will be drawing on their extensive experience in each medium, and numbers are limited, so this will be a unique opportunity to learn from two very experienced practitioners.
Headlining on the Saturday night is award-winning novelist Sarah Perry. Her bestselling The Essex Serpent was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and is longlisted for the 2017 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.
One of Richard and Judy’s Summer Book Club choices, they describe the novel variously as a beautifully atmospheric work of historical fiction, a thing of beauty, and something of a masterpiece. Sarah will be talking about her bestseller at 7.30pm in West Lane Baptist Centre.
Don’t miss out on this stellar line-up – a real treat for admirers of contemporary fiction. Tickets are available from bronte.org.uk/whats-on or call 01535 640192 for further information. (Damien Holmes)
Keighley News gives further information on the Sew Near-Sew Far artwork project:
New pieces of artwork will go on display close to a popular public footpath this autumn.Bleeding Cool reviews the upcoming comic Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna and Ramón K. Pérez:
The initiative is part of a five-year Brontë Parsonage Museum programme marking the bicentenaries of the siblings' births.
Pieces of large-scale, textile art will be installed at three locations along the Brontë Way – each celebrating the famous signatures of the literary sisters.
Sew Near-Sew Far is a collaboration between the Haworth museum and artist Lynn Setterington, who said: "Signatures are an important marker of identity and the Brontë sisters famously used pseudonyms at their time of writing to disguise the fact they were women.
"I'm creating an artwork for the Parsonage Museum exploring the adopted and real signatures of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
"I'm working with local people to develop the pieces and inviting them to add their own signatures.
"We're also creating a film documenting the whole process, which will be shown later in the year.
"I'm collaborating with community groups and volunteers, and capturing the process is an important part of the artwork."
The completed work will be displayed between September 30 and October 14, near the Brontë Bridge and Waterfall, in the museum's first outdoor exhibition.
Lauren Livesey, arts officer at the Parsonage, said: "Whilst we have a long-standing reputation for working with leading artists, this project with Lynn will be a first for us as we take the exhibition out of the museum and into the landscape that was so important to the Brontës.
"We've been able to work with local communities as part of the project and really involve people in our Brontë200 celebrations." (Alistair Shand)
The writing is solid and paced appropriately. Jane is fleshed out exceptionally well, as is Mr. Rochester. Rochester’s young daughter, Adelle, is an adorable young side kick to Jane, though she does not get much in the way of development. Jane and Rochester are the focus of this story, and every other character is just there to move the plot along.The Irish Times reviews the film God's Own Country:
But the two are intoxicating to watch. Jane completely falls for him, throwing caution to the wind. Rochester is also doing this as well, but he still has a long list of unresolved issues. At times I was rooting against Rochester, since he’s still a grade-A jerk, but McKenna still makes him likeable enough that you do want Jane to get under his skin. Jane is a resilient character, who is at her core a strong, brave woman. Falling for Rochester makes her more human, and I truly sympathized with her through the story.
Despite knowing the basic story (and ultimately how it will end), I couldn’t put the book down. It’s an easy read and a great update to a classic, and even though I know it should end where it is, I want more. I want to see these characters continue to grow and expand. McKenna created a world and updated setting where these classic characters could be themselves.
The art by Ramón K. Pérez is stunning. It invokes a Darwyn Cooke style, with attractive characters and strong expressions. The New York backdrop is muted as to not take away from the characters, but the city itself lends itself as a background character to help Jane evolve. Irma Kniivila (along with Pérez) is a master colorist. The water scenes are especially perfect, showing a beautiful calm that ultimately put Jane where she is now. (Lauren Sisselman)
The English countryside hasn’t seemed this unforgiving since Emily Brontë mapped out the moors between Wuthering Heights and the neighbours. (Tara Brady)The same newspaper interviews the writer Henry McDonald:
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party? (Martin Doyle)The London Economic reviews another film, The Limehouse Golem:
Henry Miller for the smutty stories; Christopher Hitchens for the wit and erudition; Charlotte Brontë to clash with Miller and Albert Camus just because such a morally upright figure deserves to be brought back from the dead.
The cinematography is reminiscent of an ITV period drama or a pre-Cumberbatch adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Each shot is very stuffy and something closer to Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights would probably have been more suitable. (Wyndham Hacket Pain)The New Yorker revisits the influential 1997 book Hamlet on the Holodeck (Janet H. Murray) about digital narrative:
She compares Myst, for instance, a seminal first-person adventure game from 1993, to the juvenilia of the Brontë sisters, who told stories to one another about tense dungeon-crawls in a “regressive, violent, overheated emotional universe.” Fans of Myst and fans of the Brontë sisters seem equally likely to resent this comparison. But Murray’s point is that the juvenilia became “Jane Eyre,” and that rough-hewn digital stories are best understood as the evolutionary predecessors of forms that are yet to come. (Matt Margini)Daily Mail describes Laurence Olivier like this
He was the impossibly handsome, dark, and brooding Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, acclaimed as the greatest actor of the 20th century, and the youngest ever to be knighted. (Michael Thornton)Nerdly reviews the film Lady Macbeth:
In many ways, Lady Macbeth feels like a Brontë story. We have the evil family who treat Katherine like she is nothing but another servant. We see scenes in which she is meant to sit subserviently and just be furnishing for the house. What the story lacks though is the good nature of Katherine herself. We see many times she is just as cold as her father in law and husband. (Paul Metcalf)Quartz and pseudonyms:
Several women writers in history, including the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and, more recently, J.K. Rowling, have used pseudonyms to bypass assumptions about women’s intelligence and creativity. (Lila MacLellan)Sicilian Post gives a hint of a tantalizing new project:
Ci sono le parodie di Bruno Enna che si è occupato del filone gotico, prossimamente si lavorerà ad un romanzo delle sorelle Brontë[.] (Giulia Imbrogiano) (Translation)El Nacional (Venezuela) reviews the current performances of Jane Eyre. Detrás del Fuego in Caracas:
Respetando el texto y el momento histórico en el que se desarrolla la obra, Cestari logra un montaje correcto, muy académico, que permite desde su propuesta una aproximación escénica del público a la inmortal historia de amor entre Jane Eyre y Edward Rochester. (...)
Drama romántico que mantiene su impacto en el tiempo, el montaje de Cestari logra respetar su esencia, apoyado en la actuación de Jhoamy Manrique, asumiendo con soltura el personaje de Jane Eyre, que entre sus principios y deberes, en su labor como institutriz de la pequeña Adèle, se verá perturbada en su ejercicio académico por sus sentimientos hacia el rudo Edward Rochester, interpretado de manera efectiva por Jesús Barroeta. (José A. Pisano) (Translation)
El Espectador (Uruguay) recommends To Walk Invisible. Emma Dawson reviews the Belfast performances of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre. Emily C. Gardner posts about Jane Eyre, Sarah Shoemaker's Mr. Rochester and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. Books I Love reviews Wuthering Heights.
