Planet Century 19

Edited Collection CFP: Pedagogies of the End: Teaching and Knowledge at the Fin de Siècle Co-Editors: Dan Bivona, Arizona State University; and Helena Gurfinkel, Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville This collection explores a possible relationship between the fin in the fin de siècle (the turn of the nineteenth century) and pedagogy. We welcome essays about … Continue reading »

The Yorkshire Post explains some details of the garden:

Meanwhile, stone from a disused Victorian quarry at Dovestones Moor, part of Saddleworth Moor, has been put into place at the Chelsea Flower Show as part of “The Brontës’ Yorkshire Garden” by tourism board Welcome to Yorkshire.
The gritstone was chosen to be part of the garden which celebrates the authors and the landscape around Haworth.
Tracy Foster, who is putting the Brontë-themed garden together, said: “The stone is beautiful. We have deliberately not cleaned it so it has aged naturally and is of the period when the girls would have been walking around the West Yorkshire moors.
“The stone still has its original lichens and mosses attached, which look just perfect in the garden and really give a sense of the beauty and bleakness that epitomise the wonderful moorland landscape.”
The Brontës’ Yorkshire Garden is based on a location often visited by the sisters, on the path to Top Withens, where the so-called Brontë Bridge crosses a stream.
It is hoped the garden will build on the success of last year’s People’s Choice award-winning garden, “The Art of Yorkshire”, and encourage people to visit the region.
Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “The authenticity of the stones and the stonework really connect the garden to Yorkshire.
“I cannot wait for people to see the completed creation when the show opens on Monday. (sic)”
When the show has finished, all the stone will be returned to its original surroundings.

The Independent publishes an A-Z guide:

Y is for Yorkshire, and designer Tracy Foster's garden celebrates the wild moorland around Haworth that fired the imaginations of the Brontë sisters. It's a shame David Austin's new 'Heathcliff' rose is not included in this miniature Wuthering Heights. (Victoria Summerley)

Are you curious about the Heathcliff rose?

Heathcliff (Ausnipper)

Category English Roses (English Rose Collection)
Bred By David Austin
Flower Type Semi-double
Hardiness Very hardy
Fragrance Medium
Repeating Good
There are few roses as popular as those of deep crimson colouring – and none so difficult to breed. ‘Heathcliff’ is a beautiful addition to English Roses of this colour. It has large, fully double flowers of deep rosette shape. The colour is a deep crimson, with a certain softness that is reminiscent of some of the old red Gallica Roses. It is a healthy variety, with shiny, deep green leaves and rather upright growth. Its fragrance is most pleasing and rather unusual – basically Tea Rose with a mixture of Old Rose and just a hint of cedar wood.
Named for the character in Emily Brontë’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights.

In the 1850s the central issue in America was slavery, and the debates over it played out in the country's newspapers. And, it should be noted, ...

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The screening of Wuthering Heights 1939 in the TCM programme The Essentials (yesterday, Saturday 19) is commented by some news outlets:

In any other year, Wuthering Heights might have walked away from the Academy Award ceremonies with top honors. But this was 1939, a year that has gone down in legend as Hollywood's crowning moment. It was the year of Gone with the Wind, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and a host of other memorable movies. Nevertheless, Wuthering Heights was still one of the most acclaimed pictures of its time. Although not a financial success on its initial release, Emily Brontë's classic tale of a tempestuous love that retains its passion even beyond death eventually captured the hearts of audiences, and in spite of the numerous remakes and adaptations, this version remains, for most viewers, the definitive film adaptation. (...)
The film is noteworthy, too, for the cinematography of Gregg Toland. Creating a gothic, almost supernatural atmosphere for the tragic love story, Toland refined the deep-focus technique for which he would become famous and which achieved its greatest accomplishment in Orson Welles' landmark Citizen Kane (1941). (Rob Nixon on TCM)

As she has done since taking over co-hosting duties from Alec Baldwin, [Drew] Barrymore will sit down with TCM's learned film host, Robert Osborne to introduce this week's feature.  During their introduction of the film, which coincidentally focuses on only sixteen of the tome's thirty-four chapters, Barrymore will reveal why she holds the film in such high regard. She is expected to tout the film's strong female character, something she's pointed out in most of the film's she's previously introduced as part of her time on The Essentials.
Osborne will no doubt lace his commentary with insider facts, including the popularity afforded its stars, Merle Oberon and Oscar-nominated Laurence Olivier. The duo brought the novel's ill-fated lovers, Cathy and Heathcliff, beautifully to life with the help of Best Supporting Actress nominee, Geraldine Fitzgerald. Throughout his life and career, Olivier would often cite Wuthering Heights, and working with directorWyler as the most educational experience of his life as an actor. (Jonathan Pinkerton on TCM Examiner)

Many movie and TV adaptations have been made of this gothic romance novel by Emily Brontë, but none has surpassed the teaming, in this 1939 movie classic, of Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier as passionate lovers Cathy and Heathcliff. Their screen romance here is a type of perfection as sheer as the cliffs on which they embrace. No moor, no less. (David Bianculli on TV Worth Watching)

Grough publishes an informal survey to visitors of Top Withins:

Dog walkers mingled with literary pilgrims who had travelled half way round the globe at a windswept ruin high on the Pennine Way.
That was one of the findings of an informal survey of visitors to Top Withens by artist Simon Warner and two tourism students conducted over the Easter holiday.
The ruined farmhouse high above Haworth in West Yorkshire is believed to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and attracts literary fans from across the world. But the building also stands on the Pennine Way, the 429km (267-mile) national trail that runs from Edale in Derbyshire to the Scottish border at Kirk Yetholm. (...)
“We spent two days near Top Withens, on the footpath leading to it and at Brontë Waterfalls, and asked nearly 50 people how far they had travelled, the reasons for visiting and their impressions,” he said.
“It was a fairly random exercise but I think we got a good cross-section of people and it would probably be a similar story whenever you went up there.”
He said: “Beyond a certain altitude it’s a pre-industrial landscape with just the remnants of the packhorse trails visible. (...)
Simon Warner will also be giving an illustrated talk, Picturing the Watershed, in which he will refer to earlier portrayals of the South Pennines uplands by artists like Bill Brandt and Joseph Pighills, and describe how his own landscape techniques have evolved from black and white photography to digital video. The talk, from 2pm on Saturday, 23 June, at the Manor House Art Gallery and Museum, Ilkley, is free and there is no need to book. (Liz Roberts)

The Derby Telegraph presents another walk with Brontë connections too:

This walk follows the River Derwent before gently climbing up the hillside to Hathersage, a village with strong literary connections.
Charlotte Brontë's best friend at school was Ellen Nussey, whose brother was vicar of Hathersage. In 1845, Charlotte stayed at the vicarage with Ellen for about three weeks. Inspired by what she had seen, she wrote Jane Eyre, set in Hathersage.

The Washington Post reviews the latest John Irving novel, In One Person:

Alarmed by the school physician, who claims that homosexual "afflictions" must be treated aggressively, Billy asks Miss Frost if she can recommend "any novels about young people who have . . . dangerous crushes." She leads him to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Tom Jones and Great Expectations, hardly what the 13-year-old expected, but not as surprising as what she eventually reveals in the basement of the library. (Don't ask, don't tell!)  (Ron Charles)

Kay Woodward, author of Wuthering Hearts and Jane Airhead, publishes a guest post on girls ♥ books; Viajando nas Letras e Imagens (in Portuguese) posts about Wuthering Heights.

The Telegraph & Argus publishes an article about Rebecca Chesney's weather-related project about the Brontës:

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë all used detailed descriptions of the weather around their moorland home at Haworth to emphasise the dramatic and emotive aspects of their novels.
Last October, Rebecca Chesney set up a solar powered, digital weather station at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth to collect weather-related data such as rainfall, wind speed, air pressure and temperature.
While doing that, she also started a residency at the Parsonage, reading letters and novels by the Brontës and researching historical weather records to try and cross-reference similarities and differences with the present day weather readings.
To complement the scientific data being collected, there are also local volunteers noting down weather comments everyday for the duration of the year.
The sum of the scientific data and personal reflections is intended for an archive of weather information specific to the Haworth and Thornton area.
Using the weather station records and her time at the Parsonage, Chesney has developed a series of drawings on graph paper that parallel specific quotes from Brontë writings, on display at Thornton’s South Square Gallery this summer. (July 11 to 29)
With the use of handwritten historical weather records from the 1800s, Chesney has also developed a series of screen prints relating weather patterns to key dates during the Brontë sister’s lives and deaths.
Each image is an over-layered mass of data, unreadable in its intensity and suggestive of the severe and devastating impact that weather had on the Brontë’s health.
From drizzle and mist to storms and gales, thunder and lightning to sunshine and rain, the Brontë sisters’ novels reference the same changing weather conditions that continue today. (Jim Greenhalf)

The Observer reviews  Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale:

When I was at university in the late 80s, the influence of The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's milestone feminist study of the Victorian imagination, could be felt in every corner of the department of English: liberating breeze or poisonous miasma, depending on your point of view. As a result, our studies were onerous. It wasn't enough to read Jane Eyre, Villette and Middlemarch. Beside them on your desk would be a teetering stack of books about Victorian attitudes to sex and science, to marriage and mesmerism, to geology and phrenology and the female malady – plus a pile of minor novels, too.  (Rachel Cooke)

The Guardian also publishes a podcast featuring the British Library exhibition Writing Britain curators, Jamie Andrews and Tanya Kirk:

In this week's podcast, we explore the relationship between landscape and literature in the UK. The British Library's Writing Britain exhibition opens today, and we take a tour round the books and artworks with curators Jamie Andrews and Tanya Kirk, moving from the moors of the Brontës to JG Ballard's suburbia.  (Presented by Sarah Crown and produced by Tim Maby)

The Ilkey Gazette discusses the results of the National Short Story Week in Bradford:

A retired teacher from Ilkley has won a Bradford libraries-run fiction com-petition held to celebrate National Short Story Week.
David Stokes’ story, Good Dog Josie And Mr John, has now been published in an anthology which is avail-able to borrow from libraries across the district.
David also received a bag of goodies including books and free tickets to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Los Angeles Review of Books reviews Terese Svoboda's Bohemian Girl:

Bohemian Girl, Svoboda's latest novel, seems at first glance to fall into one of two distinct categories. In the most basic sense, the book is a picaresque: one character's journey translated into a series of encounters with disparate individuals. But it also resembles, for lack of a better phrase, the novel as response. (Is there a proper term for the literary equivalent of the answer song: the likes of Wide Sargasso Sea and Jack Maggs?)  (Tobias Carroll)

The Goole-Hawden Courier reviews a local production of LipService's Withering Looks:

Withering Looks is an up-close-and-personal look behind the forbidding exterior of Haworth Parsonage, where the three Brontë sisters (well, two of them actually, Anne’s just popped out for a cup of sugar) lived and worked.
They attempt to answer such gritty and scholarly questions such as who is the Brontës’ mysterious neighbour Mr Moorcock, of Ravaged Heath House, and what does the maniacal laughter coming from his attic mean? Do unfulfilled souls really wander over the wild and heather-clad moors? And, of course, who should Cathy marry, Heathcliff or David Niven? (...)
Switching roles at such high speed allows for some intentionally tight squeezes, quite literally, while the use of suitably cheesy props is slapstick heaven. And the several inevitable delivery lapses threatened to cause several toilet dysfunctions among the more elderly in the audience!
The purists may be offended, but this is Lip Service at its best.

Styleite talks about Mia Wasikowska's Miu Miu campaign:

We’re sure the actress enjoyed playing dress up for the label – after all, Jane Eyre never ventured far from her preferred palette of drab grays and Alice in Wonderland stuck faithfully to her familiar blue dress.  (Hilary George-Parkin)

The Hartford Courant tells a story connected to mother's day with a Brontë reference:

I called her "my Jane Eyre,'' because of her adventurous (not by choice) childhood and I often wondered how in the world she ever became such a wonderful mother. "It was because she watched [our] Mother," my sister Sandra said.

The model Carolyn Murphy chooses her favourite things for The Telegraph:

Book Wuthering Heights or The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  (Sophie De Rosee)

The Times interviews the actress Chloë Sevigny:

"I went to see Jane Eyre, the Mia Wasikowska one, recently. It was so beautiful — a little boring, but so beautiful. I would die to be in something like that.” (Benji Wilson)

L'étrange bibliothèque de Calenwen (in French) and ﾘﾙの不思議の国 post about Jane Eyre;  germangreeneyedmonster reviews Jane Eyre 2011; The Artist Who Never Starved is delighted to have found a copy of the Fritz Eichenberg illustrated Jane Eyre edition; ezridek uploads a video to YouTube with a public reading of Emily Brontë's Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee.

Finally, we present an always-welcome initiative. Cipria e Merletti (in Italian) organize on their blog, the Brontës' Weeks (7 to 20 May):

In questo ambizioso progetto, che come noto dal titolo del presente post si chiamerà "The Brontë's Weeks" o nella versione italiana "Le Settimane delle Sorelle Brontë", abbiamo deciso di coinvolgere altre blogger e ve ne daremo notizia nel corso delle due settimane. Possiamo anticiparvi che un buon numero di coloro che sono state contattate hanno deciso di partecipare e dare così il loro contributo attivo all'iniziativa. Ciò ci rende davvero orgogliose e siamo certe che apporteranno un notevole arricchimento al progetto sotto forma di post interessanti, originali ed istruttivi. 

Siamo entrambe molto emozionate per questa nuova avventura e vi possiamo assicurare che abbiamo messo mente e cuore in quanto abbiamo preparato (e stiamo continuando a preparare) per queste due settimane.

Check posts on  Romancing Miss Brontë or Agnes Grey; La Sofitta di Camilla joins in with a post on Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Rose at 5 ― same scirocco.

Packed. Wrote many letters.

Got ticket. Paid G. 3 months wages & Παραμυθιόττι 2 months rent.

Good old Βασίλεα came ― & afterwards Spiro. Got 40£ from Taylor. ―

Janni Kokali also came, to whom I gave a good knife & pair of scissors. Their mother was sad enough, or to use Giorgio’s few words, non poteva parlare.[1] At 3. G. made me dine on Pigeon & pease, & had it not been for a great rage I fell in about paying the zincaro who would not send in his bill, all had gone smoothly. Anch’io ― said G. ― mi arrabio:[2] & that is saying much. At 6. we went on board the Marathona ― a famous large Screw Liverpool Steamer, & I had a cabin to myself.

George soon went back ― poor fellow: doubless one of the truly best men I have ever known.

We are to start at 12 ― or 1. After the long dreadful scirocco the mountains are really clearing, & becoming divine: somehow the beauty of these Epirus hills is enough for a life..

At 8.30 ― old Lady Βαλσαμάκι came on board. There is also a daughter of Mr. Neile of Lpool, & some 4 or 5 young men on board. Walked & talked with Capt. McArthur, a very gentlemanly fellow. Tea, (worse luck), & bed at 10.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Some Italian Brontë-related books:

D'amore e di ragione. Donne e spiritualità
Laura Bosio
Editori Laterza, 2012
Collection; Saggi Tascabili Laterz
Serie: Festival della mente
ISBN: 9788842099093

«La spiritualità, e forse, in particolare, quella delle donne, non è sentimentalismo; al contrario, è desiderio di superare, fino a estinguerle, le vicissitudini delle sensazioni e dei sentimenti».

Nelle pagine di filosofe, poetesse, mistiche e scrittrici, dall'antichità a oggi, Laura Bosio rintraccia le tante espressioni della spiritualità femminile. La loro cifra non rinvia necessariamente «a un credo religioso, ma nelle modalità delle esperienze e nelle parole che le traducono trova punti di contatto inattesi. Amore è il termine che le accomuna. Un amore che contiene e trascende tutti i termini che lo rappresentano: affetto, simpatia, sollecitudine, devozione, carità, eros».

One of the women writers featured in the book is Emily Brontë (SoloLibri).

Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë
Newton Compton, January 2012
ISBN 978-88-541-3422-5
Grandi Tascabili Economici n. 692
Introduzione di Marisa Sestito
Edizione integrale

Agnes Grey, la protagonista dell’omonimo romanzo del 1847, opera prima e in parte autobiografica di Anne Brontë, fa la governante presso due famiglie della facoltosa borghesia inglese di età vittoriana. La sua famiglia è caduta in disgrazia e prendersi cura dei figli dei ricchi, indisciplinati e viziati, è l’unica scelta rispettabile che la ragazza possa fare per sopravvivere. Con una prosa elegante e scorrevole, la minore delle sorelle Brontë mette a confronto la grettezza della nobiltà dell’epoca, del tutto priva di scrupoli e di valori, e i sani principi morali di una giovane timorata di Dio, che cerca in ogni modo di smascherare il lato oscuro delle persone “perbene”.

«Ogni storia vera contiene un insegnamento; può capitare tuttavia che il tesoro sia ben nascosto e, una volta trovato, risulti esiguo e insignificante, un grinzoso gheriglio rinsecchito che miseramente ripaga la fatica di schiacciare la noce. Se questo sia applicabile o meno alla mia storia, non sono io la persona più adatta a giudicare. Penso a volte che possa risultare utile per alcuni, divertente per altri; ma ognuno può giudicar da sé.»

Cime tempestose
by Emily Brontë
Publisher: Crescere
Series: Grandi classici
Publication date: 2011
ISBN: 8883371291 ISBN 13: 9788883371295

Ophelia by Pierre Auguste Cot

Painting of the Day Archive

Arlington National Cemetery was the site of a remarkable observance earlier today: nearly 200 buglers from across America assembled to commemorate the 150th anniversary of "Taps," the mournful bugle call ...

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It seems that the new date for the auction of the alleged Brontë sisters watercolour portrait (which is also allegedly attributed to Edwin Landseer) will be next May 24th:

A painting previously withdrawn from auction will finally go under the hammer after experts confirmed they believe it is linked to the Brontë sisters.
It was due to be the third in a hat-trick of items concerning the three literary siblings to be sold by the same auctioneer.
But the watercolour, believed to be painted by 19th-century English artist Sir Edwin Landseer, was withdrawn from the sale last month while auctioneers tried to track down a similar work by the same artist to check its links.
Jonathan Humbert, from JP Humbert Auctioneers in Northamptonshire, said the work will be offered for sale next week after experts confirmed it is by Landseer and is believed to show the Brontë sisters.
The work was previously attributed by a team from the National Portrait Gallery as well as four years of research by the vendor, but Mr Humbert said after further examination it is to be offered for sale and is expected to raise between £20,000 and £30,000.
He said: "We have spent quite some time trying to establish a link between Landseer and the Brontës and after cross referencing with other known pictures by Landseer, we are confident that we have a strong argument that this picture is as important as we hoped." (Source)

As usual, we would like to know more details about "the experts".

The Citizen (South Africa, where the film has just opened) doesn't like Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights very much:

Director Andrea Arnold could have named this adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 19th century classic “Withering Heights” – it’s packed with interminable shots of bleak, monochromatic countryside.
And yet, there’s a brittle beauty to this elemental world of wind and rain and muck that makes one pause and contemplate nature.
As a viewer, you may be rather confounded by the film. The liberties Arnold has taken might well offend Brontë purists, but then the original novel was received with some perplexity by the critics of its time.
The shifting moods of the rural Yorkshire landscape are as much a focus as the turbulent emotions of the piece’s central characters. Nature takes pride of place and the film offers a wildlife documentary-type effect, with dizzying camerawork that might give some viewers mild motion sickness.
While there is sparse dialogue and no music, the lovers’ world is far from silent, with the roar of the wind as it buffets the desolate plains a constant symphony. (...)
This is a film you need to be patient with if you are to appreciate its beauty. (Leigh-Anne Hunter)

Artlink  likes it even less:

The film embraces highly emotional issues such as domestic violence, racism and the cycle of abuse, yet one finds no empathy with any of the characters. One has great difficulty warming to them. In a feeble attempt to gives the version some bite, director Arnold plays around with the sparse dialogue by injecting a modern vernacular to the many exchanges. It’s all so self-consciously pretentious with its lingering shots of butterflies and birds, the howling wind through the tall grass, the constant site of mud everywhere and Heathcliff looking forlornly at the hills.
This “withering” heights is one film where I couldn’t wait for the 129 minutes running time to end – it was excruciatingly bad.  (Peter Feldman)

The Independent is the positive exception:

As refreshing as a dawn walk in winter on the Yorkshire moors, Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights shows how 21st century cinema can – and should – go about boldly revitalising even the most familiar literary properties.  (...)
The film’s audacious unconventionality and a cast headed by four unknowns make it a tough commercial sell. But such is the enduring power of Wuthering Heights that there’s no reason why director and co-writer Arnold’s third feature shouldn’t prove an art house success in the mould of her Fish Tank (2009). (...)
Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is her most successful and satisfying feature to date. Her only real misstep is the inclusion of a newly-commissioned, unmistakably modern-sounding song by popular British neo-folk band Mumford & Sons during the final moments and over the closing credits. (Theresa Smith)

BizCommunity also mentions the South-African premiere of the film. Other reviews can be read on qulisty (in Polish), C7nema (in Portuguese), Полит-НН (in Russian) and Folkbladet (in Swedish).

AfterElton mentions a Wuthering Heights reference in the latest episode of Glee (Season 3, Episode 20): Props:

"We’ll be kicking off our 'Vintage' theme with the legendary Jim Steinman’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Rachel will do the solo, 'It’s All Com...'"
Rachel cuts him off. "'…Coming Back To Me Now'. One of Celine Dion’s most powerful ballads, inspired by Wuthering Heights." (Christie Keith)

The song was indeed inspired by Wuthering Heights, but the first version was not by Celine Dion but by Pandora's Box in 1989.

Wall Street Journal reviews Gothicka by Victoria Nelson:

It is also the underpinning, though artfully concealed, of works such as the Brontës' "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" (and even, though Ms. Nelson does not mention it, of an apparently much primmer text such as Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"). Charlotte Brontë's refashioning of Mr. Rochester, from the dark anti-hero into a soulmate who delivers the heroine into "the journey of her true life," anticipates the explicit treatment of this theme in the"Twilight" romances: The demon lover Edward Cullen quite literally offers the heroine the "kiss of death." The twist is that, instead of reforming him, Bella Swan is fated, as Ms. Nelson puts it, "to find her true identity by dying and triumphantly joining him on a transformed dark side." (Elizabeth Lowry)

The Miami Herald reviews John Irving's In One Person:

By the time he turns 15, Billy Abbott has developed an unfortunate habit of getting “crushes on the wrong people.” He is obsessed with Miss Frost, the suspiciously tall librarian with “broad shoulders” and “young, barely emerging breasts” who introduces him to Fielding and Brontë and Dickens. (Rene Rodriguez)

And Lovely County Citizen reviews Vanessa Diffenbaugh The Language of Flowers:

Love and hope. Two things Diffenbaugh considers of great importance in her "other" career as both natural and foster mother, and two things missing from her protagonist's experience. As her novel, considered "a Jane Eyre for 2012," went to press, the author had concerns that some aspects of it would not be well received by those in the foster care industry.  (C.D. White)

The New Zealand Herald talks about books for all ages:

Or rather, I should say that this idea - that certain books break age barriers - is coming around again. As Colfer pointed out, 19th century books ostensibly for children like Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland are considered unqualified classics. In the same Auckland Writers & Readers Festival session, fantasy author Emily Rodda suggested that Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre would be considered YA rather than adults' books, were they to be published for the first time today. But in the 19th century, everyone from children to grandmothers read those stories aloud to each other.  (Janet McAllister)

Louiville.com describes a local garden and... well, there are some problems identifying who wrote what:

Yew Dell Gardens in Crestwood, KY is a refuge of green beauty that will immediately put you at peace with yourself and the world at large. The perfume of roses hangs heavy in the air and the urge to sit a spell and read a Jane Eyre novel will seem so right you can’t explain it. (Julie Gross)

We rather suspect this is not a metaliterary joke but exactly what it seems, a blunder.

Several news outlets mention how Paul Gordon has been honored by TheatreWorks:

TheatreWorks, the nationally-acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, presented its annual TheatreWorks Honors Gala. The event honorees were Chairman and Former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank Ken Wilcox and Tony-nominated Broadway composer Paul Gordon (Jane Eyre), both of whom have dedicated their lives to bringing forth vision, innovation, and creativity. The gala was held Saturday, May 12, 2012. (Broadway World)

The Vancouver Sun talks about Victorian writers in general;  My Favourite Things and More! reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1996; My Wonderland has some nice gifs from Jane Eyre 2011; La Sofitta di Camilla (in Italian) participates in Le Due Settimane delle Sorelle Brontë hosted by Cipria e Merletti (with other posts on Jane Eyre nowadays and Jane Eyre 2011); Smart Woman (in Romanian) posts about the Brontës; Writer's Block 23 has rediscovered Jane Eyre and JulzReads has just read it; Miss Drama posts in Portuguese about Wuthering Heights; Treasured Tales for Young Adults interviews Eve Marie Mont, author of A Breath of Eyre. Finally, a curious exhibition of porcelain dolls inspiredy by literary characters in Chita (Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia):

Всего в коллекции читинки Людмилы Травкиной более 20 кукол - среди них есть Эмма Бовари, Маргарет Шлегель, Джейн Эйр, Анна Каренина, Булгаковская Маргарита и многие другие героини известных литературных произведений. В своё время всех своих любимец читательница библиотеки собрала сама - они выпускались вместе с номерами журналов. (Zabinfo) (Translation)

I became acquainted with Lori Smith when she wrote her first book, A Walk With Jane Austen. Our association has continued with her new book, The Jane Austen Guide to Life. (Read my review here.) Please welcome Lori as I talk to her about her most recent writing experience. I hope to meet her, as [...]

Published in the Korean magazine Singles (May 2012):

Publication:
Singles Korea
Issue: May 2012
Title: Wuthering Heights
Model: Jin Jung Sun
Photography: Kim Youngjun
Styling: Jung Min Kang

(Via Anne De Carversville)

No visible mountains: frightful scirocco.

The Marathon is to sail tomorrow early ― & I have therefore pretty well decided to go in her. ― & have packed accordingly.

Meanwhile, that amiable Villetta has written, saying how glad he would be of my going for a month or two ― but, with this blot-out of all distance, cui bono?

Wearied, & slept.

X6}
X } O! what a bore!

Dined at home ― pigeon & peas.

No letters.

Bed early.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Hester Thrale Piozzi (1793) by Charles Dance

Remedios Varo (1908-63), A Paradise for Cats

Dear friends and readers

Ann Francis, whom nobody has ever heard of (she’s not in Paul Backscheider’s anthology, nor Joyce Fullard’s, nor Paula Feldman, nor any of them but one: Lonsdale), so just about totally unknown; and Hester Piozzi (as I’ll call her), if not a household word, a familiar name well outside 18th century studies and for more than as Dr Johnson’s favorite woman, whom everyone thihks they know and many like to castigate and dismiss. Both writing verse where the depth of emotion is controlled and checked by the comic and poetic diction idiom. I chose one for her grief for her loss of her cat, the other for her depth of feeling for her second husband and her anger at her society’s rejection of her for marrying him.

From Roger Lonsdale’s Oxford book of 18th century women poets:

An Elegy on a Favorite Cat

WHEN cats like him submit to fate,
      And seek the Stygian strand,
In silent woe and mimic state
      Should mourn the feline band.

For me — full oft at eventide,
      Enrapt in thought profound,
I hear his solemn footsteps glide,
      And startle at the sound!

Oft as the murmuring gale draws near
      (To fancy’s rule consigned),
His tuneful purr salutes my ear,
      Soft-floating on the wind.

Among the aerial train, perchance,
      My Bully now resides,
Or with the nymphs leads up the dance­
      Or skims the argent tides.

Ye rapid Muses, haste away,
      His wandering shade attend,
Hunt him through bush and fallow grey,
      And up the hill ascend;

O’er russet heath extend your view,
      And through th’ embrowning wood;
On the brisk gale his form pursue,
      Or trace him o’er the flood:

If he a lucid Sylph should fly,
      With various hues bedight,
The Muse’s keen pervading eye
      Shall catch the streaming light. …

I like the line about how she hears his quiet paws.

Thomas Gainsborough, a Suffolk Landscape

Ann Francis was a highly educated woman. Her father was the Revd Daniel Gittins (d. 1760), Rector of South Stoke (near Sussex), and Vicar of Leominster, who taught her Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, in which she became a ‘great proficient’. She married the Revd Robert Bransly Francis, Rector of Edgefield (near Norfolk), and through him corresponded with educated men (e.g., John Parkhouse, author of a Hebrew lexicon). She did write erotic poetry under the guise of her learning: A Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon, From the Original Hebrew (1780), a drama, dedicated to Parkhouse: in her preface she defends herself against the assumption that “a woman would lack the learning for such a translation,” and such erotic mater was unfit “for a female pen’. Melancholy poetry emerged as The Obsequies of Demetrius Poliorcetes: A Poem (1785) and gothic too: A Poetical Epistle from Clarlotte to Werther (1788, a responses to Goethe’s novel). Less ambitious and more domestic subjects are found in her: Miscellaneous Poems, By a Lady (Norwich, 1790), which includes some by are mostly on less ambitious and more domestic subjects. She was conservative politically: A Plain Address to My Neighbours (1798), is a stern warning of the consequences of a French invasion to liberate the British working classes. She died at Edgefield Parsonage on 7 November 1800, praised for ‘mental acquirements’ and as a daughter, wife, and mother.

*************************

Streatham Park, the Thrale residence, 1863 (prior to demolition)

My favorite poem by Hester Piozzi

To Gabriel Piozzi on their twentieth wedding anniversary:

Accept my Love this honest Lay
Upon your Twentieth Wedding Day:
I little hop’d our Lives would stay
To hail the Twentieth Wedding Day.
If you’re grown Gouty-I grown Gray
Upon our Twentieth Wedding Day
­Tis no great Wonder;-Friends must say
“Why tis their Twentieth Wedding Day.”
Perhaps there’s few feel less Decay
Upon a Twentieth Wedding day:
And many of those who used to pay
Their Court upon our Wedding Day,
Have melted off, and died away
Before our Twentieth Wedding Day.
Those Places too, which once so gay,
Bore Witness to our Wedding Day;
Florence and Milan blythe as May
Marauding French have made their Prey.
The World itself’s in no good Way,
On this our Twentieth Wedding Day.
If then-of Gratitude one Ray
Illuminates our Wedding Day,
Think midst the Wars and wild Affray
That rage around this Wedding day,
What Mercy ’tis-we are spar’d to say
We have seen our Twentieth Wedding-day

They remind me of Johnson’s lines to Hester herself (she never lost his influence) when she reached 35, which my husband wrote out for me when I reached 35 too:

‘To Mrs Thrale on her Thirty-Fifth Birthday

Oft in Danger yet alive
We are come to Thirty-five;
Long may better Years arrive,
Better Years than Thirty-five;
Could Philosophers contrive
Life to stop at Thirty-five,
Time his Hours should never drive
O’er the Bounds of Thirty-five:
High to soar and deep to dive
Nature gives at Thirty-five;
Ladies — stock and tend your Hive,
Trifle not at Thirty-five;
For howe’er we boast and strive,
Life declines from Thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by Thirty-five:
And those who wisely wish to wive,
Must look on Thrale at Thirty-five.

Companionate marriage, deep tender affection in comic stunts of ringing changes on a single rhyme.

While she’s probably best known to the public through her relationship to Samuel Johnson, and after that Fanny Burney; Hester Thrale Piozzi was a remarkable writer in her own right. She certainly was learned (if not in the high style so sheerly of Ann Francis — she loved the circulating library in Bath), but was not inclined to idealize or sentimentalize at all, and especially society. Good reason: after enduring many years of a early-on coerced marriage with a wealthy brewer (open about his liaisons) and having had many pregnancies inflicted on her and dead children, he died and there was yet time for her to live. She had fallen in love with a musician and tutor: Gabriel Piozzi and wanted to marry him. For this she experienced ostracism at high throttle, with not only supposed loyal friends (Burney, Johnson who loved her himself), but her daughters (who in character favored the father) issuing philippics which they made good. She married anyway and had a happy life with Piozzi (see above, traveled, and began to write and publish. This is written in Italy in 1785 shortly after she had left England to live with her new husband:

An Ode to Society

[Written at the Bagni di Pita, in the Appenines]

Society, gregarious dame!
Who knows thy favoured haunts to name?
Whether at Paris you prepare
The supper and the chat to share;
Where, fixed in artificial row,
Laughter displays his teeth of snow;
Grimace with raillery rejoices,
And song of many-mingled voices;
Till young Coquetry’s artful wile
Some foreign novice shall beguile,
Who, home returned, still prates of thee,
Light, flippant, French Society.

Or whether, with your zone unbound,
You ramble gaudy Venice round,
Resolved th’inviting sweets to prove
Of wanton mirth and willing love,
Where gently roll th’obedient seas,
Sacred to luxury and ease.
In coffee-house or casino gay,
Till the too quick return of day,
Th’ enchanted votary who sighs
For sentiments without disguise,
Clear, unaffected, fond and free,
In Venice finds Society.

Or if, to wiser Britain led,
Your vagrant feet desire to tread,
With measured step and anxious care,
The precincts pure of Portman Square;
While wit with elegance combined,
And polished manners, there you’ll find,
The taste correct and fertile mind;
Remember Vigilance lurks near,
And Silence with unnoticed sneer,
Who watches but to tell again
Your foibles with tomorrow’s pen,
Till tittering Malice smiles to see
Your wonder — grave Society!

Far from your busy, crowded court,
Tranquillity makes her resort,
Where, mid cold Staffa’s columns rude,
Resides majestic Solitude;
Or where, in some sad Brachman’s cell,
Meek Innocence delights to dwell,
Weeping with inexperienced eye
The fate of a departed fly;
Or in Hetruria’s heights sublime,
Where Science’ self might fear to climb,
But that she seeks a smile from thee,
And wooes thy praise, Society.

Thence let me view the plains below,
From rough St. Julian’s rugged brow;
Hear the loud torrents swift descending,
Or watch the beauteous rainbow bending,
Till heaven regains its favourite hue,
Aether divine! celestial blue!
Then bosomed high in myrtle bower,
View lettered Pisa’s pendent tower;
The sea’s wide scene, the port’s loud throng
Of rude and gentle, right and wrong –
A motley group! which yet agree
To call themselves Society.

Oh thou! still sought by Wealth and Fame,
Dispenser of applause or blame!
While Slander, ever at thy side,
With Flattery can thy smiles divide:
Far from thy haunts oh! let me stray,
But grant one friend to cheer my way,
Whose converse bland, whose music’s art,
May soothe my soul-and heal my heart;
Let soft Content our steps pursue,
And bliss eternal bound our view
Power I’ll resign, and pomp, and glee,
Thy best-loved sweets-Society.

(Written 1785; pub. 1789)

In those books I’ve come across that reprint her poems, the choice is her didactic (and possibly worst) poem, a sort of Aesop fable about death: The Three Warnings. This is much more in character:

On a Sundial:

Mark how the Weeping Willow stands
     Near the recording Stone;
It seems to blame our Idle Hands
     And Mourn the Moments flown.

Thus Conscience holds the fancy fast,
     With Fears too oft affected;
Pretending to lament the past,
     The present still neglected.

Yet shall this swift-improving Plant
     With spring her Leaves resume;
Nor let the Example She can grant
     Depend on Winter’s Gloom:

Loiter no more then near the Tree,
     Nor on the Dial gaze;
If but an Hour is given to thee
     Act right while yet it stays.

As with Virginia Woolf, publications of new biographies of Piozzi are often occasions for castigating her. She seems to be resented for not knowing her place. Marilyn Francus suggests Piozzi represented someone unusual because she really commanded respect the way men who set standards do: Wm MacCarthy (Hester Thrale: Portrait of a Literary Woman) says she invented new genres, her Thraliana is an autobiography; she re-makers what constitutes a dictionary. She thinks well of herself. She judges her male companions and friends. It’s instructive to read these two opposing reviews of the latest book on Piozzi: Hester Thrale by Ian McIntyre (Hester: The Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson’s ‘Dear Mistress’). The subtitle tells how the editor wants her framed, if only to attract attention? Compare these short reviews, one by Anne Sebba where the life is retold from the woman’s point of view with real sympathy:

It begins:

Hester Thrale was a political wife before the term was invented, a landowner at a time when wives could not own land in their own name and, above all, a diarist and author. Her ambitious final book, Retrospection, was the first attempt by an Englishwoman to write a history of the world.

And this by Frances Wilson where we find a bad mother who we are to sit in judgement on:

The first paragraph ends:

For Johnson’s biographer James Boswell, who remained immune to Hester’s charms, she was “a little artful impudent malignant devil”. Johnson would eventually agree with him

But what is in McIntrye’s book? Hard to say. A recent well-written interesting potted biography on Johnson himself in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik mentions McIntrye in passing, but only to bring out his take (decent, reasonable) on Hester Thrale Piozzi in passing. He is interested in her sexual relationship with Johnson.

If you’re like me and first met her through her delightful travel book, Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy and Germany 1789), and then her casual life of Johnson and through her letters to and from Fanny Burney, your perspective will be quite different from Gopnik’s. To New Yorker readers she appears as the lady who kept the fetters and perhaps beat Johnson. To Austen she was the delightful woman who wrote the verses I’ve cited and a lively original travel book. Austen quotes the travel book apparently from memory and at one point in one of her letters imitates Piozzi. She did not hold the woman’s marriage against her.

She was also a poet in prose, an original spirit. Some online selections of Thraliana. Books I know are good: James Clifford’s biography of Hester: much of the second half is about her writing. Mary Hyde Eccles, The Impossible Friendship (about Thrale and Boswell, he became a deadly enemy) and The Thrales of Streatem Park, finally a good charter in Shari Benstock’s The Private Self (about autobiographies) on Thrale Piozzi’s journals.

For the sake of Ann’s favorite cat, and Hester’s comedy which “hovers” (as MacCarthy puts it), on the edge of poignancy and justifiable wry alienation.

Gabriel Piozzi, also by George Dance (also drawin in 1793)

I have no photo of Ann’s cat so Elsa Morante (a 20th century great Italian novelist and poet too) and her cat must replace them:

Contemporary foremothers (see other archive).

Ellen

The Mail & Guardian picks Wuthering Heights 2011 as the movie of the week.

In the most extraordinary way, Arnold achieves a kind of pre-literary reality effect. Her film is not presented as another layer of interpretation, superimposed on a classic and all those other remembered versions, but an attempt to create something that might have existed before the book — something on which the book might have been based, a raw semiarticulate series of events, later polished and refined as a literary gemstone. That is an illusion, of course, but a convincing and thrilling one.
Cathy and Heathcliff are both outsiders: the woman dependent for her future on a marriage proposal, the man on a benefactor’s charity. It is as children that their love is happiest and most uncompromised — and, probably, most clearly doomed.
That said, the decision to use two separate actors to play Cathy and Heathcliff, in their younger and older guises, was for me a little uncomfortable: it is understandable, of course, but the younger leads are, in fact, not so very young, and their later selves are not so very much older, and the apparent transformation is an oddly artificial effect.
It is a minor consideration, given that there is so much in Arnold’s film that is exhilarating. The film gave me something I never expect to get from any classic literary adaptation: the shock of the new. (Peter Bradshaw)

The Oxford Student also comments on this adaptation:

For generations of readers, the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff was shrouded in mystery; with only Nelly’s incomplete version of events to go on, they had no way of knowing exactly how the two children managed to cement their lifelong connection on the lonely moors.  That is, until they saw the 2011 movie version—with Nelly, demoted from her position of narrator to minor servant, the camera was finally free to follow the children out into their refuge in the wilderness and record in detail all the activities that led to their bond. As readers, critics and probably Emily Brontë herself would be surprised to learn, these bonding activities consisted mainly of staring at each other in silence. One wouldn’t expect chats about the weather and exchanges of recipes, but it seems strange that two such intelligent children would have no profound conversations, no exchange of stories and fantasies.
The implication, of course, is that their connection is powerful enough to transcend words; after all, this is a couple whose relationship is strongest when they are rolling around in the mud together. [...]
Significant silences are a common feature of many genres, from high culture to sheer escapist entertainment, from Wuthering Heights to Drive. (Rachael Goddard-Rebstein)

Word and Film reports that Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot is to be a film too and looks at recent on-screen literary adaptations:

Hollywood seems to be getting serious in its on-again, off-again romance with the nineteenth-century novel. Things started heating up late last year when director Joe Wright (“Atonement”) fast-tracked his high-gloss production of “Anna Karenina.” Then came “Submarine” director Richard Ayoade’s very promising cinematic rendering of Dostoyevsky’s The Double, starring Mia Wasikowska, who’s suddenly become the redux romantic heroine of choice with her finely calibrated performance in last year’s gothic iteration of “Jane Eyre” and her upcoming title role in the upcoming adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which added Ezra Miller, the creepy kid from “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” to its talented cast earlier this week.
Now it seems that romantic novels may have upgraded to “trending” status — a distinction that places the last century’s literary giants in dubious company alongside the likes of “The Avengers” and John Travolta’s masseuse – now that Greg Mottola has signed on to direct a big-screen adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ post-college novel, The Marriage Plot, about post-college romantic and intellectual entanglements (whose title references the narrative device of choice for bourgeois turn-of-the-century novelists like George Eliot and the Brontë Sisters). The classics have always been fertile terrain for filmmakers who have produced a reliable yield of fortifying cinematic meals. A few of the best examples of canon-to-celluloid renderings include Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the A&E “Pride and Prejudice” miniseries starring Colin Firth as Darcy, Orson Welles’ and Cary Fukunaga’s versions of “Jane Eyre,” and Scorsese’s doomed love epic, “The Age of Innocence.” But none of these adaptations has packed the emotional power and timelesness befitting such major works of art. (Christine Spines)

The Awl discusses Clarice Starling, of The Silence of the Lambs fame:

A young woman, cut loose for the most part from family and community, comes to live in a strange new land. After she arrives she is told of a brilliant but mysterious and, by all accounts, frightening man, whose reputation is based at least in part on his inability or refusal to relate to any of his peers. When he meets the young woman, however, he is immediately transfixed by her, and their strange kinship—which mystifies and in some cases frightens other characters—fuels the resulting narrative.
If this sounds familiar to you, then you probably recognize it from (a) Jane Eyre; (b) nearly every subsequent romance novel ever written; or, more recently and most prominently, (c) Twilight. And if that particular take on Hannibal and Clarice's relationship surprises you, then you're probably unfamiliar with the place where Hannibal Lecter, romantic hero, can be found most frequently outside the confines of Harris' novels: fanfiction. (Sarah Marshall)

The Montreal Gazette reviews Waiting for the Monsoon by Threes Anna:

One Dutch reviewer says the book reads like “Slumdog Millionaire meets Jane Eyre,” and I’m inclined to agree. (Getta Nadkarni)

WCVB also finds echoes of Jane Eyre in William Landay's Defending Jacob:

The hot new thriller Defending Jacob is burning its way up the bestseller list; meet the local author behind this publishing phenomenon. A new book recounts Boston’s Great Molasses Flood; a local builder turns life with a bookie father into his first novel, and a veteran writer produces a Jane Eyre for modern readers. Plus, a former model turns a clear eye on the beauty business.

The Washington Post reveals that the woman who has won the Sophie Kerr Prize is a Brontëite and The Wall Street Journal finds a mansion in the Bronx that is apparently 'straight out of Wuthering Heights'.

Zimmer mit Stuck posts in German about Jane Eyre 2011.

Spellbound by Frederic George Cotman

Painting of the Day Archive

• Colonial girlhood and its literary representation
• The construction of colonial girls’ culture
• Australian girls’ magazines and periodicals
• “The antipodes” in both British and colonial girls’ publications
• Colonial children’s literature and writing for girls
• Individual authors and their works
• Comparative approaches

See also: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cfp/rwowcfp5.pdf

Please submit papers for consideration between 4000-7000 words to Tamara S. Wagner at  tswagner_at_ntu.edu.sg by 1 September 2012.

Always scirocco ― thick & warm: not windy.

Rose at 5. ― Later, packed all my books & wrote to F.L. ― At 1 ― called at the Sargents, but only saw Miss Reeve. Then on Col. & Mrs. Wynne: ― the De Vere’s there ― & they asked me to stay dinner wh. I did ― pleasant enough. Home, & at 5 to church, ― where Craven preached an idiotic sermon.

Walk to Ascension with Col. Wynne, ― & tea with him & Mrs. W. Singing afterwards.

Tremendously oppressive scirocco all day ― no mountains visible. ― Cui bono then remaining here to draw? ―

The Marathon is to come to morrow.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Trajectory Inc. has released a collection of Classics Illustrated comics for Ipad, Iphone and Ipod Touch. Including the 1947 Jane Eyre issue, illustrated by Harley M Griffith and adapted by Harry Miller:

Jane EyreBy Charlotte Bronte
Genre: Romance
Number of Original pages: 48
One of the world's most beloved novels, Jane Eyre is a startlingly modern blend of passion, romance, mystery, and suspense. Immediately recognized as a masterpiece when it was first published in 1847, Jane Eyre is an extraordinary coming-of-age story featuring one of the most independent and strong-willed female protagonists in all of literature. Poor and plain, Jane Eyre begins life as a lonely orphan in the household of her hateful aunt. Despite the oppression she endures at home, and the later torture of boarding school, Jane manages to emerge with her spirit and integrity unbroken. She becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she finds herself falling in love with her employer-the dark, impassioned Mr. Rochester. But an explosive secret tears apart their relationship, forcing Jane to face poverty and isolation once again. Beautifully illustrated, this classic tale will capture children's interest and spark their imagination inspiring a lifelong love of literature and reading.

Westminster Abbey at night by Arthur Hacker

Painting of the Day Archive

Heather Barbieri writes in The Huffington Post about Jane Eyre and her family:

The leather-bound copy of Jane Eyre sits on my bookcase, amidst the others I've collected over the years, a library to which I return, as both reader and writer, time and again.
Alphabetized newer paper and hardbacks stand alongside older novels, dating to the early 1900s, handed down through generations of my family, pages puckered slightly from contact with water--tears, rain from a day outdoors when the weather changed quickly, who can say? Books with history, the history of the readers--my grandmother and mother--who forgot their difficult lives while immersed in the ivory pages.
Precisely how Jane Eyre came into my grandmother's hands is the subject of debate, as were so many things in the Weatherill family. She may have borrowed, and never returned, it from her grandmother, Frances, writing her name, Esther Archer, on the flyleaf. (Read more)

The New York Observer reviews the film Hysteria by Tanya Wexler:

Hysteria is Jane Austen with a vibrator—a movie about the invention of the scandalous electro-mechanical device that changed women’s lives forever. Set in the Victorian era of scientific ignorance and cultural Puritanism, its style is still more Restoration comedy than Victorian decadence—postcolonial feminism with a temperament more Austen than Brontë. Nothing to snicker about here. (Rex Reed)

Big Think also mentions the Brontës and Jane Austen when writing about this UK literary map sold by The Literary Gift Company.

It's funny to see the Brontë sisters, wedged in a part of their Yorkshire, so far apart from Jane Austen, a Hampshire lass. These ladies are lumped together on many a reading list and in quite a few libraries. (Frank Jacobs)

Austin 360 looks at the wide ranging influences of The Rude Mechs' new play Now Now Oh Now.

Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. Puzzles. The Brontë sisters. Choice versus chance.
The Rude Mechs are making a new play again. And, as usual, the celebrated Austin theater collective is pulling from seemingly disparate sources.
But, as usual, they've found a poetic and inventive way to blend multifarious ideas into one compact 90-minute play. (Jeanne Claire van Ryzin)

A Star-Telegram columnist posts about finding accommodation in London:

A couple of days after arriving not knowing anyone, I went by a grad student dorm that was too gloomily Jane Eyre-ish, then found a listing through the university I'd be attending. (Linda P. Campbell)

Books I Done Read posts about Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre. This & That reviews Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. Susycottage looks at this photograph. And finally YouTube user Portalomdvu shares footage taken at Top Withins.

Here's a new one on me - pavement advertising in the West End, 1856 (as recounted by French visitor Francis Wey, 'A Frenchman sees the English in the Fifties', transl. 1932). What is he talking about? Could be pavement chalking, but that would hardly work after wet weather. Anyone heard of anything similar?

'Publicity invades even the asphalt pavement. It relies on the frequent rain and the habit the people have over here of looking down as they walk. When the weather is fine, dust dulls the surface and nothing much is visible. But as soon as a shower has washed it clean the characters appear, letters blossom under your feet and you find yourself walking on gigantic posters. In this way, the stone flags of London are made as productive as fields of wheat.'

Less scirocco ― mountains tolerably clear.

Rose at 4. By 5 ― was out of the gates ― & by 7 at the 7^th mile beyond Sta. Decca: thereabouts I drew till 10 ― & finding no resting place intended to walk back, when an empty Carter’s carriage passed & took me ’ς τὸ χώριον[1] ― by 12.30.

Found letters from Ellen ― nothing heard of Fredk.
―― C. Fortescue: very kind & nice, but the pictures are hung high.
W.H. Hunt ― also stating the same.

G. Παραμιθιόττι took me to see the state the Maude’s had left the home in ― certainly ― most piglike. ―

Wrote to C. Fortescue.

At 4 went up to Ascension, & drew the village.

Returned by 7.

Dinner ― 7.40.

Bed early ―

& slept well.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

LHS Theatre Presents:
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
May 17th - 19th

All shows will be at 7:00pm at the Lehman High School Theatre.

Tickets are $5

See the LHs Theatre for more information: http://www.lehmantheatre.com/index.htm

The Angel of Evil by Antoine Wiertz

Painting of the Day Archive

Good news for Brontë country residents and visitors. Like all fairy tales featuring an evil character, the Haworth clamper tale seems to have reached its happy ending (we hope). The Telegraph and Argus reports:

Wheel clampers who act like “modern-day Dick Turpins” will be banned from operating on private land under a new law welcomed by former Speaker of the Commons Betty Boothroyd, businesses and visitor attractions in one of Bradford district’s most important tourist honeypots.
Campaigners have been battling for more than a decade to rid Haworth’s notorious Changegate car park of its clampers, following years of negative publicity about how their behaviour drives away tourists.
It is hoped there will be a boost in visitor numbers to the famous village where the Bronte sisters lived, when clamping on private land becomes a criminal offence later this year under the Protection of Freedoms Act.
Those who have fallen victim to the Changegate clampers include the former Speaker of the Commons, Betty Boothroyd, who was clamped in 2008 while visiting Haworth with a friend after their valid parking ticket fell face down on the dashboard of their car to obscure it.
Welcoming the new legislation Baroness Boothroyd, told the Telegraph & Argus: “It is about time. People have been taken for a ride by these cowboys for too long.”
The life peer added: “They are just cheating the public. I was very annoyed about it at the time and have had masses and masses of letters since, from overseas visitors to Haworth, about these people who have thoroughly shamed the area by what they have done.”
At the time, car park owner Ted Evans accepted that the pair had bought a valid ticket but said it had not been displayed properly.
Stephen Whitehead, a trustee of the Brontë Society who has been campaigning for a change in the law for more than a decade, said: “There has been a catalogue of complaints against the Haworth clampers.
“I have seen old men shaking and old women crying after receiving a punishment that was completely disproportionate to any crime they may have committed. Because it has been so outrageously administered, it has given Haworth national and international publicity – which has been totally negative.
“Everyone involved with the tourist industry in Haworth has been affected because it has stopped people coming.
“This will remove that blight from the village.” (Marc Meneaud)

Picture source

And more local news as The Telegraph and Argus also mentions that artist Ashley Jackson is now backing the protests against the planned wind farm on the moors.

A famous Yorkshire landscape artist is backing an anti-wind farm campaign, describing controversial plans for wind turbines in Brontë country as “money-making vandalism”.
Watercolour painter Ashley Jackson contacted the Thornton Moor Wind Farm Action Group following concerns that plans to put up turbines will “desecrate” views believed to have inspired Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights.
Mr Jackson, 70, said: “As a 16-year-old boy I wrote in my sketch book that I wished to create with a brush what the Brontë’s did with a pen. I cannot then stand back and watch as the landscape that inspires me is desecrated by concrete and metal. These windmills on the moor have been set in tonnes of concrete beneath them. What happens to this when the windmill is no longer productive. Who will remove this from our landscape? Man is destroying the world and this is money-making vandalism."
Mr Jackson has allowed the campaign to use one of his watercolour paintings on their campaign literature. The artwork, called ‘Ma Look What They Have Done to My Moor’, formed part of his 2010 exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.
Anthea Orchard, chairman of the action group, said: “Mr Jackson contacted us after the media coverage of the test mast because he was so concerned about what was happening and the damage to the moors.
“We are delighted that he is supporting us.”

South from Haworth is Stevenage where

The street names were also themed. One area paid tribute to great British women: Brontë's Pass, (unintelligible), Elliot Road, Austin Pass, Siddons Road (David Greene and Gary Younge on NPR)

Litte Rock Books Examiner reviews the novella Waltzing with the Wallflower by Leah Sanders and Rachel Van Dyken:

Aside from the title, which ingeniously targets chick lit lovers the world over, the premise of the book sounds like a combination of “Jane Eyre”, “Cinderella”, and “Pygmalion”, mixed with a dash of “Emma” for good measure. (Jennifer Lafferty)

A chemistry teacher recalls a funny anecdote on Corante's In the Pipeline:

But when I came back for the Thursday session, the first first wave of ether vapor washed over me and nearly stretched me out on the tiles. I taught the entire lab from the hallway, shouting and waving like Monty Python's "Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights". (Derek Lowe)

New York Irish Arts reviews William Luce's Brontë. A Portrait of Charlotte. Jane Eyre 2011 is reviewed by  Daily Movie Review and Maksquibs Cinematheque. Alekseypavlovic posts in Turkish about Wuthering Heights 2011. Reader's Reach writes about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Diamante Literário posts in Portuguese about Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë. And finally Flickr user Ferndean Manor has uploaded a picture of the moors.

• the reinventions of Foucault’s systems of power and knowledge as pedagogical strategies
• fin-de-siècle anxieties surrounding physical, moral, and intellectual decline
• didactic representations of a pending catastrophe and attempts to teach how to avoid it.

• Max Nordau’s Degeneration
• Thomas Hardy, the Education Reform Act of 1870, and the dangers of literacy
• George Gissing and concerns about declining literary standards
• The didactics of social Darwinism
• Scientia sexualisas a teaching/didactic tool against perversion and degeneration Eugenics, colonialist education, and protecting the “healthy” national/racial body from decline
• The end of traditional womanhood and the fear of the New Woman.
• Fin-de-siècleapproaches to paideia
• Religion, pedagogy, and eschatology at the fin-de-siècle.

X5
X

Medicine ― & rose at 6.

We do not advance.

All the morning went to & fro between Charlton’s ― Woodleys ― & Taylors ― the annoyance of the pictures being still there worrying me unendurably.

Endeavored to make a drawing ― for Charlton, but failed.

Dined at 4.

At 6 ― set out to draw at Ἀνάλειψις, but was constantly waylaid by ― Grasset ― De Veres ― Fosters ― Herberts &c. &c.

So I did nothing.

At 7.30 ― went to Mrs. Woolffs, where was E. Curcumelly. ―

Bed by 10.40.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Francis Austen around 1825

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve just finished a highly informative and discreetly insightful book by Brian Southam, Jane Austen and the Navy, whose readings were they to be taken seriously, could help correct some false emphases about Jane Austen’s political and familial allegiances as well as make the nautical matter in her letters, fiction, and verse too more precisely understood. The reviews I’ve read thus far have been lazily general so the important findings of his book (just about all persuasive, nothing exaggerated or unsubstantiated) have hardly begun to penetrate Austen studies. Southam’s book is not a rehash of John H. and Edith C. Hubback’s Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers, even though the general outline of Francis and Charles’s characters remains more or less the same in both books. Southam’s depiction of later 18th century naval life and battles as prompted by what he finds of fragments of it in Austen is invaluable. What he also brings out about Austen while presented discreetly fits what I’ve found in the first half of her letters carefully studied and her novels.

However deflected and even denied at the outset (deliberately, diplomatically), what generally emerges is how much of Jane Austen’s family members, people she knew, is mirrored directly in the characters and events and scenes of her novels. Further, how especially devoted was her love for her brother closest to her in age (though not in literary interest), Francis: Persuasion emerges as a kind of love song to Francis Austen through the depiction of both Wentworth and Harville; Southam goes so far as to say (in separate places) that there is a disturbing poignant personal loss actuating this book, a craving need seeking satisfaction through an idyllic dream and it is her attempt to “repair the [thwarted] career of Francis, compensating to him for all he did not have in life.

Ciaran Hinds is indeed perfect for the role (1995 BBC Persuasion, Wentworth)

What I’ve found in the letters is that 1) obviously there were three packets of letters just to Frank, he held onto them past the day he died; a grand-niece destroyed them almost immediately. I suggest Jane loved Frank passionately, and he did at some level know it. It may have embarrassed him, but he reciprocated at least the love. As she preferred the niece who was not intellectual and was conventional (Fanny Austen Knight) to the niece genuinely gifted, like herself (Anna Austen Lefroy), so she preferred the unintellectual, more uncomplicated, straight-forward brother who was active, who did not like landscape (we see her try and try again to get him to appreciate it but he won’t), who does not lie, can’t lie (Austen just loathes lying, and her definition is as austere as any of Swift’s horses). He got that house strongly for her in Southampton; he worried intensely over the move to Chawton, going out of his way to try to intervene and stop it, but whatever he foresaw as hurting his sister did not in the end happen (whence her poem to re-assure him). His opinions of her books are set out first among the opinions.

Most of all all the books: a man with the letter “F” is the one Elinor had a necessarily hidden love for; the motive of the hidden love that must not be spoken which recurs throughout the books (even NA, Eleanor Tilney), from Jane Bennet through Fanny (who blushes crimson over Edmund who is a displaced Frank) and William to Jane [Fairfax] and Frank [Churchill's] clandestine love and her intense emotional hurt; to Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth (F name). Frank marrying Martha late in life is a marrying of his memories of his sister, the one she originally wanted for him. Her two loves united.

What I’ve just said is supported by Southams’s detailed analyses of the brothers’ characters, careers, and Austen’s relationship to these as seen in the letters. She never wrote Charles the way she did Francis, or apparently Henry, certainly not James (most like her in literary gifts) nor Edward (the dullest of the group, most ordinary reflected in John Dashwood).

I look at her two poems to Frank as love poems transposed (one upon him coming to Godmersham married in the person of Fanny Knight; and one upon her coming to live in Chawton); her two poems to her niece, Anna (one on Anna’s depressions when young written inside a decently moralizing book by Ann Murray, and the other a self-alienated burlesque), are ambivalent intensities in comparison, and need to be contextualized with their playlet, Sir Charles Grandison, and now the two Sanditons, Jane’s unfinished and Anna’s continuation with the tale of their lives such as it was (cut off by Jane herself) in the extant 16 letters. For Frank we have but 2.

Now Southam situates Frank and Jane in the midst of a telling of the experiences as well as specific naval conditions of a career, how careers were formed and men got on, attitudes of mind toward the navy by the imperialist Tory class of landowners and place-holders (to which Jane belonged and to which she narrowly adhered) which explain so much in the books that readers might glide over without noticing they have not gotten a real specific meaning and experience or type person intended. How did Mr Price come to be a Marine on half-pay for so many years? what does that mean about what kind of person he is, how the contradictions he manifests are to be understood?

I will come back to these matters in separate blogs when I return to the letters and Austen’s biography.

**********************

Just as striking to the reader of Austen are her fiercely partisan ways of discussing books by others, other people, and all the many occasional unknown or passed over passages by Austen in prose (her letters) and verse which often offend people. What I want to spend the second half of this blog on her a series of verses which show her to have been willing to write as a dense partisan romantic reactionary. This is not the unknown Austen (read Marilyn Butler) so much as the Austen people don’t like to see. We must to understand her books’ and her limitations (in the area of literary criticism too).

So really worth calling attention to and explaining is a set of verses written in the style of Pope and/or Swift where she sneers at and dismisses a more than justifiable court martial of a man named Home Popham:

On Sir Home Popham’s Sentence

Of a Ministry pitiful, angry, mean,
A gallant commander the victim is seen.
For promptitude, vigour, success, does he stand
Condemn’d to receive a severe reprimand!
To his foes I could wish a resemblance in fate:
That they, too, may suffer themselves, soon or late,
The injustice they warrant. But vain is my spite
They cannot so suffer who never do right.

The gallant commander in question, the “victim” is a man court-martialed for disobeying an order to protect the colony at the Cape of Good Hope to go off on a military expedition in Buenos Aires whose purpose was to make large sums of money for himself and wrest power from the Spanish gov’t of Argentina, ostensibly to “liberate” the people, but really just to support a faction who would be favorable to increasing his personal political power.

Southam patiently explicates these lines phase by phase, performs an exemplary thorough close reading.

Jane Austen first of all hates the ministry in power at the time because to save money, Fox, Windham and Grenville tried to decrease the numbers of local militia in the English counties as basically useless in the war against Napoleon. Such groups were great for networking local gentry, their activities flattered all the people involved with vanities of outfits, training sessions, and made for festive occasions for those belonging to them, but as far as any practical effectiveness, they were nil. Now Austen’s male family members and their friends and further off clans were precisely those who personally profited from and enjoyed such volunteer activities. The ministry even wanted to allow Irish Catholics to join (if such groups were to carry on). “No Popery!” was a cry she would join in on here even if in her Juvenilia History of England a more fanatical Stuart cannot be found.

Second she is apparently quite take by the glamor, performative socializing and basically ruthless careerism of the man. He had precisely the qualities in say Mr William Elliot that Anne Elliot deplored: insincerity, but personal interest here trumped principle. (After all as she said Anne Elliot is just this picture of perfection and in another oft-quoted line, pictures of perfection made her sick.) Southam likens his behavior to Henry Austen as banker, who equally came to grief by loaning huge sums to people (Francis Rawdon Hastings Moira in particular) whose favor he was buying. This may be.

Southam also thinks that Francis and Charles would have sided with Popham; hard to say, but from the evidence he produces, it does seem here Jane was on her own, and (as in other cases) differed at least from Francis at least as he appears in his letters when he writes about actions and unprincipled behaviors like Popham’s. Long passages by Francis and all we know about his behavior shows man who believes one must obey the orders of one’s commander. When one is ordered to stay and protect a port, one must, even if it means foregoing pots of money and the enjoyment of exhilarating bloody combats. Francis always behaved this way and he missed Trafalgar (which he regretted all his life because it meant less money and less prestige and fewer connections he could pressure) because he obeyed an order.

One of Popham’s schemes and inventions were claptrap timed bombs called “catamarans;” water-tight containers packed with explosives that would be set off by clockwork timers. We could call these primitive torpedoes, or to bring this up to date, drones. You drop them on a ship, set off quickly and they blow the ship up, killing many people, setting the ship on fire, destroying it. Happily when he tried it, he failed — well, he managed to destroy four of his own ships and kill many many men on his own side indiscriminately so the method of murdering others with impunity was given up for a time. What did Francis think of this? it’s quoting from a long passage he wrote here:

This horrible mode of warfare seems scarcely justifiable in principle (amongst civilized nations) short of self-preservation and perhaps its entire want of success may have been a fortunate circumstance for England who could not have expected to be the only power to use such machines and whose shipping would be constantly liable to similar attacks with much greater facility from the exposed situations of the anchorages then used.

Francis foresees such barbarism could be used against England’s ships too and since they relied on their ships than anyone, they would be a prime target. He hoped this would not catch on.

Alas. In his journalism Samuel Johnson hoped people would never fly planes because (he said) the first thing many would do would be to kill other people from the sky. We’ve seen this from WW! on, no matter how often it’s been shown that bombing civilians does not bring an end to war because the people conducting are not the same people being killed. When people drop drones, we are often told a single “terrorist” is killed; not so; you cannot direct them that way; the drone drops the bombs on a house and destroys the house and anyone in it plus usually the whole street. Hundreds are killed and maimed and lives destroyed.

Jane Austen was taking precisely the opposite position from Francis. Throughout the books we see her usual mockery (Southam calls this joking) and often taken adverse positions to the family. One can see parallels with Henry’s banking and loan practices and who he was more than willing to be friendly with but all the evidence suggests Francis would have judged Popham fiercely and said he should be court-martialed.

Gallant commander. Right

Popham, Southam, shows was a highly controversial figure and not liked by a host of powerful people. This was not 2012 where say CEOs who sluice companies and fire workers are sustained as useful to the rest of the world as a matter of course. (When they are as Popham was one of those Thomas More labels the “pests” of the human race.) Even Nelson thought him a horror and not a desirable commander: Nelson, we have to give this to him, did not seek wealth personally except as it came as part of actions he thought genuinely for the good of the people and land of England. What he wanted to do at Trafalgar was destroy the French fleet. He broke with previous military strategies to do so.

People like to ignore or not talk about how Wentworth is presented as making money from his ships; we are not told what this actually means in reality. Bloodshed, huge numbers of wounded men, dead corpses, fire, stink.

During the 1810s Jane Austen was reading Charles Pasley’s Essay on Military Policy (you can download this as an ebook and I have) and we find in her letters one of these short phrases, but it is in full admiration. The man advocates the most ruthless of imperalist policies, the sort that leads to what Belgium did in the Congo. Southey reviewed it and said it was the most important political document of the era.

Persuasion and Mansfield Park are used as jump-off places to teach the reader a great deal about the patronage politics (all corrupt but at the time not admitted to be so, though no one advertised how anyone got ahead, and who had done what for whom) as well as real experiences at sea, which Austen only refers to in general terms: as when William Price tells his gory stories and Wentworth his fearful ones to rapt or put-off audiences (Lady Bertram decides the last place she’d want to be is at sea). Southam turns around readers’ suppositions For example, perhaps Captain Wentworth was right to tell his in-laws a ship (his ship) was no place for a woman. Southam makes the important point that it was not just one’s quarters that mattered. Brutal fighting, death, terrible wounds were the order of the day, flogging and all sorts of punitive measures continual.

Modern readers may not realize what is intended by Austen’s short but explicit statements about the navy. Maybe. Then they don’t imagine the US wars abroad either. Crabbe includes pictures of misery at sea; even Cowper shows graphic knowledge. Southey’s Life of Nelson sold widely then and very readable it is. Southam seems to assume Jane Austen expected her readers to know and that many did.

And now finally, consider Byron’s poem:

Wellington: The Best of Cut-Throats (1819)

Though Britain owes (and pays you too) so much,
Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more:
You have repaired Legitimacy’s crutch,
A prop not quite so certain as before:
The Spaniard, and the French, as well as Dutch,
Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore:
And Waterloo has made the world your debtor
(I wish your bards would sing it rather better).

You are ‘the best of cut-throats’: – do not start;
The phrase is Shakespeare’s, and not misapplied;
War’s a brain-spattering, wind-pipe-slitting art,
Unless her cause by right be sanctified.
If you have acted once a generous part,
The world, not the world’s masters, will decide,
And I shall be delighted to learn who,
Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?

I’ve done. Now go and dine from off the plate
Presented by the Prince of the Brazils,
And send the sentinel before your gate
A slice or two from your luxurious meals:
He fought, but has not fed so well of late.
Some hunger, too, they say the people feels: -
There is no doubt that you deserve your ration,
But pray give back a little to the nation.

Never had mortal man had such opportunity
Except Napoleon, or abused it more:
You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity
Of tyrants, and been blest from shore to shore:
And now – what is your fame? Shall the Muse tune it ye?
Now – that the rabble’s first vain shouts are over?
Go! hear it in your famished country’s cries!
Behold the world! and curse your victories!

Here we gauge Austen’s distance from Byron whose poems (Giaour, Corsair, Bridge of Abydos) she alludes to in order to frame how we are to see Wentworth. It’s not clear but Popham could fit into a “best of cut-throats” pattern as long as we included non-violent politics too.

Yes the world is often filled with people who will defend atrocious behavior on the grounds this is the way to get rich but the world (and this includes Austen’s too) also includes people who draw lines, say there are things they will not do.

Tellingly, the flogging of ordinary seaman at sea is not one torture modern day establishment film-makers are willing to film; even now the material is severely repressed

Southam though clearly conservative does call a spade a spade, and includes a long section on flogging and how one cause for Francis’s failure to move on up as quickly and fully as he expected was his flogging policies. He was apparently capable of great cruelties towards sailors who drank a lot. His rigid and impersonalizing way of getting through the world led to this. His evangelism was shared by Gambier, one of his few patrons and he too was not liked (and this didn’t help), though Southam does not say if he was particularly harsh as a flogger. I will spare my reader descriptions of the whips, with their exquisitely added torture knots, straps and the procedures by which men were forced to watch someone be whipped in one place and then another. And remember a percentage of these would be pressed man, in effect and truth, slaves (see pp. 282-83).

*********************

James Stanier Clarke (1766-1834)

I hope to post again on Southam’s book. I was glad to see that on the important area of Austen’s literary contacts and understanding of what she was doing that Southam does agree with me that far from simply ridiculing the librarian Stanier Clarke, though Austen does that (as well as many other people and authors), she confided in him, respected him and he was a rare literary person (no matter how minor) who she actually talked. I think she was comfortable with him because he was minor, because he was no threat to her self-esteem or status. But that’s for another evening.

To conclude there is an Austen to be discovered, we might call her the unknown Austen only she’s been there in plain sight all along. We just haven’t wanted to look.

In Miss Austen Regrets Jason Watkins as Clark genuinely congratulates Austen, is really enthused, tells her that in comparison with her, the “gentlemen” (Byron and Scott) are unreadable

Ellen

‘What’s in a name?’ asks Dr Robert MacPhail in Aldous Huxley’s utopia Island: ‘Answer, practically everything’ (ch.9). Morris’s own works seem to be in two minds about the issue. On the one hand, Dick Hammond in News from Nowhere blithely asserts, in relation to Trafalgar Square, that ‘the name of a dead folly doesn’t bite’ (ch.VII). But Morris’s early poem ‘King Arthur’s Tomb’ disagrees rather sharply, since Guenevere there claims that ‘The ladies’ names bite verily like steel’.

The question of the effectivity of names came up in the earliest discussions about founding a Society to commemorate the life and work of William Morris, as Michael Crick informs us in his excellent history of the Society: ‘May [Morris] had suggested the Morris Guild or Morris Fellowship, but Emery Walker felt that this would narrow the scope of the organisation. It would, he thought, tie it too closely to the personality of Morris and might therefore lead to a type of antiquarian society, devoted to the past and with no impact on the present’ (p.18).

I think Emery Walker was clairvoyant here, and that though the Morris Society has often attempted to have an 'impact on the present’, there is a momentum about its name which does indeed, slowly but steadily, pull it regularly back towards the Victorian past. Therefore, almost a century after Walker first issued his warning, I wish to make a Swiftian modest proposal: that we re-name the William Morris Society as the News from Nowhere Society. For in that great work all of Morris’s political and aesthetic concerns are intensely active, and yet, as a utopia, it orients us necessarily towards the future rather than the past, towards a collective project rather than an individual personality.

Another amateur production of Polly Teale's Brontë which is currently being performed in Herne Bay, Kent, UK:

Herne Bay Little Theatre presents
Brontë by Polly Teale

Directed by Christine Ramsay
Toby Mercer (Branwell Brontë), Jessie Kingshott (Anne Brontë), Ben Holliday (Patrick Brontë), Natasha Girling (Charlotte Brontë), Mariah Young (Mrs Rochester) and Elen Jones (Emily)

14th to 19th May 2012
The play is very topical at present with films of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in cinemas now. There has also been a good adaptation of Tenant of Wildfell Hall on Radio 4. The play centres on the troubled relationships within the Brontë family. This is a challenging and fascinating play, showing tantalising glimpses into the lives of the family and how they developed as writers. After you have seen the production I am sure you will all be rushing out to Waterstones to read the novels they wrote.

Additional information can be found in Canterbury Times.

The House of Dreams by Albert Welti

Painting of the Day Archive

The Irish Emigrant Online reports an event recently organised by the Alloy Theater Company (currently playing William Luce's Brontë. A Portrait of Charlotte).

Supporters of the Alloy Theater Company were recently hosted at a cocktail reception to celebrate the upcoming production of Brontë: A Portrait of Charlotte, directed by Timothy Douglas and starring Irish-born actress Maxine Linehan.
The intimate gathering took place at the chic, Upper East-Side restaurant Desmonds, home of acclaimed chef and restaurateur David Hart, who prepared a spectacular menu for the guests. On the night, Ms. Linehan treated all present to a reading of one of Charlotte Brontë’s many letters.

Crikey's Lit-icism has a guest post by January Jones (apparently not the actress of the same name) on adaptations ruining the originals:

Reading these adaptations of the Jane Eyre narrative has caused me to reconsider, and consequently, dislike the original. Just as reading Rebecca after Wide Sargasso Sea left me unconvinced by Maxim’s explanation that he murdered his late wife because of her sexually deviant behaviour. Despite this, I can’t help wondering whether such a reaction is fair to the original work, which in this case is ultimately a work of its times. Or has reading the later works encouraged me to view the original more critically? Either way Jane Eyre will never be the same loved story from my youth, I just haven’t decided if this is a good thing. 

Now for something fun. Here's an example of one of Wired's Geekmom's Puzzles of the Week:

EXAMPLE:
Using the clues, find the name of the the famous novel:
The sound a dog makes
The only thing to be afraid of
Where skaters skate
Flown on strings
EXAMPLE SOLUTION:
Woof
Fear
Rink
Kites
So you would need to send us the solution: Wuthering Heights. (Sophie Brown)

Read'n'Dream writes in French about Jane Eyre and Book Rhapsody comments on it being April's book of the month at a book club while Tiptoe Through, Lost in Translation, Yo Soy Kaplan (in Spanish) and Livros e outras felicidades (in Portuguese) post about the 2011 adaptation. My Reading Rainbow writes about Wuthering Heights. Elinor, Elizabeth, and Emma counts Charlotte Brontë among her favourite authors.

Finally, an alert from Kannapolis, North Carolina:

Kannapolis Classics Book Club — Do you love the classics? Want to catch up on the classic books you missed in high school and college? Then we have the book club for you. The Kannapolis Classics Book Club meets the third Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to come. The May book is “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. Tuesday, May 15 at 5:30 p.m. (Salisbury Post)

In Chapter VII of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, the Unicorn looks at Alice “with an air of the deepest disgust” and asks, “What – is – this?”

“This is a child!” Haigha replied eagerly, coming out in front of Alice to introduce her, and spreading out both hands toward her in Anglo-Saxon attitude. “We only found it to-day. It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!”

“I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?”

There’s layers of good jokes here, as the Unicorn thinks Alice is a “fabulous monster,” and then offers to believe in her if she believes in him. There’s also some play on the concepts of “life” and being “alive.” (Death is one of the major themes of TTLG.)  For Haigha’s “twice as natural” remark, Martin Gardner’s note in The Annotated Alice is this:

“As large as life and quite as natural” was a common phrase in Carroll’s time (the Oxford English Dictionary quotes it from an 1853 source); but apparently Carroll was the first to substitute “twice” for “quite.” This is now the usual phrasing in both England and the U.S.

This series G.A.H.! (Gardners Annotations Hyperlinked) has the singular purpose of supplying internet links to Martin Gardner’s classic notes. Since he wrote them more than fifty years ago, some of his sources have become difficult to find in print, or alternately, easier to find online. Gardner never cites why he thinks Carroll was the first man to change the “quite as natural” into “twice as natural,” although it is vintage Carrollian wit. No doubt the inclusion of the phrase in the Alice books has aided its longevity in that form.

It’s hard to create hyperlinks for the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is ubiquitous in halls of higher learning and prohibitively expensive to access outside of them. My local public library doesn’t have a subscription, so I had to swim through their physical volumes to find where and what that 1853 source was that Gardner referred to. I found the quote in question under life s.b., on page 911 in Volume VIII of the Second Edition:

7. a. (In early use commonly the life.) The living form or model; living semblance; life-size figure or presentation. Also life itself. after, from (or by) the life: (drawn) from the living model. as large as (the) life, life-size; hence humorously, implying that a person’s figure or aspect is not lacking in any point. Hence larger-than-life; larger-than-lifeness (nonce). small life: ? somewhat less than life-size.

There’s nothing like needing a dictionary to have a joke explained. “As large as life” is funny because, you see, in a humorous context, you are implying that the life-form has successfully achieved an adequate fullness of size in proportion vis-à-vis its life.  They supply several quotes about the size of life, many much earlier than 1853. The 1853 quote that Gardner alludes to is from ‘C. Bede’ Verdant Green, I. vi. “An imposing-looking Don, as large as life, and quite as natural.” I can create a hyperlink for The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green by Cuthbert Bede, B.A., a novel about a Freshman undergraduate at Oxford University (written within a few years of when C.L. Dodgson entered Oxford). The full text is at Project Gutenberg and the 1857 edition can be seen on Google Books, with 90 illustrations by the author, (whose real name was Edward Bradley).

Now, the Second Edition of the OED wasn’t published in its glorious twenty volumes until 1989, so the First Edition that Gardner would have looked at (in the early 1960s) might not have included the following quote, which is in the Second Edition immediately before the 1853 C. Bede one:

1840 Lady Wilton Art of Needlework xxi. 334
Birds … being, in proportion to other figures, certainly larger than life, and ‘twice as natural’.

What happened? Lady Wilton’s quote uses Carroll’s ‘twice as natural’ instead of the “common phrase” ‘quite as natural,’ and 1840 is three decades before Looking-Glass was written.To further add to the mystery, she places “twice as natural” inside inverted commas, to imply she’s also quoting something earlier – but what? (As for the “larger then life” versus “large as life” debate, there’s an article in the New York Times Magazine by William Saffire published October 14, 1990, about the evolution of the phrase. The article includes a conversation with Charlton Heston, who had nitpicky opinions about which of his characters were “as large as life” and which were “larger than life.” Henry VIII? Merely as large as life. Long-John Silver? Larger than life.)

Project Gutenberg also has the text of “The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages” (1841) which was edited by “The Right Honourable The Countess of Wilton” (actually named Elizabeth Stone), and Google Books also has one of their Xerox-quality scans of the 1841 edition. Wilton uses the expression twice in this book. In a chapter called “The Needle,” she tells a weird anecdote about an old woman’s needle, and the phrase “large as life and twice as natural” refers to a tear-drop found in the needle’s eye. I’ll quote it in full for context and also because it’s very silly:

For instance, we were told of an old woman who had used one needle so long and so constantly for mending stockings, that at last the needle was able to do them of itself. At length, and while the needle was in the full perfection of its powers, the old woman died. A neighbour, whose numerous “olive branches” caused her to have a full share of matronly employment, hastened to possess herself of this domestic treasure, and gathered round her the weekly accumulation of sewing, not doubting but that with her new ally, the wonder-working needle, the unwieldy work-basket would be cleared, “in no time,” of its overflowing contents. But even the all-powerful needle was of no avail without thread, and she forthwith proceeded to invest it with a long one. But thread it she could not; it resisted her most strenuous endeavours. In vain she turned and returned the needle, the eye was plain enough to be seen; in vain she cut and screwed the thread, she burnt it in the candle, she nipped it with the scissars, she rolled it with her lips, she twizled it between her finger and thumb: the pointed end was fine as fine could be, but enter the eye of the needle it would not. At length, determined not to relinquish her project whilst any hope remained of its accomplishment, she borrowed a magnifying glass to examine the “little weapon” more accurately. And there, “large as life and twice as natural,” a pearly gem, a translucent drop, a crystal tear stood right in the gap, and filled to overflowing the eye of the needle. It was weeping for the death of its old mistress; it refused consolation; it was never threaded again.

In that instance also, the idiom is in quotation marks, as if she’s either quoting a common phrase or referencing a well-known joke from an unnamed source. Seventy-nine pages later, in an unrelated context, the Countess of Wilton is describing French tapestries. The images are “representing scenes of the chase, and are enlivened with birds in every position, some of them being, in proportion to other figures, certainly largerthan life, and ‘twice as natural.’” The italic emphasis on “larger” is hers, indicating that she’s playing around with the phrase “as large as life” – the birds depicted on a giant tapestry, you see, are indeed larger than real-life birds. They’re also twice as natural. Vintage Wiltonian wit.

 

I’m sure others have been struck by this paragraph from Pride and Prejudice (see quote below), and wondered if perhaps it gives us a clue about how Cassandra was able to locate the many letters from Jane that she would destroy, for the majority of those that survived are innocuous and mundane. They reveal very little [...]

Finer ― but scirocco.

Rose at 4.30. At 5 ― drew the Citadel ˇ[from Καστράδες] & returned at 8 to breakfast. Accounts with G. ― & at 9  went out ― calls on Charlton ― out, Luard, ― who has lent his Yacht ― wh. I had minded to take: walked with him to the Citadel, & saw the yot where the De Vere’s are. To Taylor’s, where I found to my utter disgust that the pictures are all here still, no L.pool steamer having called ― & the only one likely to call, goes to Trieste, Smyrna, Alex.dria & where else not? This, (the Atlas,) I have ordered the things to be sent by: but they cannot be England before July.

Pleasant!

Called on Mrs. Bridge ― out: Mrs. Woolff ― & saw Ευφροσυνη Κυσκυμέλλι [sic], ― & the children. At Dr. Woolff ἀπέθανε.[1] Returning saw Clark, Herbert, & Majr. Cocks, ― T. Cock’s brother. ― Called on Mrs. Boyd: ― out, on Boyd: ― & asked him for a letter to [][2] Γεννάδες[3] ― though I am now so unsettled & angry I hardly know what to do. ― For in London, previous to the arrival of the Pictures, what is to be done? ――― Home & lunch & wrath. Saw the 2 Foster’s also: setting off to Πανταλεώνε[.]

At 2 P.M. the wind is frightful ― scirocco haze. 2 to 3 wrote out last 6 days journal.

At 4 ― went out to draw ― the view by the Casino Gate ― but no mountains were visible ― along of thick scirocco fog. ― so I walked up to Ἀνάλειψις & drew till 6.30 ― Dr. Roberts sitting by latterly, & walking back with me.

Dined at 7.30: ― Foster came in ˇ[at 8], & sat till 9.30. ―

---

Paleontologists and artists alike may be interested to hear of a new project to further our understanding of the unfortunate Raphus cucullatus, otherwise known as the dodo. Fewer that 300 years ago the bird was strutting around Mauritius, yet today only two complete skeletons are known to science. Researchers at the Massachusetts College of the Holy Cross are hoping to extend the influence of one of those skeletons by giving it new life online.

The skeleton has been scanned in 3D, digitized, and uploaded to a public website funded by the National Science Foundation. Using a Java plugin, users can manipulate 3D images of the individual bones, as well as a mummified head (left).

We first read about the story in Digging up the Dodo, an article on IOLscitech. The dodo images are found on Aves 3D. The Aves 3D database contains images of many bird species; it’s primary aim is “to allow for the rapid global dissemination of three-dimensional digital data on common as well as rare and potentially fragile species, in a format ready for a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses, including geometric morphometric analysis and finite element analysis.”

After conducting our own research using the data, we can also report that by careful rotation of the mummified head image it is possible to produce quite convincing facial expressions including “solemn,” “offended,” and “thoughtful.” Each expression requires tiny adjustments to the image, but of course, as the most famous dodo of all once advised, “the best way to explain it is to do it.”

NOW NOW OH NOW
Created by Rude Mechs
Concept, Structure, and Content development by Madge Darlington, Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah, and Shawn Sides
Staging by Shawn Sides | Writing by Hannah Kenah
Performers: Robert S. Fisher, Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah, Lana Lesley, E. Jason Liebrecht, and Shawn Sides

May 17 - June 9, 2012
Thursday - Sunday
7:00 PM and 9:00 PM
Running time: approx 75 minutes

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, Austin, TX

Rude Mechs is proud to present the first fully mounted production of NOW NOW OH NOW, previously presented in various workshop versions under the working title “CL1000P.” Inspired by evolutionary biology, the Brontës, and LARP communities, NOW NOW OH NOW invites you to enter into an interactive puzzle for the stage about the importance and impermanence of selecting for pleasure over survival. A triptych tribute to everyone’s inner geek, NOW NOW OH NOW embodies Rude Mechs’ desire to create a more tangible, social, active, and personal experience for the audience. The performance marries serious scientific content with the nerdy pleasure of puzzles and gaming and the undeniable satisfaction of Murder Mystery Theatre. This intimate consideration of how our individual choices lead us through life and impact the world takes a locked room puzzle, a lecture on sexual selection in evolutionary biology, and the world's weirdest night of Dungeons and Dragons and weaves them all together to paint a picture of why the things you find beautiful are important to the world.

“NOW NOW OH NOW” is performed for an intimate audience of only 30 people, so there will be multiple showings of the performance each night. The audience experience is roaming so we recommend that you wear comfortable shoes and consider leaving big purses and bags at home.

Escape of a Heretic, 1559 by Sir John Everett Millais

Painting of the Day Archive

The Economist's Prospero has an article on the British Library exhibition Writing Britain:

No section of the show expresses this better than “Wild Places”, which sketches not only the meanings writers find in Britain’s rugged parts, but the power these observations then have on other writers. The Yorkshire moors of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” are a kind of “urtext” of British wildness, says Jamie Andrews at the British Library. They inspired much pilgrimage by other writers, including Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as Hughes wrote: “The book becoming a map./Wuthering Heights withering into perspective.” (A.C.)

Historian Bettany Hughes 'chooses five books about strong women in history' for the Telegraph. This is her disclaimer:

If you grew up with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) as a role model you can’t fail to relish stories of strong women and of the human spirit winning out against horrible odds.

Down under, The Australian reviews the play A Hoax, on stage in Brisbane.

Director Lee Lewis steers a tight first act towards the cliffhanger of Currah's maiden media conference, but from there the focus fades. The closest [Rick] Viede comes to explaining Anthony's actions is to evoke one of Victorian fiction's most famous nom de plumes in Currer Bell. But Anthony isn't Charlotte Brontë, and A Hoax is far from Jane Eyre. (Cameron Pegg)

Bite My Moko interviews writer Charity Norman:

BMM: Did you always want to be a writer? CN: Yes. As a child, I lived in Yorkshire and my father is a vicar – like the Brontë sisters, whose father was also a vicar. My father had seven children and Patrick Brontë had a similar number. I thought I was Emily Brontë as a child. I used to make up really appalling poetry. But, as life went on, I realised I needed a proper career and proper money. I was a barrister for about 15 years or so in the northeast of England. I practised in crime and family, which feed into (Freeing Grace). The book is about adoption and so I was able to use a lot of my experiences in court and experiences with working for local authorities taking children away from their parents or acting for parents attempting to have their children not taken away. All of that has fed into this book and the next and, I suppose, into my life.

An Edmonton Journal blog lists mothers in literature (Jane Eyre's mother is listed under those 'six feet under') and this Midland Daily News columnist agrees with Mr Rochester when he says that Jane must have been 'tenacious of life' growing up in Lowood. Jane Eyre is reviewed by Bibliothèque (in French) and Livros, letras e metas (in Portuguese). Sans Farine posts in French about Wuthering Heights while Boilerdo writes in Portuguese about the afterlife of the novel. Flickr user ga_bs features the novel in a picture. African Angle posts about the Brontës.

I recently visited Maryland to see how the state is preparing for the War of 1812 Bicentennial, and a highlight was a visit to Baltimore's Fort McHenry. Francis Scott Key, ...

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At 4.30. got coffee, & at 5.30 set off ― man & horse.

Of course, the very best view of Clomò is just beyond the village: it was however too windy to draw. [In a rage] to Messonghi, & later passed [Capodistria’s] house ― (where I had once landed, & whence we walked back ―). ― Tired, ― sleepless ― & cross: scirocco no end. Was angry at G.’s account of the peasants in that murder affair, & spoke harshly: He also was angry ― having a bad eye & being tired. So, I set off alone, & walked straight into Corfu ― reaching home at 10.45.

Got [4][1] letters. F.L. ― Mrs. G. Clive ― no good account of G.C. ― T. Cooper ― & Dickenson.

Washed & read. Dined at 6. Bed at 9.

X4

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Inquiring readers, guest blogger Tony Grant is a marvelous photographer, as you might have discovered from the images that accompany his posts. A week or so ago he wrote a post about door knockers. He provided only two original images: the rest came from the web. Last weekend he rectified the situation, saying: I drove [...]

Two new scholar books recently published:

Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the 'Twilight' Series
Edited by Anne Morey, Texas A&M University, USA
Ashgate Publishing
Series : Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present
Published: April 2012
Extent: 252 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-4094-3661-4
Much of the criticism on Stephenie Meyer's immensely popular "Twilight" novels has underrated or even disparaged the books while belittling the questionable taste of an audience that many believe is being inculcated with anti-feminist values. Avoiding a repetition of such reductive critiques of the series's purported shortcomings with respect to literary merit and political correctness, this volume adopts a cultural studies framework to explore the range of scholarly concerns awakened by the "Twilight" novels and their filmic adaptations. Contributors examine "Twilight"'s debts to its predecessors in young adult, vampire, and romance literature; the problems of cinematic adaptation; issues in fan and critical reception in the United States and Korea; and the relationship between the series and contemporary conceptualizations of feminism, particularly girl culture. Placing the series within a broad tradition of literary history, reception studies, and filmic adaptation, the collection offers scholars the opportunity to engage with the books' importance for studies of popular culture, gender, and young adult literature.

Includes:

'Famine for food, expectation for content': Jane Eyre as intertext for the 'Twilight' saga by Anne More

And a curious revival by Cambridge University Press:

A Book of English Prose
Arranged for Secondary and High Schools
Part2
Percy Lubbock
Paperback
ISBN:9781107604902
Publication date:February 2012
Originally published in 1913, this book of English prose for school children forms part of a two-volume series: the first volume contains selections for preparatory and elementary schools; the second volume contains selections for secondary and high schools. Both texts cover a broad variety of literary styles, moving chronologically from the late-medieval period through to the nineteenth century, explanatory notes being provided where necessary. The selections were arranged by Percy Lubbock (1879–1965), a renowned essayist, critic and biographer, who became Henry James's editor after his death.

Includes

Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester Charlotte Brontë

The Easy Chair by John William Waterhouse

Painting of the Day Archive

I’ve placed these gorgeous Ackermann fashion plates here  to wish my readers who are mothers a Happy Mother’s day. Aren’t these images precious? Click on images to enlarge. Filed under: 19th Century England, Children's regency fashion, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, Regency Period, Regency style, Regency World

I've become a fan of Chronicling America, the truly amazing collection of old newspapers at the Library of Congress. When the site was recently shut down for about a week ...

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50 years old. Sky rather overcast. Rose at 4.15 ― coffee & a dollar to old Sotin; ― & then good-bye to good Dr. Sansoni. ― a kindly man leading a hard life of work for the benefit of others. The way in which all the family adapt themselves to the unpleasantness of [][1] is highly praiseworthy. What can I send them? A Lamp? or Toys for their little boy, who I fear will die, as have done 3 before him.

I have even remembered my old days in the Abruzzi while here. ― Morning fine, & we went on to Περιβόλι, where I drew, ― tho’ it has few charms. Then, through uncultivated wilds of olive & Prinari[2] &c. &c. ― below Marathia, wh. G. says was pulled down in 18 or 19 ― when all the people died of the plague. (Pigs are not allowed by the Governo to this day ― on account of their disinterring propensities, ― throughout Lefchimo.) Next was Ἀργιράδες ― rather a putty village; I decided on coming back to it, [][3] on seeing the rough long road however to Clomo, I gave that idea up wholly. Clomo in itself is ugly ― but the views thence are wonderful. The wind however rose so that nothing could be done out of doors. Srgt. Launasio’s house ― when opened by a highly morose & unclean man, is good, ― but full of fleas: ― howbeit we must endure it for a night. No sheets ― & a vast rattling of windows. Swallows twitter all around. (Little girl near Ἀργιράδες laying up great red poppies in a wreath ― 1^st of May ― quò George ―: dunque,[4] is the May day festivity a Greek one?) ― At 3 ― the day is wholly gloomy & disgusting ― so I drew from the window of the forlorn nasty country house (moth eaten chairs &c.) G. & I went up to the top church ― Ταξιάρχας,[5] & I drew a little here & there, & then returned ordering a horse for tomorrow. No wine ― no nothing.

What a night! A hurricane of wind, & a world of fleas. ― I walked up & down from 7 ― having no appetite ― & unable to lie down by incessant torment by vermin ― all night long.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

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 Eyre. Fifty/Fifty . . . Really? writes briefly about Romancing Miss Brontë. Reveries 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).

The Espinosa-Israilevich Cumbres Borrascosas opera rock is returning to Córdoba, Argentina with a new cast:

Cumbres Borrascosas
Lyrics: Hernán Espinosa
Music: Fernando Israilevich
Friday 11, 18 May 20:30
Saturday 12, 19 May: 20:30
Sunday 13, 20: 19:30

Sala Menor Ciudad de las Artes, Córdoba, Argentina

The new names of the cast are the following ones:

Kathy (sic) ... Agustina Di Vico
Linton ... Emmanuel Bobadilla
Heathcliff ... Andrés Bertz
Isabella ... Evangelina Sellán

Woman with the lyre by Carlos Schwabe

Painting of the Day Archive

Picture source

The Yorkshire Post has an article on a letter written by Charlotte Brontë which is to be auctioned at Bonhams on June 12 as part of their auction Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs.

A letter from Charlotte Brontë hinting at her motivation to write is to go under the hammer.
The three-page letter, which is expected to fetch between £10,000 and £15,000 when it is auctioned at Bonhams book, maps, manuscripts and historical photographs sale in London on June 12.
The recipient of the letter, a Miss Holmes, lived for a while with the family of William Makepeace Thackeray and greatly irritated the author of Vanity Fair with her constant attempts to convert him to Catholicism.
Writing to Miss Holmes, who had sent her an – unidentified – book to read, Charlotte said: “I own I prefer the study of the human being – to that of the human being’s requirements.”
She also comments on the life of a governess – her own former occupation and that of the heroine of her best known novel Jane Eyre – saying: “I must feel a degree of interest in the details of a Governess-life.
“That life has on me the hold of actual experience; to all who live it – I cannot but incline with a certain sympathy; and any kind feeling they express for me – comes pleasantly and meets with grateful acceptance.”

Here's the press release from Bonhams. As usual we hope this item will go back home to Haworth.

Speaking of upcoming events. The British Library's new exhibition Writing Britain opens today. The Times features it in an article where Richard Morrison discusses why this is an exhibition worthy of your time and thought:

That’s where I think deeper, less news-driven surveys such as Writing Britain might help. Its ostensible aim is to show “how the landscapes of Britain permeate the nation’s great literary works". But perusing the 150 chosen exhibits, I am struck by how much the converse is also the case: how our finest literature actually shapes our attitude to our landscapes and our national character. That’s true not only in the superficial way we speak of “Brontë country” or “Dickensian streets”, but also at a more profound level.

The film Dark Shadows also opens today internationally. The Brontës were a source of inspiration for both the original series and Tim Burton's new take on it:

The blue-eyed, blond-haired Lara Parker arrived in New York City in the mid-1960s convinced she only would land ingenue roles. A week later she was cast to play one of the most famous witches in television history: Angelique on the daytime drama "Dark Shadows." [...]
She points out the series drew from classic literature, ranging from "Jane Eyre" to "The Portrait of Dorian Gray." (Rick Bentley in the Fresno Bee)

In 1966, creator Dan Curtis conceived of a show that was Gothic but nonsupernatural, like Jane Eyre. (David Edelstein on 90.9wbur)

So, it’s no wonder that a high priest of pop culture like director Burton would be intrigued enough to craft an update. But fans of the series may be disappointed. While the show was often inadvertently humorous, the intent — in its story of the rich but haunted and trouble-plagued Collins family — was to be some blend of “Dracula” and “Wuthering Heights.” (Cary Darling in the Times Leader)

"Dark Shadows" — the gothic TV soap opera that was part "Jane Eyre,"part "Dracula," part cheesy production values — focused on the travails of the wealthy, mysterious Collins family and their vampire cousin, 200-year-old Barnabas.  (Richard Knight Jr in the Chicago Tribune)

Still on the screen, the New Zealand Herald recommends Wuthering Heights 2009:

Before actor Tom Hardy had a film career leading to his role as the villain Bane in the upcoming Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises, he starred as the brooding tormented Heathcliff in this two-part miniseries.
His Heathcliffe [sic] certainly is a menacing and obsessive sort when he first makes an appearance in this stylish gothic retelling of Emily Brontë's classic novel of doomed love, betrayal, and family feuding.
As with past screen adaptations, this one takes some liberties with Brontë's narrative, starting on the anniversary of the death of Cathy, Heathcliff's one true love, before flashing back to when Heathcliff was rescued from the streets of Liverpool by Cathy's father then taken to the Moors.

Also, St Louis Today's Yakkin' with the Sherpa picks Judi Dench's top 10 films:

I'm giving honorable mentions to "Jane Eyre, "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Importance of Being Earnest." Dench is superb in these classic works of literature, but I had a hard time figuring out how to rank them. That's the tricky part when ranking the work of an actor who doesn't seem to give a bad performance. (Joe Holleman)

The Khaleej Times begins an article on Scottish castles open to tourists as follows:

From Pride and Prejudice to Wuthering Heights and the hugely popular TV series Downton Abbey, there’s no doubting the popularity of period dramas. So next time you’re in Scotland, why not star in your own by checking into one of these historic abodes? (Andrew Marshall)

The Guardian wonders whether a fictional character can 'take you over':

Good lord above! If this is really true then I dread to think what havoc is wreaked by people who've just finished reading A Clockwork Orange; what unrealistic expectations of romance are held by fans of Jane Austen; what heights of passion are reached by Wuthering Heights aficionados on a daily basis. Because, according to a new study from researchers at Ohio State University, "when you 'lose yourself' inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behaviour and thoughts to match that of the character". (Alison Flood)

And finally the London Evening Standard mentions the most famous plain-looking fictional character of all:

Jane Eyre, perhaps our most treasured plain-looking girl, would have been ideally suited to this task — neither too daunting to be selected for your enquiry, nor too indecisive-looking to be of much help, but someone who seems approachable and guileless, unreserved and straightforward. (Charles Saatchi)

The Brontë Weather Project posts briefly about Branwell Brontë. A Year with Mom and Dad is giving away a copy of Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre.

My 50^th birthday. Rose at 4.20: ― off by 5.15.

Long winding paths through olive groves: then dips & struggles with quite wild places, stuffed with all sorts of underwood, the old olives growing tangly all about. Frogs there were also, & rushes. A man passing, & asked the way to Sparterò ― said ― “διατί ἐπιθυμεῖς νὰ πηγαίνης ᾽ς το χώρι μου;[1] I shall not tell you.” ―― Small miserable collection of huts are Nicori, Palaiocori, & Βαστάτινα, & I see no fun in going back by them: so having drawn the Northern distance above the last village but one ― Dragolenà, & great groups of vast olives higher up ―― we arrived at Σπαρτηρῖο, 20 little houses scattered here & there; κατσικιές,[2] & rayther wretched: ― the people only half polite. Nevertheless there is superb scenery all about the place. We took a boy to guide us to Ἅ. Προκόπιος ― (the best place to pass the rest of the day in,) ―― ever winding paths, thro’ thickets, a few scared cattle. A church (in a wilderness,) & thus by 10 ― or 10.30 ― reached the groves of the Holy Προκόπιος. Lunched & drew in the wide grove till 1: nothing but a  very elaborate study of this wood ― even if that, ― could convey an idea of this beautiful place: ― the quiet, warmth, & semishade are delightful. The Elements ― trees, clouds, &c. ― silence ― ὃλη ἡ φύσις δηλαδῆ[3] ― seem to have far more part with me or I with them, than mankind. After death perhaps I shall be a tree ― a cloud ― a cabbage ― or silence in the next world: but most possibly an ass. In these Προκόπιαν holy glades are but 3 very manifold colors, ― the warm pale green of the floor ― with long shades: ― the gray uniform freckly shimmer of the roof: & the dark brown gray of the supporting pillar trunx. At 1, or 1.30 ― into the Monastery, & drew till 3 ― awfully tortured by fleas, & obliged to stand in the sun all the time. As soon as I got to the sea I bathed ― killing 11 fleas first. At 6. Reached the Casa [Curì]: paid Dimitri 2 dollars [][4] a shilling[5] for his days work ― he merits it well.

Sate in the gallery with Dr. & Mrs. S. till dinner ― Dr. Samuello also ― 7.30 dinner ― alquanto [troppo][6], & I was horribly bored by a flea!

Bed by 10.15.

Kindly good folk[.]

X3

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

The Irish Echo reviews the off Broadway performances of Brontë. A Portrait of Charlotte by William Luce:

A solo show befits the solitary existence of Charlotte Brontë, at least when we find her in “Brontë; a Portrait of Charlotte.” It is July1849, and the author of “Jane Eyre,” now 33, has within the past 10 months, buried her sister Emily, of “Wuthering Heights” fame, her sister Anne, a less known writer, and their brother Branwell. Her two other siblings died in childhood; her mother in 1821, when Charlotte was five.
Charlotte is depleted by death and loath to return home to the tiny village of Haworth, and the parsonage now occupied only by her father, she tells a friend in a letter. Patrick Brontë is a man “hard as flint,” whose church when empty is said to have “a full congregation.” It is full, however, of dead bodies, buried under the aisle, and Charlotte faces the desolate prospect of years worshipping, knowing that “your loved ones are moldering under your knees.”
She clings on like a tiny heather bush buffeted by the “merciless winds” of her beloved Yorkshire moors. She longs for “a time of kindness, a time of gentleness,” repeating this phrase like a mantra.
The personal success that has eluded her, despite her public success, is all she seems to care for now. The door isn’t even opened to callers in search of the famous author. (The real identities of the Brontë sisters, all published under male pseudonyms, has emerged.)
Another caller – will he, won’t he? – is the source of the dramatic “action” of the play.  Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, and a fellow Irishman, has said he would call that night. Charlotte feels sure he has a special reason. In the arc of the play she goes from mocking the rumors that the two were to wed, through the tension produced by several false-alarm knocks at the door and on to a seeming conviction that this is what she wants.
Similarly we share in the dramatic revelation to herself of why she so resented her opium-addicted brother, a tortured homosexual. Branwell had an adulterous affair with the wife of his employer, whereas Charlotte’s passion for the married proprietor at the language school in Brussels, where she once worked, was unrequited. Charlotte’s resentment was cured only by Branwell’s death, she says, in the most moving scene of the play, adding, “It is not until the last that we know how much we can forgive.”
Charlotte forgives Mr. Nicholls his physical imperfections for his “kind eyes,” in a scene almost as funny as the earlier one was sad. The knock comes.
The play ends with a TV screen providing the audience with newsflashes. Charlotte declines Mr. Nicholls proposal. Charlotte relents. Charlotte dies nine months after they marry.  Why did the newsflash omit the major fact that Charlotte was pregnant? An odd choice, using a device that felt like an awkward imposition of modernity into this period piece. Providing context amplified the play’s impact, but a voiceover might have been better. (Orla O'Sullivan) (Read more)

Don't forget there's a special offer connected to this production for BrontëBlog readers!

The Awl has asked 'an assortment of folks' to suggest the best audiobooks for road trips.

Adelle Waldman When you read—I mean, read-read—you instinctively speed through sections that are less good. Listening to a book means that every word will be given equal weight. Padding will be seen for what it is. Also, authorial self-indulgence. (Take the last few pages of Jane Eyre—they are just embarrassing when read aloud. I love the book, but when I read it in text form, I must have always skimmed the end, where Brontë is going on and on like a juvenile romantic fantasy about how Jane and Rochester share a single soul.) (Nadia Chaudhury)

It must be that embarrassment keeping people from actually reading the book... and then later on being embarrassed again and lying about having actually read it. The Daily Mail reports a study by Lindeman's Wine and Book Club:

If you’ve never quite managed to finish Pride And Prejudice or Jane Eyre, you’re not alone.
Some 71 per cent of us claim we’ve read classics in an attempt to seem more cultured, according to a study by Lindeman’s Wine and Book Club.
Most ‘book bluffers’ said they lied about their reading because they did not want to appear stupid.
More men were fibbers, with 23 per cent saying they had lied to impress a female, while women said they feared friends’ and colleagues’ judgement.
Books that had been made into films or TV series were the most lied about as people at least knew the plot.
The top five books people claimed to have read were: Pride And Prejudice, The Lord Of The Rings, Jane Eyre, Tess Of The d’Urbervilles and The Hobbit.
Less than half of Brits (45 per cent) correctly named Emily Brontë as the author of Wuthering Heights.
Many believed it to be Charles Dickens (16 per cent), Charlotte Brontë (13 per cent), fictitious character Jane Eyre (12 per cent) and even the singer Kate Bush (4 per cent).
When it comes to Jane Eyre, 15 per cent wrongly think it was written by Jane Austen while the Brontë sisters are most commonly credited with writing Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

That's what's embarrassing, and not the final pages of Jane Eyre. (Also reported by Female First).

The Tampa Bay Times looks at the long-standing collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and this is how 'the look' of Sleepy Hollow is described:

Relatively normal, with Depp ready to step onto the set of a Wuthering Heights remake. (Steve Persall)

Random Acts of Momness and Filmsbloggurin post about Jane Eyre 2011 while Elinor, Elizabeth, and Emma writes briefly about the 2006 miniseries. O Falcão de Jade writes in Portuguese about the Brontës. The McScribble Salon has added Keeper and Flossy to the Pillar portrait.

“I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to pay” —-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

‘An you’ll be a bit o’company for me too, miss … I like as I feel lonesome without my cat … [there was] Mr Weston, with the identical cat in his arms. I now saw that he could smile, and very pleasantly too … not twelve months ago I lost the last and dearest of my early friends; and yet, not only I live, but I am not wholly destitute of hope and comfort, even for this life … —-Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey

Charlotte Bronte by George Richmond

Anne Bronte by Charlotte Bronte

Dear friends and readers,

As a follow-up and continuation of my discussion of Mary Brunton’s Self-Control, I thought a brief foremother poet blog presenting some of the poetry of Charlotte and Anne Bronte would be fitting. Emily’s (1818-48) poetry is well-known and done justice to; her sisters’ verse not as much. I begin with Anne as her work is often not reprinted except with her novels.

**********************

John Constable (1776-1837), Autumn Sunset

Anne Bronte lived but 29 years. She seems to me a poet of autumn. In her novels (Agnes Grey and Tenant of Wildfell Hall), her tone is bleak, she often feels hopeless when confronted with the inhumanity of her employers and allowed brutality of their children; in her poetry there is much sweetness, and

Consolation

Though bleak these woods and damp the ground
With fallen leaves so thickly strewn,
And cold the wind that wanders round
With wild and melancholy moan,
There is a friendly roof I know
Might shield me from the wintry blast;
There is a fire whose ruddy glow
Will cheer me for my wanderings past.

And so, though still where’er I roam
Cold stranger glances meet my eye,
Though when my spirit sinks in woe
Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh,

Though solitude endured too long
Bids youthful joys too soon decay,
Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue
And overclouds my noon of day,

When kindly thoughts that would have way
Flow back discouraged to my breast
I know there is, though far away
A home where heart and soul may rest.

Warm hands are there that clasped in mine
The warmer heart will not belie,
While mirth and truth and friendship shine
In smiling lip and earnest eye.

The ice that gathers round my heart
May there be thawed; and sweetly then
The joys of youth that now depart
Will come to cheer my soul again.

Though far I roam, this thought shall be
My hope, my comfort everywhere;
While such a home remains to me
My heart shall never know despair.

[My feeling is this is autobiographical and refers to those times she was sent away to school and to the period of governessing which she was not alone in hating as an occupation; paid companion was just as bad.]

Lines composed in a wood on a windy day

MY soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

[It's tempting to compare it to her sister Emily's acerbic and grim lines, but that usually ends in seeing Anne as weaker. It's rather she has a different more open voice. This last occurs in Agnes Grey within a moment of hope in the book:]

The Bluebell

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.

Yet I recall not long ago
A bright and sunny day,
‘Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leagues away;

That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed.

Before me rose a lofty hill,
Behind me lay the sea,
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be.

Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.

But when I looked upon the bank
My wandering glances fell
Upon a little trembling flower,
A single sweet bluebell.

Whence came that rising in my throat,
That dimness in my eye?
Why did those burning drops distil -
Those bitter feelings rise?

O, that lone flower recalled to me
My happy childhood’s hours
When bluebells seemed like fairy gifts
A prize among the flowers,

Those sunny days of merriment
When heart and soul were free,
And when I dwelt with kindred hearts
That loved and cared for me.

I had not then mid heartless crowds
To spend a thankless life
In seeking after others’ weal
With anxious toil and strife.

‘Sad wanderer, weep those blissful times
That never may return!’
The lovely floweret seemed to say,
And thus it made me mourn.

A fine selection may be found in Anne Bronte: Agnes Grey and Poems, introd. Anne Smith (Everyman, 1985).

************************

William Turner (1789-1862), Drachenfels (1817)

By contrast, Charlotte’s poems are far more visionary, passionate; they have complicated ethical statements.

Sigh no more-it is a dream
So vivid that it looks like life.

Fast, fast as snow-flakes, fled the legions,
And the heart throbs, the blood runs fast
As gathering in from many regions
Returns the scattered, faded Past.

Under the rubric, “O that word never, December 23rd:”

NOT many years, but long enough to see
No foe can deal such deadly misery
As the dear friend untimely called away
And still the more beloved, the greater still
Must be the aching void, the withering chill
Of each dark night and dim beclouded day.

THE Nurse believed the sick man slept,
     For motionless he lay.
She rose and from the bedside crept
     With cautious step away.

HOW far is night advanced? Oh, when will day
Reveal the vanished outline of my room?
I fear not yet — for not a glimmer grey
Steals through the familiar blank and solid gloom
Which shuts me in — would I could sleep away
The hours — till, skies all flushed with morning’s
     bloom
Shall open clear and red and cheer with light

Like wolf — and black bull or goblin hound,
     Or come in guise of spirit
With wings and long wet waving hair
And at the fire its locks will dry,
     Which will be certain sign
That one beneath the roof must die
     Before the year’s decline.

Forget not now what I have said,
     Sit there till we return.
The hearth is hot-watch well the bread
     Lest haply it may burn.

At first I did attention give,
Observance-deep esteem;
His frown I failed not to forgive,
His smile — a boon to deem.

Attention rose to interest soon,
Respect to homage changed;
The smile became a relived [?] boon,
The frown like grief estranged.

The interest ceased not with his voice,
The homage tracked [?] him near.
Obedience was my heart’s free choice
Whate’ er his mood severe [?].

His praise infrequent — favours rare,
Unruly deceivers [?] grew.
1And too much power a haunting fear
Around his anger threw.

His coming was my hope each day,
His parting was my pain.
The chance that did his steps delay
Was ice in every vein.

I gave entire affection now,
I gave devotion sure
And strong took root and fast did grow
One mighty feeling more.

The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core
     Through my veins with quickened start
     A tide of life did pour.

[A] halo played about the brows
Of life as seen by me,
     And trailing [?] bliss within me rose,
     And anxious ecstacy.

     I dreamed it would be nameless bliss
     As I loved loved to be,
And to this object did I press
     As blind as eagerly.

But wild and pathless was the space
     That lay our lives between,
     And dangerous as the foaming race
Of ocean’s surges green,

     And haunted as a robber path
     Through wilderness or wood,
     For might and right, woe and wrath
     Between our spirits stood.

I dangers dared, I hindrance scorned
     I omens did defy;
     Whatever menaced, harassed, warned
     I passed impetuous by.

On sped my rainbow fast as light,
I flew as in a dream,
     For glorious rose upon my sight
     That child of shower and gleam,

And bright on clouds of suffering dim
     Shone that soft solemn joy.
     I care not then how dense and grim
     Disasters gather nigh.

I care not in this moment sweet,
     Though all I have rushed o’er
Should come on pinion strong and fleet
     Proclaiming vengeance sore.

Hate struck me in his presence down,
     Love barred approach to me,
     My rival’s joy with jealous frown
     Declared hostility.

Wrath leagued with calumny transfused
     Strong poison in his veins
     And I stood at his feet accused
     Of false [ -] strains

Cold as a statue’s grew his eye,
Hard as a rock his brow,
     Cold hard to me-but tenderly
     He kissed my rival now.

She seemed my rainbow to have seized,
     Around her form it closed,
And soft its iris splendour blazed
     Where love and she reposed.

This, The Teacher’s Monologue, shows a working out of painful thought:

The room is quiet, thoughts alone
     People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put off, the long task done,—
     I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. Now, I see,
     For the first time, how soft the day
O’er waveless water, stirless tree,
    &nbps; Silent and sunny, wings its way.
Now, as I watch that distant hill,
     So faint, so blue, so far removed,
Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill,
     That home where I am known and loved:
It lies beyond; yon azure brow
     Parts me from all Earth holds for me;
And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow
     Thitherward tending, changelessly.
My happiest hours, ay! all the time,
     I love to keep in memory,
Lapsed among moors, ere life’s first prime
     Decayed to dark anxiety.

Sometimes, I think a narrow heart
     Makes me thus mourn those far away,
And keeps my love so far apart
     From friends and friendships of to-day;
Sometimes, I think ’tis but a dream
     I treasure up so jealously,
All the sweet thoughts I live on seem
     To vanish into vacancy:
And then, this strange, coarse world around
     Seems all that’s palpable and true;
And every sight and every sound
     Combines my spirit to subdue
To aching grief; so void and lone
     Is Life and Earth—so worse than vain,
The hopes that, in my own heart sown,
     And cherished by such sun and rain
As Joy and transient Sorrow shed,
     Have ripened to a harvest there:
Alas! methinks I hear it said,
     ’Thy golden sheaves are empty air.’
All fades away; my very home
     I think will soon be desolate;
I hear, at times, a warning come
     Of bitter partings at its gate;
And, if I should return and see
     The hearth-fire quenched, the vacant chair;
And hear it whispered mournfully,
    &npsp; That farewells have been spoken there,
What shall I do, and whither turn?
Where look for peace? When cease to mourn?

‘Tis not the air I wished to play,
     The strain I wished to sing;
My wilful spirit slipped away
     And struck another string.
I neither wanted smile nor tear,
     Bright joy nor bitter woe,
But just a song that sweet and clear,
     Though haply sad, might flow.

A quiet song, to solace me
     When sleep refused to come;
A strain to chase despondency
     When sorrowful for home.
In vain I try; I cannot sing;
     All feels so cold and dead;
No wild distress, no gushing spring
     Of tears in anguish shed;

But all the impatient gloom of one
     Who waits a distant day,
When, some great task of suffering done,
     Repose shall toil repay.
For youth departs, and pleasure flies,
     And life consumes away,
And youth’s rejoicing ardour dies
     Beneath this drear delay;

And Patience, weary with her yoke,
     Is yielding to despair,
And Health’s elastic spring is broke
     Beneath the strain of care.
Life will be gone ere I have lived;
     Where now is Life’s first prime?
I’ve worked and studied, longed and grieved,
     Through all that rosy time.

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,—
     Is such my future fate?
The morn was dreary, must the eve
     Be also desolate?
Well, such a life at least makes Death
     A welcome, wished-for friend;
Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith,
      To suffer to the end!

[It's a poem by Charlotte Bronte expressing her real feelings in finding herself among deeply uncongenial people as a teacher in a school of the era, most of them then dedicated to teaching conformity in outward life and "accomplishments" and rote learning to impress others. I like the long opening especially. It falls off in the last two stanzas. I remember how more than ambivalent were the feelings of Jane Eyre about her students in the last part of the famous book, and also the power of the bitterness of Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey. I've been watching Jane Eyre films the past couple of weeks or so (1973 mini-series and again the 1983 one, the 2006 one -- superb that last one too, by a team of women), also Kathryn Hughes's Victorian Governess (how the job search then is like many today, and the experience afterwards too).

I was interested to see that in Chadwyck-Healey, a note told the reader as a matter of course, this is not good poetry. The assumption seemed to be that it's bad because it tells the truth about the very real negative aspects of teaching and social life and depression, loneliness. Maybe too it's not liked because it's what Annie Finch calls "poetess" poetry, a poetry showing dwelling in sensitivity.]

Regret
by Charlotte Brontë

Long ago I wished to leave
“The house where I was born; “
Long ago I used to grieve,
My home seemed so forlorn.
In other years, its silent rooms
Were filled with haunting fears;
Now, their very memory comes
O’ercharged with tender tears.

Life and marriage I have known,
Things once deemed so bright;
Now, how utterly is flown
Every ray of light !
‘Mid the unknown sea of life
I no blest isle have found;
At last, through all its wild wave’s strife,
My bark is homeward bound.

Farewell, dark and rolling deep !
Farewell, foreign shore !
Open, in unclouded sweep,
Thou glorious realm before !
Yet, though I had safely pass’d
That weary, vexed main,
One loved voice, through surge and blast,
Could call me back again.

Though the soul’s bright morning rose
O’er Paradise for me,
William ! even from Heaven’s repose
I’d turn, invoked by thee !
Storm nor surge should e’er arrest
My soul, exulting then:
All my heaven was once thy breast,
Would it were mine again!

[The sadness and isolation from others recall Bronte's Villette. And the longing to be with those who have passed on, so poignant.]

*********

Emily Bronte by Branwell Bronte (the brother who also died young)

This one is said to be by both Emily and Charlotte:

The Visionary

Silent is the house; all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out o’er the snow-wreaths deep;
Wathing every cloud, dreading every breeze
That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees.

Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor;
Nor one shivering gust creeps through pane or door;
The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far:
I trim it well, to be the wanderer’s guiding-star.

Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame;
Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame:
But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know,
What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.

What I love shall come like visitant of air,
Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;
What loves me, no word of mine shall e’er betray,
Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.

Burn, then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear –
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:
He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy.

      (Written 1845, published 1850).

See Selected Bronte Poems, ed. Edward Chitham (Blackwell, 1985).

*******************

The 1983 Jane Eyre with Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane is very good (see The Latest Jane Eyre)

Of course I love their novels too as well as most of the film adaptations thus far. I can’t think of one I don’t like.

There are so many sites, so many books and essays, so much is known that I won’t repeat a potted life once more, but shall confine myself to referring the reader to the Victorian Web for Charlotte; and University of Pennyslvia and the Literary Gothic for Anne. One of the finest biographies is still Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Bronte; Maria Frawley’s Anne Bronte is a gem. A good book which treats Anne as her sisters’ equal: Julie Nash & Barbara A. Suess’s New Approaches to the Art of Anne Bronte. It’s telling to know that George Moore admired Anne Bronte. And don’t miss Daphne DuMaurier’s on The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.

Landscape from Sandy Welch’s 2005 Jane Eyre (On Never Tiring)

Ellen

Jane Eyre
Penguin English Library
Charlotte Brontë
Paperback
ISBN 9780141198859
26 Apr 2012

'It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine... '
Rejected by her guardians and offered cold charity at an orphanage, Jane Eyre has come to rely on her own intelligence and strength of character to guide her through life. But when she becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, working for the gruff Mr Rochester, she finds a man who may be her equal - and a secret that threatens to destroy them both.
Published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, Jane Eyre enthralled and appalled readers with its passionate, defiant heroine. It remains a novel of unparalleled narrative grip, vivid imagery and naked emotional power.

Focus on Jane Eyre
Philip McCarthy
Paperback
Greenwich Exchange Ltd
ISBN-13: 9781906075606
01/05/2012

In this Focus study of Jane Eyre, a number of central ideas are considered, including the appeal of the Cinderella story the conflict between nature and control and the discontent of women in a society dominated by men.

Doing Mr. Rochester 
Kinking the Classics
Mandy Fontain
Length: 21 pages (estimated)

What happens when the characters from our classics go modern and meets erotica? This series is going to find out!
Jane has been the live in au pair for the Rochesters for over a year now and her hunger for the master of the house is getting out of hand.
And tonight, with the annual Rochester house party in full swing, things are about to get sexed up...
Doing Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre) is an erotic title seeped in sexy content.
This series if not for the faint of heart, contains explicit language, age play and kinky sex all round!
For readers +18 only.

Cleopatra by Gustave Moreau

Painting of the Day Archive

Rose at 5.30. 6.30 out with G., & drew by the Ποταμὸς bridge. (Calabrians have a boat here, ― a company sent by Primo Pignatelli to search for Liquorice root.[)] Returning at 8.30 ― met Dr. Sansoni, & back with him to Ἅγιος Νάσσος ποῦ ἥτον ἐφολῆ,[1] & a giving away of boiled wheat & sweetmeats, some to us. Then we went to a higher point, where I drew again ― for the views are lovely. Finally ― we returned at 11.15. At 12 ― Colazione, at the end of the long Gallery, Sig. & Sig.ra Sansoni & I: pleasant & rational. The lovely distance recalls many far away days. ― At 1. drew a “femmina,” in Λευκίμμη costume. Ἑφανήθη[2] also, the Doctor’s mother; [] a pleasant old lady, [fever] suffering. After wh. ― I returned & slept till 3.30.

At 4 ― walked to the Gallery, & drew [ezidionety][3] till after sunset ―: the long brim of mountains, & 2ndly the northern view of S. Salvador &c. ―. ― Coversation for ½ an hour ― poi dinner. I wish they would not bring out various wines ― as one or two are enough: howbeit tonight there was port ― beyond all belief execrable & wholly undrinkable ― Which I said ― & did not try to drink it. These are warmhearted folk.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Have you ever heard the story of how Lewis Carroll inspired the career of Staten Island photographer Alice Austen? I thought not. Read all about it in Alice Austen’s Amazing Adventures in The Wonderland of Staten Island on the official website of “The Forgotten History of Staten Island.”

Before you get too worried about what else you might have missed in your studies of the great man, check out some of the other unexpected tales on the website, all purportedly the work of Dr. D. I. Kniebocker (Staten Island’s self-described “greatest historian”). The website has been created by questioning historian Ed Weiss, who also coordinated related installations and readings around Staten Island last year. And remember, as Voltaire is supposed to have said, “History can be well written only in a free country.”

A new an interesting book which sheds light about the many uses of books (beyond just reading them) in Victorian times:

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain
Leah Price
Cloth: ISBN: 9780691114170
eBook: ISBN: 9781400842186
Princeton University Press
2012
360 pp.

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap?
Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading.
Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.

"Price does an excellent job in explaining the how and why of books during the era by discussing how the readers perceived themselves (men read newspapers to learn world events while women read novels that kept them away from their daily chores), the economical and social status of owning, reading or reciting books and how printed paper was mostly thrown away during the era."--Conny Crisalli, BookPleasures.com

Endorsements:

"Beautifully written, this superb book gives us a magnificent study of the social lives of books and texts in the Victorian period: their uses as missiles, doorstops, food wrapping, spouse-ignoring devices, and vehicles for individuation, spiritual development, and childlike wonder and delight. A joy to read."--Elaine Freedgood, New York University

"This timely and witty book is more than a shrewd look at the social lives of book-objects and their users, and a reconstruction of the protocols organizing that use. It also provides, gloriously, a new interpretation of the Victorian novel."--Deidre Lynch, University of Toronto

"Price has written an exceptional book of literary history that stretches the boundaries of what literary history means and does. Making her argument through an astonishing range of evidence about the uses of books, paper, and printed material in the nineteenth century, she shows that reading is not the only thing to do with books, either as objects or as historical evidence. A remarkable work."--Nicholas Dames, Columbia University

Isabella and the Pot of Basil by John White Alexander

Painting of the Day Archive

Slept well, yet I think some heaviness proceeds from the air. At 5.30 ― (why do they put cinnamon in their coffe? ―) G. & I & Dimitri ― a well-behaved obliging χωριάτης[1] ― went out. Lovely bits of green sward or fern ― with beautiful olives ― characteristic bits of Lefchimo scenery, we passed, ―― & so reached the cypress tuffy hill of Ἄγιος Ταξιάρχης, by 7, or 6.30: where I drew 3 or 4 times. The “cypress tree” is here smisuratamente[2] existing: & thousands of tiny little cypress treelets pick up everywhere. At 9.30 we went “cross country” ― to Ἄ. Νικόλα, where we lunched ― but Χωρὶς νερὸ.[3] So I remain under the shade of a giant Εχινάρι a Lentish tree. There is everywhere a flood of gold & green & blue. This, & the breeze, blowing freshly now & then, remind me of days in many lands before that knowledge came which tells us we have so little, & so much conjecture. On Swiss, & Como hills in 1837 ― in the first years of Rome & Amalfi life /38,/9 ― the long Civitella sojourns ― 1839-40 ―  Abruzzo 43-44 ― Sicily & Greece,ˇ[47] 48/49. ― I do not now suppose that kind of happiness can ever come back but by unexpected & unsought snatches; so I do not strive after it, nor mourn that I cannot have it. Only now & then, the whole long stream of bright ˇ[past] life glitters before me as it was in a distant valley, & I can seem to mark all its windings & shallows, & the lights & shadows on its far distant shores. Just now the lilac range of Albanian mountains with the few pale but defined clouds above, the blue sky & far deeper blue sea: the long ― almost blue plain of [distant] Ilias, & the still dark heavy full cypresses close by  ― all bring back old memories. ― (What excessive contrast there is between the bloo-blooness of the sea & lilac hills, & the rich raw Sienna green of those Cypresses! ―) afterwards ― drew twice, & then to the hill of Ἀνάλειψις, & drew till 6: after which fogs begin & out of door life is fever. This Ἀνάλειψις view is the most pleasing hereabouts, & were there well-drawn figures, it would be beautiful, ― at sunset especially ― when the mountains, by means of many detail=shadows, lose much of their wall-like form.

“Home” at 6.20; Ἔφθασε ὁ Ιἀτρὸς:[4] to whom, & the [sost] ιἀτρόσ,[5] ― showed all my sketches. Dr. Samuello theological, (οὐ ἂντι-theological)[6] discussions were a wee-violent. The small boy Spiro’s queer ways were taking & amusing. It seems I stay here tomorrow ― en famille: ― Sparterò on Monday. Clomò Tuesday.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Apress release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Exhibition of costumes from Jane Eyre

3 May – 20 September 2012

Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth

An exhibition of the costumes from the recent film adaptation of Jane Eyre has gone on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire. The film, which was released in 2011, starred Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Dame Judi Dench and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design at last year’s Academy Awards. The film’s costume designer, Michael O’Connor, previously won an Oscar for his work on the 2009 film The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.

The exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum features outfits worn by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, as well as other members of the cast including Jamie Bell as St John Rivers and Sally Hawkins as Aunt Reed. The costumes have been loaned from NBCUniversal Archives & Collections in the USA and will be on display in the period rooms of the museum until Thursday 20 September.

Arts Officer Jenna Holmes says:

“Michael O’Connor created a beautiful set of costumes for the film, using original techniques of making from the 1840s, and with real attention to detail right down to his choice of fabric, stitches and thread. It is a real privilege to see these items up close and we know that the exhibition will be very popular with our visitors. When we unpacked a pair of Jane Eyre’s cotton boots it was amazing to see how closely they resemble Charlotte Brontë’s boots in our collection – although the film’s version does come in a larger size!”

The exhibition takes place as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s Contemporary Arts Programme, which is supported by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Arts Council England.

Fair Is My Love by Edwin Austin Abbey

Painting of the Day Archive

Time Out Hong Kong interviews Andrea Arnold, whose take on Wuthering Heights opens on May 17th there.

For most of your film, Heathcliff and Cathy are just kids. Were you most interested in them as youngsters? When I came on board, there was a script that had them changing into adults after about 15 minutes. But I thought their childhood was important in the book, and it makes sense as they’re punching each other and fighting. If they’re 28, it’s ridiculous. I also felt their childhood said a lot about their relationship as adults. For Heathcliff, it’s the time he always wanted to go back to. It’s when he was most happy.
Did you decide very quickly that Heathcliff should be black? Very early on. He’s from Liverpool, and Liverpool was a big slave port at the time. Also when you read his descriptions in the book, it’s clear he’s not white-skinned. I wanted to honour his difference. If I look at descriptions of him in the book, I wonder if he wasn’t a Romany Gypsy? They are originally from Asia and I did start casting in Yorkshire looking for Romany Gypsy lads, and after a while I decided what was important was his difference, and not being so truthful to the book. (Dave Calhoun) (Read more)

Coincidentally, The Music reports that the film will be screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival (6-17 June).

The San Antonio Current begins as follows a review of the movie Girl in Progress by Patricia Riggen:

It's a term every high school freshman English class has covered since teachers started passing out copies of The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird. Whether reading Charlotte Brontë's original novel Jane Eyre or watching director Cary Fukunaga's dark and elegant film adaptation from last year, the coming-of-age story has outlined the transition from childhood to adulthood for a countless number of literary and cinematic characters over generations. Adding itself into the already crowded film genre is Girl in Progress, a sort of meta coming-of-age tale that attempts to stand out from the pack by making its lead protagonist self-aware of her own maturation. (Kiko Martínez)

The Kapi-Mana News (New Zealand) reviewer hasn't liked Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

There's a fine line between a passionate young woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a self-righteous and bad-tempered girl.
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has the first type of heroine, and Margot Livesey's latest novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy - based on Jane Eyre - has the latter.
When retelling any story - let alone a much- loved classic - the author has to tread carefully between being faithful to the characters and taking creative licence to give an old story new life.
Unfortunately, in this retelling, the author fails. The events of the original book are retold slavishly, yet Livesey's characters are shallow imitations of the vibrant people who live in the pages of Jane Eyre.
The truly odd parts - such as Mr Rochester's secret - have been changed. I can understand the author doing this - some parts of Jane Eyre are nearly unbelievable. But to change a major part of the book, you need to change it to something equally compelling - and Livesey doesn't.
Gemma, the main character, annoyed me. She didn't hold a candle to Jane Eyre. While her time at school was interesting - and a rare attempt from the author to deviate from Brontë's original storyline - after the school section, the story just went downhill. [...]
If I had read this simply as a chick lit book, despite its faults, I might have thought it was OK. It is OK. It's not great, it's not terrible.
But as a retelling of a great classic romance, it fails. (Ruth Farrell)

Another book reviewed: John Iving's In One Person by the Washington Post:

And like Dickens, Irving sets a stage filled with irresistible and sometimes irresistibly bizarre characters.
The first is an “austerely formal” town librarian named Miss Frost with hypnotizing breasts. She becomes one of the inappropriate objects of Billy’s desire and the guide to his literary tastes. Alarmed by the school physician, who claims that homosexual “afflictions” must be treated aggressively, Billy asks Miss Frost if she can recommend “any novels about young people who have . . . dangerous crushes.” She leads him to “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre,” “Tom Jones” and “Great Expectations,” hardly what the 13-year-old expected, but not as surprising as what she eventually reveals in the basement of the library. (Don’t ask, don’t tell!) (Ron Charles)

Wired's Underwire highlights the importance of fan fiction.

Paracosms are the fantasy worlds that many dreamy, imaginative kids like to invent when they’re young. Some of history’s most creative adults had engaged in “worldplay” as children. The Brontë siblings, in one famous example, concocted paracosms so elaborate that they documented them with meticulous maps, drawings, and hundreds of pages of encyclopedic writing.
It now appears that, like the Brontës, kids who engage in paracosmic play are more likely to be creative as adults. In 2002 researchers Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein conducted an elegant study. They polled recipients of MacArthur genius grants — which reward those who’ve been particularly creative in areas as diverse as law, chemistry, and architecture — to see if they’d created paracosms as children. Amazingly, the MacArthur fellows were twice as likely as “normal” nongeniuses to have done so. Some fields were particularly rife with worldplayers: Fully 46 percent of the recipients polled in the social sciences had created paracosms in their youth. (Clive Thompson)

Shelf Actualization has a Literary Death Match: Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights. Susycottage (in Italian) announces two weeks devoted to the Brontë sisters. Tras la lluvia literaria posts in Spanish about Jane Eyre while I Probably Liked It and Cinema Monogatari write about Jane Eyre 1944 and 2006 respectively. Pareidolias has written a poem about the Brontës in Spanish.

Jane Austen loved games and a good laugh. Had she lived today in the U.S.A., she would most likely have been a listener of NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” a talk show in which the weekly news is rehashed in a humorous format. Each week the radio show features a segment called Bluff [...]

The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today (ISSN 2049-3215) invites contributors to submit scholarly papers (8,000-10,000 or 3500-4000 words), ideas for book reviews, exhibition reviews, news and events, titles of publications and projects in progress, and creative work and abstracts related to John Ruskin and related nineteenth-century scholarship. Scholarly papers should be submitted at least six to eight months in advance to allow for the refereeing and revisions process.

The Eighth Lamp is an online and double blind refereed journal published by Rivendale Press, UK. It is led and managed by Dr Anuradha Chatterjee (Founding Editor and Co-Editor), Lecturer in History and Theory in Architecture and Design, University of Tasmania, and Dr Laurence Roussillon-Constanty (Co-Editor), Senior Lecturer in English, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France. The journal is also complemented by a ten-strong Editorial Board that provides intellectual and pedagogical support and leadership to the journal. It is part of The Oscholars group of journals (www.oscholars.com) edited
by David Charles Rose.

The scope of The Eighth Lamp is multidisciplinary and it welcomes submissions related to art, religion, historiography, social criticism, tourism, economics, philosophy, science, architecture, photography, preservation, cinema, and theatre. The Oscholars site has a monthly audience of over 45,000. The journal is circulated to over 100 scholars and academics internationally. The journal is listed in key Victorian studies and nineteenth century literature, culture, and visual studies forums. Previous issues of The Eighth Lamp can be accessed via the following link: http://www.oscholars.com/Ruskin/index.htm.

Please email submissions directly to the editors at theeighthlamp@gmail.com.

• Collecting India: the development of private and museum collections devoted to Indian materials in Britain or on the subcontinent.
• Creating geography: cultural, historical, economic and other forms of “mapping” India in the nineteenth century.
•  Foreign exchange: Indian commodities in Britain; British commodities in India.
• The linguistic atlas: the teaching and learning of languages, classical and vernacular, in India and the teaching and learning of Indian languages in Britain.
• Constructing canons: what literary texts written in nineteenth-century India have entered the canon of British literature?
• What’s missing? How do the politics of reception shape the contours of the canons of anglophone and translated texts?
• Material texts: technologies, economies and practices of publishing materials relating to India.
• Visual vocabularies: representing the subcontinent in visual media.
• Reproducing, displaying, and circulating visual images of India.
• Genre and empire: how do different genres—poems, novels, stories, music hall performance, theatre—create Victorian India for British and/or Indian audiences.
• World music: the impact of Indian arts on British culture in the nineteenth-century and vice versa.
• Translation: literal and figurative dimensions of translating Indian languages in the long nineteenth century; translations from English into Indian languages in the period.
• Making history: British historiographies of India; Indian historiographies and histories in the nineteenth century.
• Transperipheral relations: among various colonies, “internal” and external; India-Britain-North America connections, etc.

Send inquiries to Mary Ellis Gibson, megibson@uncg.edu.  Completed papers should be formatted according to MLA style and submitted electronically in Word format to megibson@uncg.edu, no later than October 15, 2012.  A hard copy is not required but would be appreciated for submissions originating in the U.S.  Submit two paper copies along with electronic text to Mary Ellis Gibson, Elizabeth Rosenthal Professor of English, Department of English, 3143 MHRA, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC 27412.

Slept well. No fleas. G. is in anteroom. Rose at 4.30 coffee. Off 5.30 ― with G. & a guide, Dimitri. Heavy mist on all places ― plain & hills: wild paths, & flat desert-like spots: sandy walk by seaside.

Inland to S. Procopius ― a picturesque little monastery. beautiful olives. Hills near Sea, Capo Bianco[.] Solitary. Goats & dogs ― capo bianco ― drew. Mantis. fine ravine. ― At monastery of Ἀκροδείλιον by 9.30. Wonderful grove of Cypresses: drew a good deal: lovely day. Lunch. & drew ―. At 2 ― after various sketches began to go homeward. Walked down the hill, [][1]. By beautiful [][2] ― to Ἄ Προκόπιος ― a wonderfully pretty specimen of rural Gk. Monastery. To the sea thence, & bathed, & so by sand & hilly undulations ― back to Μελίχια to the Casa Κυροῦ by 6. This house & family reminds me of Abruzzi days. Dr. Samuelli dined, & nothing could be more pleasant than the whole matter ― save that they asked me to eat too much.

However I was too tired to be as polite as I ought to be. Bed at 9.30. The Dr. goes to town tomorrow.

---

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

an excellently-meant, elegantly-written Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura’s passage down the American River, is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she does — Letter 91, Mon-Tues, 11-12 Oct 1813

Simon Brett’s 20th century illustration of Richardson’s Clarissa — harassed from within and without

Dear friends and readers,

As I remarked, I have not given up on my project of reading Austen’s letters, but rather mean to go about it differently. First, I decided before trying to ascertain what (if any) general value Austen’s highly partisan comments on her rival novelists might have, I should be sure and read the specific works she condemns. While working on the proofs of Sense and Sensibility, she writes (Letter 72, Tues, 30 April 1811), Austen comments on Brunton’s novel in a less abruptly vehement & partisan manner, with more frankness than usual:

We have tried to get Self-contoul, but in vain. — I should like to know what her Estimate is but am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever — & of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled

H. J. Jackson begins a Times Literary Supplement article (April 5, 2006) by telling us:

Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, was a serious collector of books and prints in her own right. Surely the only British queen ever to have learnt how to set type, she also set an intellectual example to the ladies of the kingdom. The sale catalogue of her library, auctioned by Christie’s in June and July 1819, included over 500 lots of prints and drawings and almost 5,000 of books, organized by subject; theology alone took three-and-a-half days to clear. While it is interesting to see just what the Queen and her daughters might have been reading (in English, French, Italian and of course German) on sundry topics in religion, law and history, the student of literature is naturally drawn to the pages that list plays, poetry and novels, and in this last category it is surprising to find two titles most of us have never heard of listed under the name of Jane Austen.

They were Self-Control and Discipline, both by Mary Brunton. Discipline has been repeatedly compared to Emma whose story line is close; Self-Control is strongly like Sense and Sensibility but has plot-designs like parts of Mansfield Park and Emma.

Well, Brunton is very like and very different from Austen. The central drive of the book is to tell the story of Laura Montreville, a young woman, heroine, erotically drawn to an immoral, cruel, and often stupid and distasteful man, Villiers Hargrave. Laura is physically so drawn to him that she bonds intensely and only when she discovers that he impregnated a married woman, dueled with that woman’s husband, and has no remorse and taken no responsibility for the woman whatsoever does she throw off her deep emotional engagement with him, and not even then. The plot-design is also structured on his male possessiveness; Hargrave wants her and if he cannot have her, no one else will. She becomes as a symbol the repository of his respect and pride, and by the end of the novel he is stalking her, ready to murder her and her alternative partner, Montague de Courcy, a Mr Knightley type, rather than give her up. Her sexual state of intense hidden longing is not so different from several Austen heroines (Marianne Dashwood, Jane Fairfax, Fanny Price); what is different is the frankness with which the themes are treated, the conscious and articulate language used to characterize Laura and the others characters nuance and by nuance. It is an original book insofar as the reflections are concerned. Freud before the imposition of moral readings and intense religious judgements are thrown off. Like Austen Brunton uses the ordinary language of everyday life, and for the most part tries to stay within the boundaries of common sense happenings, however dire the economic situation of her heroines becomes. (Her second novel, Discipline, also brings her heroine near destitution.)

It’s somehow indicative to me that the two long academic style essays that analyze Brunton’s novels both look at them from the point of view of business and the city (Sharon Alker on Brunton and “commerce”; Martha Musgrove, Brunton and the cityh); come up with the idea that the heroines show themselves to be assertive and coping very well insofar as they can. It’s an early 21st century form of avoiding the central subject which is tabooed even today and where the heroine’s behavior is not easily exemplary at all. It is true that Scot novels show this kind of exploration of city versus townL You find it on Oliphant and Ferrier. But for Oliphant at least the erotic story is much sidelined; the central story is the loss of a business in Hester (Oliphant’s most read English novel). She did see herself as writing in a Scots milieu. She apparently compared her depiction of Edinburgh to Walter Scott’s, wrote Joanna Baillie she was exploring the passions as Baillie had only in a different genre.

The short essay published in the Times Literary Supplement by H.J. Jackson cited above is closer to the mark: Self-control is heavily indebted to Richardson’s Clarissa and Burney’s Cecilia and the two further novels delve this erotic and intensely psychological examination of sexuality further. In McKerrow’s biography, she says Brunton lost her nerve momentarily but it was too late to recall Self-Control and so Brunton defended it to friend: what does she defend: the heroine’s continued intense attachment to Hargrave. She says it’s not unnatural at all. In the era the way moralists repressed such topic and frank treatment of them is to insists on an ideal of decorum which would prevent talking of such subjects, and a norm of plausibility which would deny that people feel or act these ways.

Self-Control does reveal why so many say of Austen’s novels they are gentle and retreating and light. There is no scene in anywhere of all Austen where we see someone try to seduce a girl directly, come at her physically and pressure her. There is no scene of abrasive encounter in the streets (Davies adds this in 2007 NA in Bath). All sorts of hard everyday occurrences are described or dramatized in Brunton. Real desperate poverty or cheating: Laura’s father, naive fool, has bought he thought an annuity for his daughter; he has yet to face up to the reality the man took the money and never bought any stock and he is being put off like the characters are in Dickens Circumlocution office (or we would be today).
In all sorts of incidents this is a realer novel, Miss Austen. Including the cruelty of the mother to the daughter before she died that is not ogre like: Laura’s mother was a dense materialist, bully, who saw in her daughter the sensitive type and took it out on her in chastisement and outright hitting. Thank Lady Luck she dies — after making her husband’s life a misery too and overspending (a realer Mrs Churchill here).

Hargrave actually directly tries to push Laura into having sex with him. Her horror and fear and repulsion is not unreal given her background and what she would pay were she to have given in (the “infamy” she speaks of would destroy her life as she is now living it), but her reaction is over-the-top. She so rejects Hargrave that it becomes unreal, ludicrous. I speculate this is the kind of improbability Austen saw “everywhere.” Especially when she’s broke, her father near death and then dead. Austen’s non-heroines cave in everywhere for financial need but they do it off-stage, we are told about it from afar: from Charlotte to Mrs Clay. Or they are foolish and don’t see what’s in front of them, or are amoral, from Lydia to Maria Crawford (who Austen writes a venomous paragraph about when she marries Rushworth). Brunton’s characters who are virtuous behave with improbable idealisms. But then Austen does not try her heroines so explicitly and hard.

These kinds of scenes are not what is original in the fiction, not making us see what was not dramatized by women of this class before. What Brunton has in mind is a Clarissa-Lovelace scenario (Christy you must put everything down and read Clary next): basically in stilted and uncomfortable language but yet there fully Brunton shows us that Laura is intensely erotically attracted to Hargrave and afraid that if she marries him, she will become abject to him because of the sexual possession he will exert over her, and her sexual needs. This is why Clarissa refuses to marry Lovelace: marriage will be the seal of corruption, the coffin top locking her into abjection to an immoral cruel man. Clarissa foresees she would allow Lovelace even to beat her rather than lose him. Brunton does not want her heroine raped, indeed she cannot bear to have her lose any virginity at all, even of the vague type of sexual experience we are to imagine Marianne and Willoughby, Jane Fairfax and Frank or even that paragon Anne Elliot with Frank Wentworth may have known as engaged or semi-engaged couples (touching, kissing). So like Burney (the same kind of inhibition) she brings her heroine to the brink and improbably calls the man off. He does not proceed. At the same time she wants to show the Knightley figure, Montague de Courcy, is not attractive to Laura. I have to admit this falls into the idea women like to be with mean rough men, like rough sex, but that’s not fair to the speifics. It’s that Laura has genuine erotic feelings and longings for both men, but more for Hargrave, partly because he came on the scene first.

The passionate but good man: Gilbert Markham (Toby Stevens, 1996 BBC Tenant of Wildfell Hall)

His rival, Arthur Huntington (Rupert Graves) whom Helen (Tara Fitzgerald) has married out of erotic enthrallment

Brunton shows what Austen keeps off-stage again and again and it’s riveting and yet presented in these old-fashioned terms. Religion is specifically woven in; it’s made part of the heroine’s moral motivations and thinking only much less skillfully and tactfully than say Anne Bronte. (The insight behind this book is the same as in Tenant of Wildfell Hall — why the heroine is allured by the “bad” man.) She explores the same areas as Austen, her paradigms are even at times literally close, but she then goes on to really penetrate the territory. Poverty, the complexity of psychological motivations. She also has ironic undercutting of literary formula.

One improbability is Laura’s rejecting marriage to Hargrave. Even if he tried to seduce her, and mortified and humiliated by such conduct, and would be an immoral husband, would she in her desperate state, with her father needing money refuse to marry him and make the kind of speeches she does. She’d cave – the way Mrs Clay does to Mr Elliot and so many of the non-virgin non-heroine Austen characters do.

There is a kind of closeness in theme and intimacy. Laura is a kind of Marianne Dashwood very much sympathized with: she’s got to learn self-control. There are incidents which are closely parallel to incidents in other of the Austen books beyond S&S: a saving from drowning like that of Jane Fairfax. It anticipates Anna Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the heroine’s trying to make money by painting and selling her paintings. The psychological astuteness is very good — much better in its nuances and language than say Radcliffe. I do think Austen would have seen these as her rival. Nothing gothic about them. The characters really pass days visiting and walking and talking.

The difference is a matter of tact. Austen knows how to hide improbabilities and hers may be said to be the large ones — like Darcy turning up to a country assembly in the way he does, marrying someone like Elizabeth, being quite as grave and apparently sexually reticent and contained (the apparently virginal Mr Knightley is a character taken further in this direction since we see him more intimately.

The religious talk is explicit and interwoven. Byron had read enough of the novel (in 1810 he was still very much a part of the Scottish world) to term it filled with “religious cant.” Brunton is really driven to make sure her heroine makes no overt sexual gesture, not even to Montague de Courcy. There is no religious talk in Austen’s novels (as there is no spiritual sublime as in Radcliffe). It is however not nagging, not pompous and not directed at the reader Elizabeth (Hamilton scolds and Hannah More threatens the reader), rather another mode of explanation justifying Laura the heroine’s conduct at moments and that of the good virtuous characters. It is striking how secular Austen is in comparison (the same holds true for Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, Inchbald, and most of the male writers of this era of novels).

Since I have no religious beliefs whatsoever (thorough atheist), I probably dismiss much of the religious talk. I can take it with better equanimity than the intrusions of didacticism in Hamilton and More because they are woven into the psychological moments and are part of the spirit in distress; as someone might make a character project a terror or ghost. Clarissa is another matter; I’ve studied it and am with those who take Richardson’s belief system to be (like Prevost’s tellingly) fideist. That’s quite different from evangelical Christianity of the later 18th century type which I take Brunton to be — anticipating the Brontes here too.

But it’s understandable for the author cannot quite face what she is doing the way Richardson or more secular novelists can. One of the reasons it reminds me of the Brontes is this religious Protestant strain combined with this intense exploration of the erotic. She’s earlier than the Brontes and more evangelical. Her books were likened to More’s as well as Austen’s.

At the same time there’s this paradox: Brunton really clearly articulates say the complex motives, or really shows us explicitly she is making fun and why, really brings home the mechanisms of capitalism. Now Austen rarely does this and we are left to attribute to her this complex of understanding. But we do not know it’s there and when we come to read her letters her way of talking about people can be embarrassing, narrow, unfair, very very rarely does she at all bring out a complexity of views and then only at a distance. Austen thus remains readable and can be read in modern terms because she just suggests and does not treat directly. We can assume what we would like because there is a genuine humanity and decency at the core of Austen’s ethics and we extrapolate out from that but we do not know at all that she applies it.

I’m not sure why Austen excluded so much experience that even belonged to her stories: that is to say, are part of female everyday experience. Bronte called her passionless for doing this; my view is 1) she intuitively or instinctively didn’t bring up or marginalized central aspects of women’s life at home, courtship because she was brought up that way, and she did steer clear of violence and open sex; 2) she was an unmarried woman and knew it’d hurt her reputation, and 3) her relatives would have stopped her from publishing (as perhaps they did Lady Susan). I suspect most of the time it was the first, but also the 3rd played into it.We have so few manuscripts and yet among them a long paragraph about how her mother was offended by Persuasion because the authority figure Lady Russell was questioned. A second piece of evidence is that beautiful fair copy of Lady Susan. I’ve seen that sort of thing before — many times in the Renaissance. Women longed to reach people with their writing and you find them literally imitating books. I continue to read her. But it is a paradox and shows us why in her era people like Smith, Radcliffe and the others were more valued.

Her fame and reputation and cult begin with the James-Edward Austen-Leigh
framing.

*****************************

Harassed hounded by her landlady, Clary (Saskia Wickham), attempting to flee, is arrested on the street for debt (1991 BBC Clarissa)

The last third of the book continues to hold me, but not quite as well in the first two-thirds. What happens is Brunton continually rehearses the Lovelace-typology in Hargrave and has him again and again assail Mary oops! — Laura, this time through her aunt. What interests Brunton is not so much Hargrave versus Laura, but Laura versus Lady Pelham and unlike Clarissa, where the interest is in the general family aggrandizement perspective versus marriage for love/affection/companionship and a woman’s right to say no to a corrupt man who will corrupt her (the perspective of Mansfield Park), but the two women, with the powerful one tormenting (Brunton’s word) and harassing the woman in her power. Laura does have an allowance now but she has spent it partly on Lady Pelham’s disiherited hated daughter and must wait to save and then flee to Scotland.

For women of the era this powerful woman who preys on the powerless sensitive one is a burning trope — it’s how they experienced violation, misery, and society’s inflictions. Austen has not just her Mrs Norris, but Lady Susan who terrorizes Fredericka for a time. Elizabeth’s defiance of Lady Catherine is after all easy since Lady Catherine has no authority over her — or Darcy for that matter

To her credit, Brunton carries on explicit analysis of nuances in ways Austen does not go near, and this does question authority figures and expose them. She revels in landscape and we have visits to houses very like the one to Pemberly. De Courcy is about to marry his dependent sister off, and we see her compromise in marrying a man she only likes somewhat, who is older than she but is a good man and will care for her. The sub-story reminds me of Elizabeth Gaskell’s sub-stories in Wives and Daughters as the whole trajectory of the book and mood seems half-way between Austen and Ann Bronte.

Hargrave has a gambling friend who means to live off Hargrave and the idea that once Hargrave marries Laura (if he can manage it), Hargrave will tire of her and go back to gaming. Shades of Henry Crawford who we are to feel would have tired of Fanny once he had her. Gambling is an bad vice in Tenant of Wildfell Hall. So too drink — but Brunton will not go that far and Austen drops that reality after the Juvenilia.

I do like these moral fictions. For that’s what this is — women’s issues and experiences. I was reminded of Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding’s The art of Ingeniously Tormenting, one of these books whose genre is hard to classify. Women read it it droves (as they did in our time GWTW and recently Byatt’s Possession and some of Margaret Atwood and Drabble’s novels: Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, Surfacing; Needle’s Eye, Waterfall, Seven Sisters, the Jigsaw Puzzle memoir).

Brunton’s may fall off for others for other reasons, but for me this last part of the novel is less original. I realize it’s a burning issue for women of this era but it is not for me. I am not subject to an older woman in this way. For women today there is an escape from mothers, mother-in-laws, aunts, women you work for as companions. The first part of the book was highly original not just in its realistic kind of slant (Austen’s) and going farther than this but in its daring and penetration. Here we are back with the paradigm of Clary, anticipating the last part of MP where Austen also falls back on it.

It is a story of self-control and denial; they retain control over that much desired “rose” (their virginity; they don’t go all the way).

The very last part of the book shows her re-working conventoinal paradigms showing her heroine rising above these — when she is not drawn into debt I don’t think it’s a matter of probability but showing heroine’s strength; ditto when she is not drawn off to a lone place to be harassed.

We are given a series of rounds of Hargrave’s harassments and Laura’s inability to push him away partly because her aunt is on his side shows him stalking her. He is willing to murder her rather than she be the wife of de Courcy. He hates her at some level is made explicit. Austen called it improbable; this is the weapon used against this kind of story and Brunton’s problem is she does not resort to the Clarissa like gothic. When the aunt tries to trick Laura away, Laura finds out. When the aunt colludes in trying to put Laura into debtor’s prison, Laura is not out of her wits and remembers to call a lawyer and insists on her rights and escapes this. When they try to trick her into playing cars and getting into debt, her principles are against it. In each instance in a gothic novel we’d be whisked into another realm, not here. It does make the paradigm obsession transparent. The fights over money are kept quite specific, with specific sums and Laura reminds me of Elinor Dashwood at the close when she decides (despite the advice of Montague that they don’t need any of her aunt’s money) to keep 2000 pounds and give the rest to the proper heir (a daughter Lady Pelham hated and wants to disinherit). She has worked earlier to make ends meet in London.

I have no easy demonstration of this but I suggest that last one half-wild phase (which Austen lights upon to ridicule) where Laura escapes Hargrave by getting into a boat and risking her life over a fall is an religious allegory; God or providence is on Laura’s side. The whole of that last sequence is half-mad and reminds me of Cecilia. The heroine tells us under the harassment of her aunt (she does not use that word but it’s what she means) she blanks out, she has these periods of just sitting there and doesn’t remember what is happening, has nightmares and that is just before this final sequence.

Infamy and shame are central too. At the close where she feels her reputation is in shreds, Hargrave finally dies and writes a letter vindicating her innocence and so the last page and one half, she marries de Courcy and lives with him in retired contentment ever after. But to describe the novel (the way many do) as about this without making it clear how tacked on that is, is to misrepresent it. Brunton’s last novel, Emmeline, is apparently about a young couple who have undergone a divorce (the woman) and now marry. They have defied the taboo and now tried to live unto themselves. They find they are miserable; they cannot take the loss of respect everywhere and cannot find enough in one another without preying on one another.

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The intensely in love Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) writing, thinking, looking at the audience (2007 ITV Persuasion)

To conclude by situating Self-Control generally: it exists somewhere between Austen and the Brontes. Brunton is developing the English tradition and keeping away from the subversive of the gothic and away from the Catholic (French) or radical Enlightenment and yet her interest or subject is the same. Without meaning to she makes a telling contrast to the French novels of the period, far more than the decorous Austen. Brunton makes an instructive comparison with the English novel in general by other women (Smith, Edgeworth, Austen) and the French novels of this era (Genlis, Cottin). Brunton’s book is quite a ride though. Beyond novels, she also has some plays: Moore’s Gamester and depictions of older women in plays of the era.

Brunton herself seems to have no knowledge of the French novels in Self-Control, no references to Rousseau which is telling. Austen did have that knowledge, did know the French, was herself a far more secular writer as was Smith, Edgeworth, Inchbald (a Catholic), Burney. For me the closest in tone and effect to Austen’s quiet is Charriere’s brief novella; the closest in character types and stories are found in Burney. The subjectivity is yet another version of the kind of thing one finds in Inchbald and Radclfffe — they either do not or cannot see as readily clearly what they are showing as Brunton can. And all these women were either French or influenced by the French.

I can see that Austen would see this as her rival and wants to dismiss it. It’s not the closest thing to her type texts that exists in this era; but I can see why Self-Control might be attributed to Austen (which it was).

Finally, as I read I compared it to Trollope’s powerful Clarissa-type tragic novella, Linda Tressel. Linda is destroyed by the hounding of her aunt, which feels truer in many ways. The harassments are not tricks, but incessant berating, and it makes more sense of it. Trollope’s mother/aunt is someone drives the girl this way because she hates her to have sexual fulfillment or any measure of power or control. Resents it deeply.

Ellen

Auditions for a production of Jane Eyre. The Musical begin today, May 9, in Rocky Hill, CT:

AUDITIONS
adults and children
all roles open
for the Broadway musical

Jane Eyre

May 9 & 11
6:30pm for children (5-15)
7:15-8:30pm for adults
(16 and over)
at the Rocky Hill Community Center 761 Old Main Street
Rocky Hill, CT

You will be required to sing any song you choose and read from the script.
Accompanist will be provided.

Call 860-563-3471 or email with questions

Flag Of Truce by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Painting of the Day Archive

The Spenborough Guardian has a short article on the recent Luddite recreations at Red House.

THE turbulent times of the early 19th century were recreated at Red House on Sunday.
The event was held at the Gomersal museum to mark the bicentenary of the attack at Cartwright Mills in Liversedge in April 1812, in which two Luddites were killed.
Visitors met a ‘Luddite’ and a ‘mill owner’ to find out their different views on the uprising, and the Mikron Theatre company performed extracts from their play Can You Keep a Secret? They also tried their hand at traditional textile crafts such as carding, spinning and weaving without the aid of modern machines.
Two exhibitions told the story of the Luddites, one by the West Yorkshire Archive Service and the other by Kirklees Council, while the ‘Secret’s Out’ Gallery explored the local Brontë connections and how the story of the Luddite attacks in Spen Valley were featured in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley.

We are somewhat intrigued by the conclusions reached at this high school talk in Bromley, as reported by the News Shopper.

An author enriched the minds of students by making them think about the issue of racism in fiction.
Malorie Blackman was invited to Bromley High School to address the question of whether Charlotte Brontë was racist.
The writer of works including Noughts and Crosses did this by talking about Jean Rhys’s prequel novel to Jane Eyre, The Wide Sargasso Sea. (Robert Fisk)

But was she a racist or not? Oh well, she was just probably a woman of her time in that respect.

Another high school is mentioned by KTVU where

senior Sarah Gidre [...] is reading "Wuthering Heights" on an iPad.

Another way of 'reading' Wuthering Heights is an audiobook, a format recently mentioned in the TV series The Client List where, as Perez Hilton eloquently puts it,

A client on Jennifer Love Fefferman's list who ISN'T interested in a happy ending from the actress during his rubdown?!
IMPOSSIBLE!
Until now, at least!
That's right, check out the latest from The Client List's collection of awkward Rub 'n Tug scenes, which features our heroine struggling to understand why a heterosexual male would rather relax and get an actual massage while listening to Wuthering Heights on audio book than, as she so eloquently puts it, take "the D train"!

Gawker also discusses the matter and thinks the guy can't actually be straight if he listens to Wuthering Heights (!).

Examiner has an article on Wuthering Heights and the Otago Daily Times comments on the 2009 adaptation of the novel:

Wuthering Heights - this version at least - tries to be just a wee bit modern. Check out the fonts on the opening credits.
And there is something just a little wrong with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff.
He just does not look embittered enough to pull off the sort of emotional brutality the role requires. His lips are too pink and full.
But let us not dwell on the negatives.
It's the moors - it's Emily Brontë, it's Cathy and Heathcliff, it's Andrew Lincoln back from outer space, and not killing zombies.
It's Wuthering Heights.
Just get into it. (Charles Loughrey)

Rebecca Chesney from The Brontë Weather Project has just read Agnes Grey and Poesias Brontëanas writes in Portuguese about Anne Brontë. Livros com Cookies posts in Portuguese about Jane Eyre and Books Music Movies writes briefly about the 2011 adaptation. Dilemma - based on a true story has a short text in Swedish on Wuthering Heights 2011. The Octogon writes about Haworth.

A bandersnatch was in the news today, but it was widely assumed to be a typo. The actor who plays the titular role in BBC One’s Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch, had his already-Carrollian-sounding name apparently spectacularly autocorrected by the Washington Post into “Bandersnatch Cummerbund.” Thanks to @Alex_Ogle on Twitter for the picture before. Anyone hoping for a sober correction – something along the lines of “The Washington Post deeply regrets mistakenly printing the name of the actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Bandersnatch Cummerbund blah blah blah” – will be disappointed. The Post responded that it was not a typographical error, and issued the following statement:

UPDATE: It has come to our attention that there is raging debate, in re whether we intentionally referred to Benedict Cumberbatch as Bandersnatch Cummerbund in The TV Column and blog.

Bandersnatch concept art for the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, by Jason Seiler and Bobby Chiu ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Apparently it all started when Poynter posted an item early Tuesday afternoon about the “typo.”

MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson, a gentleman and a scholar (and former Post staffer), leapt to our defense, noting I correctly identified Cumberbatch on first reference in the column item, and explaining that we are “a titan of snark” who “gets away with that kind of stuff all the time.”

Johnson was perhaps recalling the time, back in 2009, when Politico wrote about the sorry state of The Washington Post’s copy editing, citing something we had written about “American Idol” in which host Ryan Seacrest was called “Seabiscuit” – until some people explained to the author in the comments section, that we had used the nickname for Seacrest during many years of “American Idol” recapping. (The report vanished from the Web site).

But Poynter’s Craig Silverman, a skeptic, bet Johnson a beer on it, asking Johnson, like he meant it to sting, did he think the Post’s copy desk would let that through without any kind of wink to readers.

Silverman owes Johnson a beer.

But, we would like to give credit where credit is due. The nickname “Bandersnatch Cummerbund” originated with one of the serious students of television who join me each Friday to chat about all things TV. And that person would no doubt want to give credit to Lewis Carroll, who first wrote about the “frumious Bandersnatch,” in “Jabberwocky,” in the late 1800’s. We loved it then, we love it now. Oh — and, wink wink!

Call to artists to represent the Tulgey Wood monster wearing a tuxedo sash.

Twitter seems to have gone crazy this afternoon over a blog posting about how Abraham Lincoln invented Facebook, or something very similar to it, in 1845.

The blog item, which apparently has already been taken down after quickly going viral, was an entertaining account of a visit to the Lincoln museum in Springfield, Illinois. The blogger said he was doing some research that involved whether Lincoln had ever written anything about P.T. Barnum.

When a researcher retrieved the "Springfield Gazette," it turned out to be, instead of a newspaper one might expect, a prototype of a social networking concept Lincoln had devised. An excerpt from the blog:

"The whole Springfield Gazette was one sheet of paper, and it was all about Lincoln. Only him. Other people only came into the document in conjunction with how he experienced life at that moment."

In other words, Lincoln, more than 150 years before the Winklevoss twins, had come up with the idea for Facebook updates. Yet, sadly for Lincoln, his patent application was denied.

It's a fun "Lincoln was ahead of his time" story, but of course it's a hoax. The blogger included a photo of the "Springfield Gazette," the proto-Facebook. The image immediately raises eyebrows, as it shows a photograph (actually a well-known Daguerreotype of Lincoln) printed on newsprint decades before that was possible. And the staff at the Lincoln Library, when contacted by reporters, declared the whole thing to be a hoax.

And it's perhaps pertinent that the blogger perpetrating the hoax had mentioned Phineas T. Barnum. The "Prince of Humbug" was acquainted with Lincoln, and he would have been amused.

Update: The original blog item seems to still be online, but may be hard to reach at times as traffic swarms it.

Photograph: Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, who did not try to patent Facebook/Library of Congress

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The Dormouse in Chapter VII of The Annotated Alice (pgs. 93-95) gets the following footnote from Martin Gardner:

The British dormouse is a tree-living rodent that resembles a small squirrel much more than it does a mouse. The name is from the Latin dormire, to sleep, and has reference to the animal’s habit of winter hibernation. Unlike the squirrel, the dormouse is nocturnal, so that even in May (the month of Alice’s adventure) it remains in a torpid state throughout the day. In Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti, 1906, we are told that the dormouse may have been modeled after Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s pet wombat, which had a habit of sleeping on the table. Carroll knew all the Rossettis and occasionally visited them.

This is the second blog post in a series for the LCSNA called Gardner’s Annotations Hyperlinked, in which we employ the mighty power of the internet to illuminate, investigate, and of course provide links for the footnotes from The Annotated Alice.

The only dormouse native to the British Isles is the Hazel dormouse, which is indeed more closely related to a squirrel than to a mouse. (The suborder Sciuromorpha contains chipmunks, squirrels, and dormice. Mice and rats are muroids.) Although dormire in Latin does mean “to sleep,” it might not be directly related to the etymology of “dormouse.” The Wiktionary‘s etymology: “From Middle English dormous, of uncertain origin. Possibly from dor-, from Old Norse dár (‘benumbed’) + mous (‘mouse’). … Although the word has come to be associated as an Anglo-Norman derivative of Old French dormir (‘to sleep’), no such Anglo-Norman word is known to have existed,” and it cites the Random House Dictionary as its reference. (The dormousian association with sleepiness seems to go back centuries – the Elizabethans apparently rubbed dormouse fat on the soles of their feet to induce sleep, according to The Sleepyhead’s Bedside Companion by Sean Coughlan. How could an animal both nocturnal and hibernating have any other reputation? We posted a cute viral video of a snoring dormouse a few months ago here.)

As for Gardner’s one literary reference in his note, the Pre-Raphaelite memoir Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti (1906), it’s widely available and has been reprinted multiple times in the past decade. Google Books has several accessible copies of the text: Vol. I here; Vol. II here. It is true that C.L. Dodgson knew the Rossetti’s and would hang out with them sometimes. It is also true that Dante Gabriel Rossetti owned several wombats (and some dormice and other exotic pets), and that one beloved wombat would entertain at dinner parties. However, it’s impossible that Gardner read in that specific book that Rossetti’s wombat “may have” inspired Carroll’s dormouse, because it’s neither written there nor true. In Volume I of Some Reminiscences, William Michael Rossetti describes some of the “beasts” Dante Gabriel kept in his garden, after which he describes his indoor pets:

From "Rossetti and his Circle" by Max Beerbohm. One of those animals is supposed to be a wombat.

…they were my brother’s companions day by day, and the wombat would follow at the housemaid’s heels when she went upstairs to make the beds. An anecdote is current of the wombat, and I accept it as only somewhat exaggerated – not untrue. My brother had asked, as he pretty often did, several friends to dinner; he himself never smoked, but for the satisfaction of his guests he had provided a box of superior cigars. The dinner over, he proceeded to produce the box. The box was there, but the cigars were gone: the wombat had made a meal of the entire assortment.

Hilarious! The wombat ate some fancy cigars. Sounds like a good party (except for the shortage of tobacco). He then goes on to describe several drawings of wombats by Edward Burne-Jones he owned, and of poetry by Christina Rossetti which mentions wombats as well. (“When wombats do inspire / I strike my disused lyre.”) Carroll is not mentioned in Volume I. Neither is any dormouse nor any of the Alice books ever mentioned in either volume of Some Reminiscences. In Volume II, William Michael Rossetti has one uninspiring paragraph about Carroll:

Lewis Carroll's photograph of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863)

One of the earliest of these [visiting authors] but I only saw him once or twice was the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, whom the English-speaking world knows under the name of Lewis Carroll. He was a skilful amateur photographer, and he took some few photographs of Dante Rossetti, and of other members of the family. He continued keeping up some little acquaintance with Christina till the close of her life, sending her his successive publications. My reminiscence of Mr. Dodgson is so slight and indeterminate that it would be vain to attempt any exactness of description. Suffice it to say that he impressed me mainly as belonging to the type of ” the University Man ” : a certain externalism of polite propriety, verging towards the conventional. I do not think he said in my presence anything ” funny ” or quaint.

The only mention of wombats in Volume II is a reference to his unsuccessful attempt to purchase one in Sydney.

So where did Martin Gardner learn that Rossetti’s wombat inspired Carroll’s Dormouse? I don’t know, but he didn’t invent the idea. That honor goes to the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. The artist’s grandson, Ford M. Hueffer (who changed his name to Ford Madox Ford and became a 20th Century novelist) wrote the book on Madox Brown in 1896: Ford Madox Brown: a record of his life and work. He also describes the Rossetti zoo and some legendary parties:

The beast that made the greatest impression, at least on Madox Brown, was the singularly inactive marsupial known as the wombat – an animal that seems to have exercised a latent fascination on the Rossettian mind. On high days and holiday banquets it occupied a place of honour on the épergne in the centre of the table, where, with imperturbable equanimity, it would remain dormant. On one occasion, however, it belied its character. Descending unobserved, during a heated post-prandial discussion, it proceeded in leisurely fashion to devour the entire contents of a valuable box of cigars, achieving that feat just in time for the exhaustion of the subject under consideration and consequent attention to things mundane.

If Madox Brown may be believed, the wombat of Rossetti was the prototype of the dormouse in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’  the author of which beloved work was a frequent visitor of Rossetti’s household at Chelsea. The ‘ Alice ‘ books exercised an even greater fascination over Rossetti and for that matter over Madox Brown than the historic wombat had done …

Note Ford’s subtle skepticism of his grandfather’s word. I found the final nail in the coffin to the Wombat-Dormouse theory in a 2003 lecture by Angus Trumble, the Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia, Canberra. Trumble adds some Australian local knowledge to his scholarship, in a talk called “Rossetti’s Wombat: A Pre-Raphaelite Obsession in Victorian England.”

A crystal épergne ($160) from the Horchow Collection, 20"H x 17"W x 14 1/4"D. Adult wombats are approx. 39" long.

…James McNeill Whistler invented a silly story about how the wombat had perished after eating an entire box of cigars. Ford Madox Brown thought that Rossetti’s habit of bringing the wombat to dinner and letting it sleep in the large épergne or centrepiece on the dining room table inspired the dormouse in the tea-pot incident at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This is also impossible because Lewis Carroll wrote that chapter in 1863, and the novel with its famous illustrations by John Tenniel was published two years later in 1865. As my colleague David Marshall has also pointed out, either Rossetti’s épergne was enormous, or the wombat was dramatically small.

He says “impossible,” because his research shows that Dante Rossetti had bought the first of his pet wombats in 1869. I don’t know how big an épergne usually is, but dormice certainly fit more easily into teapots than wombats do. Do wombats fit in teapots? Do teapots fit in wombats?

Several final discoveries about cute animals owned by Pre-Raphaelites before we go. One of the earliest drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti was of a dormouse – he drew pictures of his pet dormouse named “Dwanging” when he was about six years old. It looks to me more like a cave painting than anything drawn by any pre-tween I know. In Dante Gabriel Rossetti: his family-letters, Vol. I, his brother also describes his pet hedgehog, which also hung out on the family dinner table.  So Dante was into pets long before he acquired his own large collection of strange creatures as an adult. What became of the wombat? It died.

American artist James McNeill Whistler’s version of the story (from this early biography) has the wombat skeleton discovered in the cigar box. (A humongous cigar box?) I wouldn’t attempt to guess how Rossetti’s wombat actually died, but eating tobacco is extremely poisonous. According to the Wikipedia, “The LD₅₀ of nicotine is 50 mg/kg for rats and 3 mg/kg for mice. 0.5-1.0 mg/kg can be a lethal dosage for adult humans, and 10 mg (0.1mg/kg) for children.” A cigar contains around 150 mg of nicotine. Wombats weigh between 20 and 35 kg. Eating even a single cigar would very likely kill a wombat. Again, I’m not trying to perpetuate the theory that Rossetti’s wombat died from eating cigars at the dinner party in question. But either William Michael Rossetti’s anecdote is more than “only somewhat exaggerated,” or it didn’t end well for the wombat.

• Housing reform: slum clearance and the model dwelling movement
• Mapping the slums
• ‘Professional beggars’ and the Charity Organisation Society
• ‘Lady visitors’: women in the slums and women’s voluntary work more widely
• Social work and the professionalization of relationships with the poor
• Conservative feminisms: anti-suffrage and maternal philanthropy
• Working-class leisure and the right to open spaces
• The Kyrle Society and culture for the poor
• The National Trust and the preservation/conservation movement
• Hill’s intellectual and social circle (including John Ruskin, Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, and F.D. Maurice)
• ‘Teaching en-masse’: Octavia Hill and Victorian women writers
• The Army Cadet force: its history and influence

• Micro-narratives and marginalised perspectives: individual or oppressed stories from the Underground
• Counter or unrealised histories: unofficial accounts or unfulfilled plans

• The relationship between the Underground, city and nation
• Subterranean places and cultural landscapes
• Private and public spaces

• Representations in literature, music, film, photography and art
• Heritage, identity and memory
• Enthusiasts, collectors, explorers, popular pursuits and pastimes

• Power and contestation: the Underground as a site of protest, control and propaganda
• The politics of transport planning policy
• The Underground as a platform for strikes and political manifestos

• Security, surveillance and crime
• Mobility and technology
• Everyday life and experiences

Fine day. Rose at 4.30. Rushed off by 6.20[.]

Light carriage. Picked up the Fosters, ― I to pay my arranged 4 dollars they 2. Very clear & lovely weather, walked on ― horses resting, ― at Strongili. On to 19^th mile, & lunched very pleasantly close to Ἄγια Τριάδα. At Lefchimo by 1. Dr. & Mrs. Sansone kindly folk. Coffee. Walked with them to the “Ποταμὸς.[”] At 3.30 took leave of the F.’s & went to Ἄ. Nicόλο, & Ἄ. Ἀνάλειψις ― but could not draw.

Returned: washed: waited: wrote. The Doctor came at times & talked. At 7.30 supper befell ― & very pleasant too & good withal, Maccaroni, Triglie, eggs ― Παλαμιδα[1] &c. Small only boy ― 15 months old. Under Doctor ― Samuello ― intelligent: studied in Paris & London. At 9, begged to go to bed, which was (apparently) clean.

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[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

A lovely boyhood memory of the Crystal Palace, from Grant Richards' Memories of a Misspent Youth. The 'safety bicycle' which looked so funny was essentially the modern bike - ie. not a penny farthing:

'Our leisure, or at least my leisure, was spent at the Crystal Palace, in the winter looking at such shows as we could get into by luck or cunning, and, in the good weather, in the grounds, where the shrubberies were full of birds' nests - and sometimes improperly behaving lovers, where occasionally on Sundays we could manage to get hold of a boat and row across to the islands in the lake and pentrate into the very interiors of the prehistoric animals, where there were certain places in which we could help ourselves to coloured-fire laid out ready for the Firework Thursdays, and where there were on the race-track races between men on horseback and men on bicycles, and the cycle-races and so on. I remember now the roar of laughter that went round the grassy slopes of the area when the first safety bicycle made its appearance! And it was in the roller-skating hall of the Crystal Palace that I first fell in love with a girl of much my own age ...'

Emily Brontë Project
Création pluridisciplinaire d’après le roman et les poèmes d’Emily Brontë

sur réservation – Prix libre -

Le connectif KKF accueille en résidence à l’atelier Keskon Fabrique les artistes du projet Mots d’autres (la comédienne Nathalie Philip, le metteur en scène et comédien Fabrice Dauby) et la chanteuse Ma Saïsara, accompagnée de musiciens, du lundi 7 au vendredi 11 mai 2012.
L’atelier Keskon Fabrique devient pour une semaine un lieu de recherche et de travail pour ces artistes qui viennent y finaliser une réalisation pluridisciplinaire. Les artistes du connectif KKF interviennent eux sur la scénographie de cette création.
Cette semaine de création sera ponctuée d’ouvertures au public :
mardi 8 mai à 19 h, ouverture de chantier en cours (« work in progress » )
présentation du spectacle à son état d’avancement, non achevé, pour permettre des échanges autour du processus de création, entre le public, les artistes et le metteur en scène, ce qui permet d’orienter le travail à venir en fonction des réactions des spectateurs. L’esprit du « work in progress » est cher au KKF qui invite régulièrement le public à entrer dans ses propositions artistiques.
vendredi 11 et samedi 12 mai à 20 h, représentations/performances d’ Emily Brontë Project
Les personnes ayant assisté au « work in progress » du 8 mai et ainsi suivi les étapes d’une création in situ pourront mesurer l’évolution du travail. Ceux qui ne l’auraient pas vu se laisseront juste porter par ce spectacle mêlant chant, musique, lecture et arts visuels.

Récitante : Nathalie Philip / Chant : Ma Saïsara / Clavier : Jean-Michel Thiémonge Scénographie et œuvres : Connectif KKF / David Galimant, Nicolas Pennaneach’h Regard extérieur : Fabrice Dauby (Via Artactu)

The Green Butterfly by Albert Moore

Painting of the Day Archive

NPR has a challenge:

Next Week's Challenge from listener Gary Witkin of Newark, Del.: Using only the six letters of the name "Bronte," repeating them as often as necessary, spell a familiar six-word phrase. What is it? (Will Shortz)

Patrick Strudwick paraphrases Charlotte Brontë in an opinion column in The Independent.

But like Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, I believe that we were intended to prize life and enjoy it. 

The actual quote comes from chapter XXII:

God surely did not create us and cause us to live with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe in my heart we were intended to prize life and enjoy it so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me among the rest.

The Boston Globe reviews the novel When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man by Nick Dybek where

While growing up, Richard was known as a sullen boy who kept to himself and left town after high school. Most people barely remember him. Now, they are at his mercy.
Richard is a familiar literary type: an unhappy man who lacks talent, character, and charisma, and wreaks destruction all around him, simply because he can. What he has is a gift for resentment and a taste for raining down humiliation on easy targets. Think Mordred, in the legend of King Arthur; Hindley Earnshaw, in “Wuthering Heights”; Mrs. Danvers, in “Rebecca.” (Nan Goldberg)

More Brontë references in reviews of Dark Shadows. This one from Down East:

When the late Dan Curtis initially dreamt up Dark Shadows, a soap opera that ran on ABC between 1966 and 1971 that’s being reimagined by Tim Burton for the big screen, he had just one image in mind: that of a young girl named Victoria Winters riding on a train to the coast of Maine. The show would proceed from there, he thought, in the vein of Jane Eyre, as a gothic tale of class, family, and romance where the quaint English countryside was replaced by the fictional seaside town of Collinsport, Maine. (Will Bleakley)

Dilemma - based on a true story (in Swedish) and PenseiraLiterária (in Portuguese) post about Wuthering Heights. Books-Silence writes in polish about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Cúmulos y limbos posts in Spanish about the moors.

  

Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen is more popular than ever with publishers and readers. Many of her fans are attracted to her era, which they identify as one filled with grace, gentility, and good manners. In The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman, author Lori Smith examines Jane Austen’s [...]

Late in the summer of 1814 British forces humiliated the United States by torching the Capitol and the White House, and it looked like something even worse was about to ...

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Falmouth was one of the last places we visited on our trip to
Cornwall.

The Cornish word for Falmouth is Aberfal.

Together with Carrick Roads it forms the third deepest harbour in the world, so I am told.  Quite a feat when you think of the length of coastline around the world.

Because of the harbour and the estuary it has always been an important port in the defense of the country, hence the twin castles built in the 1540's on the headlands on either side of the entrance to the harbour. 

Of interest to me was the role of these defenses between 1807 and 1813 when Falmouth acted as a re-supply base for the British Army while at war with France in Spain and Portugal .   We visited Pendennis.  The castle was modified during later wars so one has to pick and choose what is relevant to our time.



This shot shows the gun battery as in the 1730's overlooking Carrick Roads.  In the foreground is the field train shed, and is the remaining half of an original structure build in 1805 for a field train of mobile guns, wagons, gun carriages, wheels and baggage, stored until needed

The tower itself was built as a gun tower, with guns to be fired on all three levels. By our time, the tower was used for living space, with the guns outside, and on the roof. The small round tower on the very top being a look out turret.


There were many changes made to the castle during the Napoleonic wars which were changed again in the late nineteen early twentieth century.  In particular a half moon battery was placed just outside the Elizabethan fortress with a command of the sea.  At the height of the war, Pendennis was defended by 22  24-pounder cannon, 14 18-Pounders and 12 carronades.  Meanwhile Falmouth along with Plymouth formed the main supply depots for the British Army. During this time, mail packet ships were armed with cannon. Many building went up at Pendennis, including barracks and a hospital.

Here is a video of what the gun platform might have looked and sounded like in the castle's earliest days.
So that last is just a bit of fun, if it doesn't interest you pass on by.

Until next time, Happy Rambles