Planet Century 19

But I went through a period of turmoil then. It was very difficult doing Leos’s Lovers on the Bridge plus Damage plus Wuthering Heights. The shoots were very difficult, my life was difficult; like a tunnel, not just simply because I was with the director.

Despite his big business plans, Rupert is still keeping busy with the acting. He’s just completed a national tour of When Harry Met Sally and now starts rehearsals playing literary anti-hero Heathcliff in a new production of Wuthering Heights under acclaimed director John Godber. (Dianne Bourne)

Peggy marches in action, rounds up her troops Billy and Minty (not exactly the SAS unless it stands for Silly And Stupid) and has befuddled Fill dragged back home to the Queen Vic.
There, she has him boarded up in the upstairs living room, a bit like that mad women in the attic in Jane Eyre. A fire was involved in that literary soap too. Here in EastEnders (BBC1) it’s time to set fire to the Vic again.

5. The Sad Sacks
The Sad Sacks are the Charlotte Brontë characters of Facebook. They're probably lying back on a chaise with their eyes bright from a TB-fever as they feebly type in their incredibly vague, but melodramatic status updates. (Susan Abe)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Midwest Victorian Studies Association
Annual Conference
Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas
April 15-17, 2011

The theme for the Midwest Victorian Studies Association‘s thirty-fifth annual conference is “Victorian Environments: Spaces, Places, Traces.”  We invite submissions of papers covering the full range of possible meanings of the theme, including, but not limited to:

– urbanization and the shaping of place,
–gendered spaces,
–built environments,
–architecture and the decorative arts,
–ecology and relations with nature,
–musical, theatrical, and performance spaces,
–electoral and political spaces,
–gardens and landscapes,
–metropolitan/colonial spaces,
–the home and the pub,
–work spaces (the factory, the mine, the atelier),
–exhibitionary spaces (the Crystal Palace, the museum),
–the traces of vanished places (ruins, palimpsests).

The plenary address will be by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and the author of Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (2005),  Opulence and Anxiety: Landscape Painting from the Royal Academy of Arts (2007), and Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (1998), among other works.

Another special feature of the conference will be tours of Topeka’s Victorian homes. Even if you do not submit a paper, we hope you will attend.

Those interested in proposing papers or full panels should submit 500-word abstracts and vitas by November 15, 2010 to the Midwest Victorian Studies
Association’s email: conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org; if you receive no reply, please re-send.
——————————-

http://www.midwestvictorian.org/

Rose late, fine. Expected W.H. Hunt, but no one came. ― Cold bad. Dawdled. ―

Called on P. Williams. Goddard Buckner & Co. there. Walked to Waterloo Br. & rail to Richmond.

To Mr. Hays: he is now quite blind, & (Giuseppe is with him,) his state is absolutely terrible. Μου φαινεται οτι τι πραγμα τι ειναι ― δεν  φανερον ― εις το νους του: δεν εμπορω να εξευρω.¹ Dined with him, & back by 9. ―― Cold very bad.

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

1. It seems to me that the thing is ― not evident ― in his mind: find no commerce.

MARYLEBONE OFFICE. - On Thursday afternoon, shortly before the close of the office, a tall, sedate-looking man, about 45 years of age, attired in a suit of black, and whose appearance altogether denoted him to be a person above the middle rank of life, was brought up in custody of a constable of the S division of police, and placed at the bar before the sitting magistrate, Mr. HOSKINS, on the charge of having in a most indecent and disgusting manner exposed himself to two females of respectability in the Regent's-park.
     The prisoner, who seemed to feel acutely the degrading situation in which he was placed, was asked his name and address, but he objected to give either, as he also did at the station-house; the required information was, however, elicited in the course of the examination by Fryer, one of the officers, who, on looking into his (prisoner's) hat, discovered written upon the lining the words - "The Rev. Robert Thorburn, No.14, Upper Montagu-street, Montagu-square," which, upon a subsequent inquiry being made, proved correct.
     The prisoner was unattended by any legal adviser, having been brought up instanter by the constable.
     Mary Davies, residing at No.82, Mary-street, Hampstead-road, was then examined, and deposed as follows:- This afternoon, about half-past 3 y'clock, as I was passing along the broad gravel walk, I saw the prisoner by the shrubbery near the top of the Regent's-park, when he turned himself round, and exposed to me his person. I was then in the act of hastily moving away in another direction, and was again insulted by him in a similar manner.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Were you at this time alone?
     Mrs. Davies - No, Sir; I had some children with me, and after what had taken place, I gave information to one of the parkkeepers, who caused the prisoner to be apprehended.
     James Harrod, 179 S, said - As I was on duty near the park, I was called in by one of the keepers, who pointed out to me the prisoner, and begged of me to keep an eye on him, while he (the keeper) went in search of the lady, by whom he had been spoken to. I kept behind a fence, and on the lady coming up, I took the prisoner in charge, at the same time telling him that it was for exposing his person.
     Mr. HOSKINS - What answer did he make to this?
     Witness. He said, if he had done so, he was not aware of it; and on the the way to the station-house he exclaimed several times, "Oh, I don't know what I shall do." He had also, as I understood, insulted another female just before.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Is she here?
     Witness - She is not, Sir; she objected to come forward.
     Mr. HOSKINS - You must desire her attendance here tomorrow. See her this evening, and if she still objects to come, I'll issue a summons. Who is she?
     Witness - She is a respectable married woman, Sir, named King.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to the prisoner) - I shall be under the necessity of remanding you until to-morrow, in order that more evidence may be procured. Do you wish to say anything?
     Prisoner contented himself by saying, that he was merely obeying a call of nature, and had no intention of offending any one.
     He was accordingly remanded, and instead of being conveyed to prison for the night, was taken back to the police-station.
     Yesterday morning, after the disposal of several charges of no particular interest, the prisoner was again placed at the bar; he was unaccompanied by any friends, and during the period of his incarceration on the previous night wept incessantly. Mrs. Davies and Mrs. King were, on this occasion, both in attendance; the latter of whom, a young and delicate-looking woman, being brought to the office by her father.
     Mr. Fell, the chief clerk, then read over the former depositions as above given.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to Mrs. Davies) - How do you get your living?
     Mrs. Davies - I have been in a situation, and am now living upon money left me by my last master.
     Mr. HOSKINS - When the prisoner exposed himself you, as you have stated, was he making water?
     Mrs. Davies - He was not; and before he acted towards me in the infamous way he did he was creeping and crawling about the spot for nearly a quarter of an hour.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Something has been said about another female having complained in a way similar to yourself. Do you know anything of it?
     Mrs. Davies - Yes, Sir. While I was talking to the policeman who entered the park, a young woman came up, and addressing me, said, "I suppose, Ma'am, you've seen the man in the same state as I did?"
     Mr. HOSKINS - Where was the prisoner then?
     Mrs. Davies - He was sitting on one of the seats; but the instant he saw the constable he got up and walked off.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Did she recognise the prisoner as the person she had been talking about?
     Mrs. Davies - She did; and her object in coming up to the place was to convince herself of the fact.
     Mrs. Eliza King, who, by order of the magistrate, had been excluded during the period of Mrs. Davies giving her evidence, was here called in. She deposed that she was the wife of Mr. Robert King, a master bricklayer, residing at No. 78, High-street, Camden-town, and that on the previous afternoon, between 2 and 3 o'clock, she  was in the Regent's-park, when she there saw the prisoner, who exposed to her his person.
     Mr. HOSKINS - In what part of the park was this?
     Mrs. King - It happened as I was coming up the broad walk opposite the gate leading to the Zoological Gardens.
     Mr. HOSKINS - When the prisoner did this, how near was he to you?
     Mrs. King - He was about 10 or 11 yards off.
     Mr. HOSKINS - You must describe more particularly what he did?
     Mrs. King - He opened his trousers in front, and in that way exposed himself, Sir. I sat done with my back towards him, thinking that he would go away, when I turned round, some minutes afterwards, he was in the same shameful situation.
     Mr. HOSKINS - How many minutes elapsed, do you imagine, between the period of the first and second exposure?
     Mrs. King - I should think, about five.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Did he say anything to you?
     Mrs. King - Nothing, your worship.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Were there any other females walking near the place at this time?
     Mrs. King - There were several about, but not precisely at the spot.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Have you anything more to say?
     Mrs. King - Nothing more than that when I saw the policeman running, I said to him, "I suppose you are after that gentleman?" (meaning the prisoner.) He answered, "Yes," and added, "I want one of you ladies to give him in charge." This was about half an hour after I got up from the seat and walked away.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Look well at the prisoner, now. Is he the man who exposed himself?
     Mrs. King (after viewing him) - He is, Sir.
     Mr. HOSKINS - Have you any doubt of it?
     Mrs. King - None whatever.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to the constable) - Have you ascertained since last night whether the prisoner lives at No. 14 Upper Montagu-street?
     Constable - I have, Sir; he does reside there.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to the prisoner). - You have heard the evidence adduced against you, and if you have anything new to offer, I'm ready to hear you.
     Prisoner (with a considerable degree of emotion) - You Worship, I feel that I am placed in a most distressing situation, and am completely covered with shame while standing here before you. I am well convinced that in cases of this kind a defendant has but little chance, as a prejudice is generally excited against him; but I do hope that you will well look into the character of the witnesses, and not judge too hastily in the present instance. I have but very recently arrived in London from Jamaica, and yesterday for the first time went out to take a walk in the park, and not being as a matter of course acquainted with any part thereof, I might, perhaps, have obeyed a call of nature in a spot not set apart for that purpose; but at all events, I had no intention whatever of insulting or offending any female. I am connected with families of the first respectability, and in some of my packages, which are still at the West India Docks, will be found papers corroborative of my assertion, particularly one from a congregation, expressive of their approbation in every respect of my character. I trust, therefore, that these points will weigh in my favour, as I conceive they ought to do, and that you will acquit me of any ill intention; but (after a short pause) if you are satisfied with the witnesses testimony, what am I to do?
     Mr. HOSKINS - Have you any witnesses to call?
     Prisoner - I have not, Sir; there was no one with me.
     Mrs. Davies was here recalled.
     Mr. HOSKINS - When he first exposed himself, where was he standing?
     Mrs. Davies - Near the fence, but the second time he was within two yards of me.
     Mr. Fell (the chief clerk) - Was his face turned towards you on one or both occasions?
     Mrs. Davies - On both, Sir.
     Prisoner - Did I either speak to or look at you indecently, or undo my clothes more than was necessary for obeying a call of nature?
     Mrs. Davies - Your worship (addressing the magistrate), when he exposed his person he laughed each time.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to the prisoner) - Have you any other questions to put?
     Prisoner - No, SIr.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to Mrs. King) - When he exposed himself to you, how far was he from the fence?
     Mrs. King - At least 10 or a dozen yards.
     Prisoner (hastily) - I trust, Sir, you will do me the justice to make a full inquiry as to the character of these witnesses, so as to enable you to come to a correct opinion as to the value which should be attached to their testimony.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to Inspector Dawkins) - You know, of course, something about these females; have you any reason to doubt their testimony?
     Inspector - None whatever, Sir; they are most respectable persons.
     Mr. HOSKINS (to the prisoner) - The whole of the evidence has now been gone into, and it is my duty to commit you to the House of Correction for three months. You have the power of appealing against my decision if you should think proper to do so.
     The prisoner, who made no further observation, was then removed by Bradshaw, the gaoler, to the lock-up room; soon after which he had an interview with Mr. Robinson, his solicitor, who was informed that his client might be liberated on producing bail in 200l., and two sureties in 100l each.
     The required recognizances not having been forthcoming, prior to the closing of the office, the prisoner (who seemed in a dreadfully distressed state of mind) was removed, not by the usual conveyance, the Government van, but in a coach, to Clerkenwell prison.

Dawn Potter
Inventing Charlotte Brontë
Sewanee Review - Volume 118, Number 3, Summer 2010, pp. 393-399

A couple of days ago, having gotten sick of the Aeneid, I found myself fidgeting among my bookshelves, looking for something to distract me from the ponderous exploits of that pious sap Aeneas (and it’s no wonder Juno keeps trying to kill him; he’s such a pill). Soon I pulled out Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and quickly remembered that the paperback I’d been dipping into periodically for the past twenty years had disintegrated, on last use, to a jaundiced brittle stack of pages laced with little white spine-glue chips that sifted onto my stomach when I tried to turn a page in bed. This discovery has not led me to toss the book sensibly into the woodstove and choose something more cohesive to read. Instead, in hopes of saving the last fragile remnants of cheap binding, I’ve taken to reading Shirley at a speed that resembles the delayed slow motion one sees in explanatory replays of baseball pitches: sitting bolt upright, preternaturally alert for a page explosion, my neck cocked stiffly at goose angle, both hands gripping the Scotch-taped cover with the sort of tension I exhibit when I’m driving in a snowstorm. If Charlotte Brontë...

Ashly Bennett
Shameful Signification: Narrative and Feeling in Jane Eyre
Narrative - Volume 18, Number 3, October 2010, pp. 300-323

"For shame! for shame! … What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre." —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Is Jane Eyre the heroine of shame? Would such a reframing of the character famously dubbed the "heroine of fulfillment" constitute its own shamefully "shocking conduct"? Widely understood as a model of engaging and empowered female voice, Jane Eyre's distinctive "I" has often seemed bolstered, especially, by the emotional display and pull of that voice. Not just feeling, but specific feelings have captured critical attention, with anger and sympathy attaining pride of place in feminist assessments of Brontë's novel and of novelistic feeling in both Victorian and contemporary culture. From Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's influential reading of Jane Eyre's anger as exemplary of "rebellious feminism" to more recent critiques of the normalizing "triumph of sympathy" staged by the novel's end, the fraught yet potent agency, self-assertion, and emotional invitation of Jane Eyre's autobiographical narrative, and especially her voice, have been understood to thrive on anger...

The Angel of Death by Simeon Solomon

Painting of the Day Archive

[JF:]It’s kind of like a person who keeps smoking more and more cigarettes. You keep giving yourself more and more jolts of stimulus, because deep inside, you’re incredibly lonely and isolated. The engine of technological consumerism is very good at exploiting the short-term need for that little jolt, and is very, very bad at addressing the real solitude and isolation, which I think is increasing. That’s how I perceive my mission as a writer—and particularly as a novelist—is to try to provide a bridge from the inside of me to the inside of somebody else.
AVC: Has technology changed that? Hasn’t that always been the essential mission of the novelist?
JF: I think it was always implicit, and in the best fiction, it was always there. I think when people were responding to Crime And Punishment, when they were responding to Jane Eyre, they really felt un-alone. But there were so many other kinds of writing, and so many other kinds of reading going on, and the novel served so many other functions back then, that the really elemental function of literature was not as obvious. And you didn’t have to attend to it so much. (Gregg LaGambina)

Meanwhile, throughout history, authors such as Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen and the Brontës were forced to write anonymously for more austere reasons than simply fuelling speculation. (Deirdre Reynolds)

There was a bit of a female Heathcliff about King as she set off up the hill into the mist, fog, and towards the trees, a lady on a passionate mission. (Will Greenwood)

The internet humor depot, Cracked.com, yesterday posted a collection of “19 Unintentionally Terrifying Children’s Album Covers“, two of which were old Alice records:

Cracked comments:

We’re tempted to chalk this one up to a bad case of Engrish mistranslation from our friends across the Pacific. It’s easy to see how “Wonderland” could have been misread as “Waterland,” and the “Mad Hatter” may have been literally interpreted as “Angry Hat.”

In any case, how we are supposed to believe that they’re pouring a cup of tea underwater? How the hell are you going to drink it? Could they have made a more disturbing Alice in Wonderland cover?

I think all LCSNA members will know the answer to that last question.

UPDATE! Matt Crandall had a post on his Disney Alice blog last year featuring Alice in Waterland, with more pictures, and included a recording:

Thank you!

And secondly:

A House to Let may be a mansion, a noble mansion, a family mansion, a residence, a desirable residence, a genteel residence, a family residence, a bachelor’s residence, a distinguished residence, an elegant house, a substantial house, a detached house, a desirable villa, a semi-detached villa, a villa standing in its own grounds, an Italian villa, a villa-residence, a small villa, a compact detached cottage, a cottage ornée, and so on, almost  ad infinitum.  Rarely do the advertisements bear reference only to a house, a villa, or a cottage: we must call the spade something in addition to its simply agrarian title.
    Now, are all these infinitesimal subdivisions of Houses to Let merely intended as ingenious devices to charm the house hirer by variety, in the manner of’ Mr. Nicoll, with regard to his overcoats, and Messrs. Swan and Edgar with reference to ladies’ cloaks and shawls; or do there really exist subtle distinctions, minute, yet decidedly perceptible, between every differently named house? Can it be that the desirable residence has points calculated to satisfy desire in a different degree to the elegant predilections to be gratified by the elegant residence? Can it be that a residence, after all, isn’t a house, nor a house a residence? It may be so. People, in the innocence of their hearts, and unaccustomed to letting or hiring houses, may imagine that there can be no very material difference between a villa, a genteel villa, and a compact villa; but in the mind of the astute house-agent, and equally intelligent house-hirer, differences, varieties of size, aspect, and convenience, immediately suggest themselves; and to their experienced eyes there are as many points of distinction between the genteel and the compact, the desirable and the distinguished, as to the visual organs of those learned in horses between a cob and a hack, a racer and a screw; or to the initiated in dog-lore, between a greyhound and a setter.
    I do not pretend to any peculiarly nice perception as to things in general. I cannot tell to this day a hawk from a falcon (between the former bird and a handsaw I might be able to guess). It was a long time before I could distinguish between a leveret and a rabbit, or tell very high venison from decomposed shoulder of mutton; and I will not be certain, even now, if I could tell from the odour (being blindfolded). which was pitch and which tar. So, the immense variety of houses to let has always been to me a mystery, the subtle distinctions in their nomenclature sources of perplexed speculation.

Perfectly fine all day ― αλλα κακη ημερα ειναι προς εμε!¹

Rose at 5½ ― & worked till 8, packed. Then deer & the trees. Breakfast ― but no time for &c. before starting ― whereby I became ill & worse when I got home at 12.

XX*

Slept, could not work.

Heard of P. Williams being at C. Eastlakes ― alone & in the dark. ― Went there & saw him, poor fellow. ―

On to Ann ― with a nosegay ― but she was at tea with 2 friends ― & I ran away [gr.]²

Dined at home. ― Still ill, bad cold & indignation.

*XX1

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

1. But it is a bad day for me!
2. παλα πολλα [], perhaps meaning παρα πολλα, “too many,” then a word I cannot read.

Braintree, Essex.

DEAR MISS ––,
    As no opportunity has presented itself at speaking to you lately alone, I venture to address you by letter, and I assure you my happiness greatly depends on the reply with which you may deign to favour me.
    I love you, dear Miss ––, very sincerely, and if you can return my affection and become my wife, I shall consider myself the most fortunate of men.
    The income which I can place at your disposal is not large, but in my family you will find the most tender and affectionate connexions. My mother (to whom alone I have confided my secret) is rejoiced at the hope of having you for a daughter. Do not, best beloved Miss Johnstone, disappoint her and myself! Should you not reject me––if I am ever so happy as to call you my wife––the tenderest and most affectionate devotion shall be yours, and the principal and only study of my future days shall be to render your life as happy as you deservedly merit it should be. Your reply is most impatiently awaited by one whose life is wrapped up in yours. My aunt has just called, and it appears that some years since she was very intimately acquainted with your father, to whom I have written, enclosing this note for you, and stating to him the purport of its contents.
        I remain,
            Dear Miss Johnstone,
                Yours very truly,
                    HARRY CLINTON.

Answer to a Proposal.

London, September 4th.

DEAR SIR,
    I was very much surprised by your letter, and I will add, much pleased at being the object of your preference. I am fully sensible that it is the greatest compliment you could pay me.
    I have had frequent opportunities of learning your worth, and must candidly admit that I both like and esteem you.
    But an engagement is a very serious affair, and I am sure that I may safely appeal to your generosity for time to give the matter due consideration, especially as I do not feel at liberty to give a decisive answer without previously consulting my relatives. Trusting that you wiIl see the propriety of my request,
    I remain,
        Yours very sincerely,
            JANE ANDREWS.

Unfavourable Answer.

London, September 4th

DEAR SIR,
    I was both surprised and sorry on receiving your letter, as I do not think I have ever by word or deed given you any encouragement which could induce you to make me an offer, and––deeply as I feel honoured by your preference––reasons which I am not at liberty to explain, prevent my entertaining a thought of a more intimate acquaintance.
    Trusting you will banish me from your memory, or think only of me as a sincere friend, I remain, with sincerest wishes for your future happiness and welfare,
    Yours truly,
        MADELINE HUNTER

Accepting.

The Oaks, March 9.

MY DEAR MR. SMITH,
    I feel much flattered by your proposal, and if my father makes no objection to you; I shall esteem myself happy in having secured the affection of so good a man.
    Pray excuse the shortness of this letter ; it is the most awkward one I ever had to write––but I have good cause to know that you will pardon the shortcomings of
    Yours sincerely,
        ––

Answer to a proposal.

Belvoir Terrace April 1, 18––.

DEAR CHARLES,
    Your letter was a surprise, although our long and affectionate friendship, and the many proofs you have given of tender care for me, ought to have prepared me for it. But it was a very happy surprise too, Charlie. I do not doubt you have a shrewd guess that I care a wee bit for my old friend; indeed I should be very ungrateful if I did not.
    You must speak to my father and mother on the subject. That they may consent to our union is the sincere wish of
    Your very sincerely attached,
        ––

Accepting

London, April 5th, 18––.

DEAR MR.––
    I scarcely know how to reply to your letter or to express what I feel at finding that you have given me your affection. I am not worthy of you in any way, but if you really think that I could make you happy. I will gladly try my best to do so.
    Of course my consent to your proposal must now depend on that of my father, to whom pray apply at once. I have prepared him for your letter.
    Believe me,
        Very truly yours,
            ––

On same subject.

London, September 4th.

DEAR SIR,
    I acknowledge with much gratitude your very flattering letter, which has nevertheless given me great pain.
    It is not possible for me to accept your proposal, and my esteem and respect for you make me feel sincerely sorry to wound you by a rejection.
    Forgive me that I cannot love you as you deserve to be loved, and try to forget that you have honoured me by your choice.
    Believe me,
        Dear Sir,
            Your obliged and obedient,
                ––

Refusing a proposal.

London, August 5th.

DEAR MR. ––,
    My father has placed your letter to him in my hands, and desired me to answer the flattering proposal which it contains. It is with profound regret that I obey him; for I cannot––unhappily––respond to the feelings you are good enough to entertain for me.
    As a friend I shall ever like and esteem you, but I cannot feel for you the love which alone can make married life happy.
    Allow me, however, to thank you very heartily fox the great compliment that you have paid me, and to entreat your forgiveness if anything in my manner has unconsciously given rise to the hopes I am obliged to disappoint.
    You will doubtless meet with some far worthier object by-and-by on whom to bestow your affections. That such may be the case is the sincere prayer of
    Your obliged friend,
        L. M.

Refusal.

The Ferns, January 1st.

DEAR SIR,
    Allow me to express my grateful sense of the great honour you have done me in asking me to be your wife. It is with extreme regret that I feel myself compelled to decline your proposal. I have the greatest esteem and regard for you, but I cannot feel the affection which a wife should possess for her husband towards yourself.
    I write with much sorrow; and I trust that at some future time, when you have a little forgotten any possible pain which I may now give you, that you will renew your former friendship with,
        Dear Sir,
   Your obliged and sincere friend,
            ––

From a Lady to her Betrothed, who has not written to her.

Elm Grove, November 13th.

DEAR JOHN,
    It is more than a month since you wrote to me. Are you ill? or what causes your silence? I  have thought lately also that your letters were constrained and cold, as well as few and far between. Has your affection for me changed? If so, speak frankly to me, dear John. I would not for the world hold you to your promise to me, if you desired to be released from it.
    Write to me immediately, and answer me truly.
        I am, ever,
            Yours affectionately,
                ––

Poet Laureate to Appear at First Brontë Festival of Women's Writing

The first Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing will take place in Haworth later this month, with a headline reading by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The festival has been organised by the Brontë Parsonage Museum as part of its contemporary arts programme, with support from Arts Council England, and will take place at various venues in Haworth from Friday 17th – Sunday 19th September 2010.

The festival weekend will be opened with a reading by novelist Kate Mosse, on the evening of Friday 17th September. Kate Mosse is best known for her international bestseller Labyrinth, which has been published in 40 countries and won the ‘Richard and Judy’s Best Read’ award in 2006.

On the morning of Saturday 18 September, recent writer in residence at the museum, Katrina Naomi will lead a poetry workshop. Participants will accompany Katrina to the museum collections where they will see some of the items not out on public display. They will then be invited to create new poems inspired by their visit.

Carol Ann Duffy, poet laureate, will visit Haworth on Saturday 18th September at 7.30pm to read from her work.

On the afternoon of Sunday 19th September, writer Daisy Hay will speak about her book Young Romantics, which explores the lives of the Romantic poets, including Byron and Shelley, and the dazzling circle of women writers and thinkers that they moved in.

The weekend will also include a variety of drop-in events and activities for families, including a poetry trail around Haworth, storytelling and informal readings by local poets.

The Brontës were pioneering writers, at a time when very few women got published. The success of their novels changed the way that women writers were perceived and the festival will celebrate their incredible legacy, by showcasing the work of high profile and emerging contemporary women writers. When Charlotte Brontë wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey for advice in 1837, she was told that ‘writing cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and ought not to be’. She would be delighted that Carol Ann Duffy, the first female in the role, will read at the very first Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing. We hope the festival will become an annual showcase of the quality of writing by women in the region and across the UK. (Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer.)

Full times and details of all festival events can be found on the Brontë Parsonage Museum website at www.bronte.info and tickets for events can be booked from the Arts Officer: jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Christina Rossetti by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Painting of the Day Archive

Considering I began this show in a state of relative ignorance – I’ve read Jane Eyre but my knowledge of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and the Brontës is decidedly sketchy – you would have been hard pushed to convince me how much I’d ultimately enjoy this solo debut from Grainne Maguire. (...)
While the former primary school teacher still indulges herself playfully, playing a hungover Emily Brontë regretting a (relatively) lusty letter sent to the vicar, or trying stand-up as Lydia Bennett, her material on gender difference reflecting the massive sexual inequality of the time, there’s an occasional edge to her delivery now. Less a fond ‘reader, I married him’, more a blunt ‘he fucked me’. (Jay Richardson)

As the head of production at SY, [Hugo] Heppell has been a key player in making movies happen in the region. With filming recently finished on the television sequel of This is England and filming about to start on Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Heppell says commitments made to films about to happen will be fulfilled, but the future is less clear. (Nick Ahad)

 ... yonder he goes, pacing placidly the broad pavement of Holborn, his arms folded beneath a mill:-white apron, and his sunburnt brows only half shaded by a little oval projection of leather appended to his blue cloth cap. Simon has done his morning's work, and now, with the air of a proprietor who feels that "the ground he treads on is his own," is patrolling his landed estate with an evident expression of satisfaction on his weather-beaten sexagenarian physiognomy.
    To be plain — for why should we confuse the reader? —Simon is a professor of the art of opening and shutting shops ; and if distinction were to be won in such a walk of life, we should say that he is a distinguished professor. His landed estate consists of a furlong or so of the southern side of Holborn, where the pavement is the cleanest, the roadway the broadest, the shops the most resplendent, the shopkeepers the most respectable and well-to-do — and where there is a cool and quiet court, in which a solitary tree rustles its green leaves in the summer breeze, and a convenient pump keeps its hospitable mouth continually open for the refreshment of thirsty lieges. Simon's especial function is to take down the shutters of his clients (or patrons, which you choose) in the morning, and to put them up again at night — in which operation he may with perfect truth be said to throw more light upon the respective developments and progress of the arts of commerce and manufacture than any other man in his parish.
    From long handling of shop-shutters, Simon has grown to regard them very much in the light that a shepherd does his sheep. He knows their ailments and infirmities, their individual constitutions and little stubborn ways ; and he will humour their caprices, and compassionate their maladies. He is aware that they have to put up with very equivocal accommodations in the day-time while off duty ; some he has to stack together under a little pent-house between their own and a neighbour's shop ; some have to be thrust into the cavernous recess beneath the show-board of the window ; some have to be carried into the back-yard in the rear of the house; and some are ignominiously shoved through a grating in the causeway into the coal-hole below. That they should at times prove a little refractory under such treatment, Simon regards as nothing more than natural, and he has patience with them accordingly. When, under the influence of the fogs and damps of winter, they swell, as they are apt to do sometimes, he will coax and humour them into their places; and when in the summer time they shrink, from the heat of the weather, he will judiciously ventilate their nocturnal position by allowing them to "inhabit lax," like Milton's celestials, while they sentinel the starry heavens.
    How Simon employs the long interval between the taking down and the putting up of his especial charge, the shutters, we are not in a condition to narrate. What we know is, that he is often seen polishing away with rotten-stone and chamois leather at the long fathoms of brass plate beneath the windows, and as often mounted on steps or a short ladder, armed with dusters and whitening, and rubbing briskly at the monster crystal panes which are the source at once of the shopkeeper's delight and apprehension. Again, we have seen him turn up suddenly from some undiscovered recess at the cry of "Shutters !" from one of his patrons, and incontinently take charge of a packet of goods to be carried home at the heels of a customer, or, it may be, only of a message of immediate importance. And more than once, of a summer's afternoon, have we encountered him in the cool court aforesaid, occupied in the cause of his wooden flocks  — now with a pocket plane, shearing off a shaving or two from the side of a refractory member ; now with a hammer and nails, or turn-screw and gimlet, adjusting or even renewing the iron sheathing at the corners of one aged veteran ; now with glue-pot and a rag or two of canvass, applying a breast plaster to a split panel. These kind offices he is at all times willing to perform of course not without a consideration. He is great, too, in the treatment of blisters — a disorder to which shop-shutters are as liable as sheep are to the foot-rot. This he cures by the application of pumice-stone vigorously administered, followed by a new coat of paint ; or, that being too expensive, of brown varnish, which for a time looks almost as well. When he has a family thus afflicted, be mounts his patients upon trestles, under the tree in the cool court aforesaid, and sets to work upon them with great deliberation.
    We know nothing of Simon's political principles ; but in practice he is strictly a conservative, and a stickler for the good old times. For more than thirty years he has obtained an honest livelihood by his present profession ; and be has been heard to remark, that during the whole of that period the hours of closing shop have, until very lately, been getting nearer midnight, to his increasing annoyance and discomfort. He is, therefore, on principle, a warm advocate of the early closing movement. He would like to see a return to the ancient fashion of putting up the shutters in summer at dusk, and in winter at six o'clock. He has a good word to say for the Saturday half - holiday, and would have no objection, if it could be managed, that a few more holidays should be scattered throughout the year.
    It is probable that the routine of Simon's daily life is as free from care as that of most men ; but we must not imagine, on this account, that he is exempt from troubles and anxieties. He has had in his time to do battle against rivals in trade, who would fain encroach upon his estate and underbid him in the market. He has at all times to fortify himself against the chances of the weather, and has grown so sensible to atmospheric changes, that, from various internal promptings, he can foretell a storm long before the black clouds rise in the horizon, or a dry season for days before it sets in. Then there is a bugbear constantly before his imagination, in the shape of that new invention which supersedes the use of shutters altogether to the shopkeeper, and which, if it comes into general acceptance, will most assuredly supersede the use of Simon. It is nothing less than a fatal contrivance for drawing up and letting down an effective yet flexible shutter concealed under the cornice above the window: it may be done by the shop- keeper's boy in a minute or less, and it reduces the whole art and mystery of Simon's profession to the simple act of turning a winch or pulling a rope. Simon affects the most sovereign contempt for a machine "that would go for to take the bread out of an honest man's mouth," and has no faith in its efficacy against burglars. Happily for him, John Bull is slow to adopt even the most palpable improvements, and he can console himself in perfect safety that the shutters will last his time. 

A really fine day all through, & a happy. ―

Rose at 5. The deer & those [tall] trees!! ― Worked at C.M.C.’s Dead Sea, till 8.45. Prayers ― μακρη ειναι η θρεσαια εδω.¹

Breakfast merry & pleasant. Mary Chester is going to be married to one Phitzgerald ― who must at least be a sensible fellow, & I should think a good one. ― 10.30 to 12 showed Palestine views with much “acclaim.” Walked at 12 to Mr. Legge ― saw Mrs. Howards & other portraits by Edwin Long. ― On to Leatherheadd. Poor Ellen: ― dined with her. ― Letter from Mrs. Smith of Charmath enclosing one from poor Mary; she speaks well of Charles [] Street, & says little of Boswell: ― I hope she may return: ― walk back by 4 ― & worked till 5. Walk with W. Legge. ― showed drawings again to him & Barbara Chester ― & sang Idyll songs to her. Dinner pleasant. The Curate ― additional.

Evening ― sang a good deal ― και καλα.²

Αυτη η ημερα επαρανε παραπολυ καλα: και επιθυμω οτε εμπουρουσα να παρασω αλλας τοιοτας.³

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

1. Long / far is the [].
2. And well.
3. This provincial day [was] good: and I do not wish to trade [].

The current issue of Smithsonian magazine includes Jenny Woolf’s succinct summary of current critical and popular thought around Mr. Dodgson, focusing on how perceptions are at last changing to a less sensationalized and more fact-based, historically appropriate view: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Lewis-Carrolls-Shifting-Reputation.html

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë

* Pub. Date: September 2010
* Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing
* Series: Timeless Classics Series, #
* ISBN-13: 9781616510824
* ISBN: 161651082X
READING LEVEL: 3.5 TO 5.0
INTEREST LEVEL: YA
GUIDED READING LEVEL: Z

Timeless Classics- designed for the struggling reader and adapted to retain the integrity of the original work. Beginning with an exciting new look, these classic novels will grab a student's attention from the very first page. The new editions now include eight pages of activities to enhance the reading experience bringing each softcover classic to 88 pages.

Timeless Classics: Jane Eyre Study Guide

• ISBN-13: 9781616511395
• ISBN: 1616511397

CD-ROM format; Thirty-five reproducible exercises in each 48-page guide reinforce basic reading and comprehension skills as they teach higher order critical thinking skills and literacy appreciation. Guides also include teaching suggestions, background notes, act-by-act summaries, and answer keys.

Interior of the 'Sibyl' by Ella Ferris Pell

Painting of the Day Archive

SOME stories are just too good to be true. Take Charlotte, the plain, stoic cleric’s daughter, who wrote one of British literature’s greatest love stories before her own heart had even been touched by the tiniest of flutters.
The myth of the quiet genius came from Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s friend and fellow novelist, who wrote the first biography of the author shortly after her death.
It was a book written with the very best of intentions but one which had no interest in salacious detail. Charlotte was an extraordinary literary talent and a woman whose vivid imagination and sheer determination allowed her to defy Victorian convention.
However, she was also arguably a wild fantasist who lived a dangerous double life, obsessively intent on destroying the marriage of the man she fell in lust with and a hopeless romantic who was taken to the very edge of a nervous breakdown.
Those seeds of destruction were sown during her childhood in Haworth parsonage. Charlotte desperately wanted to believe that brains were more important than beauty yet whenever she looked in the mirror she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. (...) (Read More)

»Miss Nannie Preston, of Littlebeck Hall, near Bingley, has already gained so high a reputation for her artistic excellence that any praise from me seems quite superfluous. ...
The portrait of Emily Brontë (see frontispiece) was carefully and accurately copied by Miss Preston from a picture which came to me from Haworth with good credentials as to authenticity. The original was submitted to the inspection of Martha Brown, the Brontë housekeeper, and admitted by her to be a tolerably faithful portrait. The picture formerly belonged to a member of the Brown family, of Haworth, who always regarded it as a good likeness. On the strength of this evidence, and notwithstanding Mr. Shorter's opinion that the quest for an authentic portrait of Emily Bronte now seems hopeless, I have felt justified in giving the portrait a prominent place in my book.
Readers of Miss Robinson's Emily Brontë will doubtless remember that lady's word-picture of the authoress of Wuthering Heights,—" A quantity of dark-brown hair, deep, beautiful hazel eyes that could flash with passion, features somewhat strong and stern, the mouth prominent and resolute." Martha Brown, who was thrown much in contact with Emily, said, "We always thought her to be the best looking, the cleverest, and the bravestspirited of the three sisters."« (xiv)

A great leap backwards.
The Chinese can’t get enough of Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It’s translated as “a record of an orphan girl who drifts about alone”, which I think is a better title. While being deeply conservative about imported culture, the Chinese have agreed to buy a job lot of our ghastly Sunday-night BBC costume dramas, presumably because these stories of petty snobbery, greed, arranged marriages, women as property and the rigid class system are cautionary tales about life in the running dog West.

Romantic Circles is pleased to announce a new volume in the Praxis Series: The Sublime and Education, edited by J. Jennifer Jones.

http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/sublime_education/index.html

The Sublime and Education offers a series of essays on how the concept of education intersects with sublime theory and Romantic aesthetics. Rooted in the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, this diverse collection engages comparatively with Romantic-era literature and cultural theory of the 20th and 21st centuries. One underlying inspiration is the pedagogical theory of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who has thought widely about humanities-based training using Romantic-era texts as principal theoretical and literary tools, formative among them the aesthetic philosophy of Kant.  Spivak’s pedagogical theory can perhaps best be apprehended through the claim that proper pedagogy consists in “the uncoercive rearrangement of desires,” which is to say a pedagogy founded on a notion of an immanent rather than a transcendental sublime. In complementary but nevertheless highly individuated ways, each contributor to this volume offers just this type of reformative work.

This volume of the Romantic Circles Praxis Series includes an editor’s introduction by J. Jennifer Jones; essays by Christopher Braider, Frances Ferguson, Paul Hamilton, Anne McCarthy, Forest Pyle, and Deborah Elise White; and an afterword by Ian Balfour.

THE WORDSWORTH CIRCLE

VOLUME XLI, NUMBER 3 Summer 2010

CONTENTS
THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ROMANTICISM: 2009

Wordsworth’s Double-Take
William Galperin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

“Antiquity! thou wondrous charm”: Lamb, Nostalgia and the Effable City
Simon Hull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Cosmopolitan Flanerie: Leigh Hunt as Literary Cartographer
Charles Mahoney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

London’s Immortal Druggists: Pharmaceutical Science and Business in Romanticism
Thomas H. Schmid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Wollstonecraft and World Improvement
Mark Canuel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Mary Robinson and the Trouble with Tabitha Bramble
Daniel Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Egalitarianism in Mary Robinson’s Metropolis
William D. Brewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Flash Romanticism: The Currency of Urban Knowledge in Tom & Jerry
Jonathan Farina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Gothic Chapbooks and the Urban Reader
Diane Long Hoeveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

The Ethnologists’ Bookshop: Bartlett & Welford in 1840s New York
Robert L. Gunn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

The Forest and the City: Savagery and Civility in the British Atlantic World
Kevin Hutchings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

John Galt, Happy Colonialist: The Case of The Apostate; or, Atlantis Destroyed
Jeffrey Cass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

The City as Portal: Late Georgian Women on the Stage and in the Public Sphere
Marjean D. Purinton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Extract from Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman. Great Northern Books, ISBN 9781905080700. To order a signed copy, visit www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk or call 01274 735056. Yorkshire Post readers save £2 on Brontë in Love, price £12.99 (RRP 14.99).
To order your copy or treat a friend, ring our order line 01748 821122, Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post, please send cheque/postal order for £12.99 plus £2.75 p&p made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd. Send to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond DL10 4QP.

Charlotte Brontë wanted desperately to believe that brains were more important than beauty. Yet whenever she looked in the mirror or caught a glimpse of herself in one of the windows of her home, in Haworth parsonage, she couldn't help but feel disappointed.
She was short. Her lips were too small. Her head was far too big for her thin body. As for her hair, when curled, it looked dry and frizzy; when left to its own devices, it sat limply round her bony shoulders.
Charlotte was her own harshest critic. Her heart beat more passionately than anyone she had ever known, but she felt trapped within the plainest of exteriors. Blind to her simple, understated beauty, she spent much of her life wishing to be different.
For Charlotte, her appearance was a constant reminder of the unfairness of real life, and from the earliest age it forced a retreat into imaginary worlds where the heart always ruled the head and where those who loved passionately almost always triumphed. (Read more)

[I]t all comes down to a simple, but brilliant 3 step formula. One that has worked for centuries in literature and transitioned seamlessly into decades of cinema.
It goes something like this:
1. The female lead character is basically an empty shell.
2. The male lead represents everything women want in a man - multiplied by 10,000.
3. No one thinks it's strange that the two are completely devoted to each other.
Thinking about it, the theory makes perfect sense. Ever heard of Wuthering Heights? Titanic? (Tom Rose)

When I was a girl, I spent many hours buried in a book. I devoured them all--and would have rather spent time curled up with a volume than participated in most other activities... Perhaps that's why I enjoyed Jane Eyre so much. I was never an orphan, but her early experience could have mirrored that of the "everygirl" bookworm--reading, imagining and dreaming of a future I could never quite foretell.

Jane Eyre, which is about a woman who falls in love with an older man who keeps his insane wife chained up in the attic, and is later reduced to caring for him when a fire leaves him blind and mutilated. (Samuel Sexton)

Favorite Book: Wuthering Heights. I had to read it in high school, which was daunting at first, because I had to give a speech about it, so I needed to read it well. Yet, it ended up being so lovely and tragic a story that I couldn’t forget it. I read it about once a year now!

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Masada 3^rd day

Rose at 6.30.

Letter from Spillman: tin received. There is now but one year’s rint (sic) to pay. ― Wrote to Ann, C.F., C.M.C. & others. Long reading of Times.

Did a little to the 2 Nunehams ― but “muddling” ― & arranging drawings occupied most of my time.

Later, retraced & reoutlined the big Masada.

About 3, Majr. & Miss Reynolds Yates came ― but I was obliged to dismiss them ― as going to a Railway. She is gossipy & a bore: he ditto. ―― At 4.30 cab to Waterloo ― & rail to Epsom ― 5.30 ― arrive 6.10. Mrs. H.’s omnibus to Ashtead. Dressing time.

Mr. W. Legge ― H.t Paget, 2 Bagots & one Mrs. B., wh. was a Chester. ― Lady Augusta Seymour ― a “Harvey” (men, women, & Harveys) & her daughter ― & General A. Upton. Mrs. G.H. ― dear good old lady ― older: otherwise the same grand old lady. ―

Much of the narrow old [Forgion]¹ riles me now ― (not in her ― she was always a Xtian, ) but it is more foolish to speak. ――

Lady A. & Miss P. played. I sang, but [these well] alla AT ― incomprehensible to them, except perhaps Mrs. G.H. ― To bed at 11. ――― Ah! Very calm moonlight ―but dim & darkling! Yet the repose I now so seldom enjoy = the absolute quiet of these stately moveless trees! ――――

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

1. I am not at all sure of this word, might it be a conflation of “forgery” and “religion”? The whole page is quite difficult to read.

"The next suggestion is also a valuable one; it is the opening of the situation of librarian to educated gentlewomen, either in public institutions or in private families of rank or wealth. From the reports of the recent Conference of Librarians we learn that the Americans have already set us an example here, and in the Public Library at Boston, U.S., seventy ladies are employed, a few men only being kept to lift the heaviest books on the high shelves. The ladies appear to have given the utmost satisfaction in this position, to which they appear thoroughly suited. The work is such that a lady of good attainments and education could undertake and enjoy. It requires no great physical exertion, no exposure to the weather, and no hardship which the most delicate would shrink from. The salaries in this profession are so limited that they are not sufficient for the support of married men with families, nor are they objects of ambition to the single man with any fairer chances in life; but they would nevertheless form a good provision for a single woman, who, upon even this small pittance, might manage, with economy, to keep herself in comfort and as a gentlewoman."

"A few adventurous females are found bold enough to dare the terrors of the deep, as stewardesses and attendants in passenger vessels"

"Almost every article purchased in shops is now sent home in paper bags ; and often you receive your change neatly done up in one. The straw bonnet - that truly English and becoming article of attire - that has been platted and made up by a woman's hands, is forwarded to you in a green bag, also made by a woman. So great is the convenience afforded to shopkeepers and others by these bags, that the demand for them is enormous. Tons of paper are daily converted into them, with an economy that wastes not a visible strip."

On Sunday 29th August, Radio Theatre Group will release a new series of recordings entitled Brontë - a selection of poems by the Brontë sisters. These poems wil be performed by Frankie MacEachen, Ann Langridge and Giga Gray.

Frankie MacEachen reads the poems of Emily Brontë, including

Remembrance
...No Coward Soul is Mine
The Old Stoic
High Waving Heather
Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning
Anticipation

Ann Langridge reads the poems of Anne Brontë

Appeal
Lines Composed in a Windy Day
The Captive Dove
Reminiscence
A Fragment

Giga Gray reads the poems of Charlotte Brontë

Regret
Presentiment
On The Death of Anne Brontë
Parting
Passion
Winter Stores

The complete set can be downloaded here.

The Bard by John Martin

Painting of the Day Archive

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Woman Reading (n.d.) 24 1/4 X 17 1/8 in. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

With art historians earnestly looking for prominent female artists, it is surprising that so little is written about Fanny Fleury (French, 1848-1920). With the exception of Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899), Fleury was perhaps the most successful female exhibitor in the history of the Paris Salon, having works accepted consistently from 1869 to 1882, and in many afterwards. She also exhibited at the Salons of Saint-Etienne and Dijon, and received an honorable mention at the Exposition Universelle of 1889.

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Les Enfents de Jean-Marie (n.d.) Oil on canvas. Unknown Collection. Lithograph reproduction of original.

Fleury’s academic credentials are impeccable. She studied with Jean-Jacques Henner (French, 1829-1905) and was later accepted to the École des Beaux-Arts as a student of Carolus-Duran (French, 1837-1917), where she was a classmate of John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925). (Speaking of her work at the 1884 Salon, one critic said Fleury had “equalled her masters,” Henner and Duran.)  Highly regarded by her peers, Fluery was elected an Officer of the Academie and an associate of the Société des artistes français.

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Portrait of an Unknown Woman (n.d.) 32 X 25 3/4 in. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.

Yet, for all her accomplishments in well-documented institutions and events, there is surprisingly little information currently available about the life and work of Fleury. (This is another instance where I am writing about an artists in hopes that it encourages others to contact me with additional information.)

Fleury was born outside Paris in either 1843 or 1848–most sources agree on the latter. It is possible–I stress “possible” for lack of form documentation, yet a great deal of circumstancial evidence–she is the daughter of Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury (French, 1797-1890), a successful history painter and on-time director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Rome; and, his son, the painter Tony Robert-Fleury (French, 1837-1912), who was also successful painter and who replaced Bougeureau as the Director of the  Société des artistes français (If anyone can shed additional light, it would be greatly appreciated.) When she married, Fanny Fluery became Fanny Laurent Fleury; but, never included “Laurent” in her signature. So, whether or not there is an actual genetic connection between the three Fluerys, they must have come into contact with one another through the Acadamie.

It has been difficult to piece together a continuum of Fleury’s production with the few works and accounts left to us. It appears that for a time–presumably early in her career–she created a number of still lives.

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Still Life with Flowers (n.d.) 20 1/2 X 17 1/2 in. Oil on canvas. Private Collection

Under Carolus-Duran, Fleury distinguished herself as a portraitist. Her large-scale work Bebe dort (1884) exhibited in the Salon of 1884 along with Madame X by her classmate John Singer Sargent. Both pieces belie the the influence Corolus-Duran, who often combined monumental human figures in contemporary settings.

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Bebe dort (1884) 83 X 57 in. Oil on canvas. Anthony's Fine Art, Salt Lake City, UT

In Bebe dort (1884), a mother–perhaps a self-portrait of the artist–cradles her child, sitting together next to a cradle. Behind the figures, on the wall Fluery places a print of a business being ransacked by a mob. No one would imagine that scene actually being hung in a child’s room. It is a clever use of a picture-within-a-picture, used often by Netherlandish painters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to create greater or multiple meanings within a work. The juxtaposition of the two scenes contrasts security and comfort of home with a threatening world.

Fanny Fluery (French, 1848-1920) Bebe dort (1884) 83 X 57 in. Oil on canvas. Anthony's Fine Art, Salt Lake City, UT DETAIL

At some point, Fleury set aside society portraits and dedicated herself to Breton scenes. In 1892, The American Magazine wrote:

Realism has likewise tempted another artists of great talent, Mme. Fanny Fleury. It is to the desolate lands of Lower Brittany that Mmde. Fleury goes for her subjects. She has painted som admirable marine scenes, but excels in depicting types of peasantry . . . every summer she goes to the seacoast, and in some retired cornes, unfrequentd by the tourist, prepares her picture for the next Salon. (The American Magazine, Vol. 34. New York: Frank Leslie Publishing House, 1892; p, 430.)

Fanny Fleury (French, 1848-1920) Pour la Chapelle (n.d.) Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Black and white, photograph from Paris-Salon by Louis Enau

The quality of her work combined with her credentials certainly raise questions about the current dearth of readily-available information on Fleury’s life and the location of her works. All signs point to a productive career. From contemporary records, we know that her works were regularly purchased from Salon galleries, and that her works were found in various French and American museum collections–none of which currently list those works in their public inventories.

Whatever the reason for Fanny Fleury’s undeserved, forgotten status, she will only gain prominence as her works are rediscovered.

Wide Sargasso Sea (first aired on May 2004)
Read by Adjoa Andoh
Abridged by Margaret Busby

Monday to Friday, 3.00 PM

Monday, August 23 Episode 1
Tensions escalate amongst the former slaves on a Caribbean island.

Tuesday, August 24 Episode 2
Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway's mother marries an Englishman in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Wednesday, August 25 Episode 3
Without her brother and parted from her mother, heiress Antoinette is sent off to school.

Thursday, August 26 Episode 4
Fresh from England, Rochester weds Creole heiress Antoinette and takes her to Dominica.

Friday, August 27 Episode 5
Antoinette and Rochester's honeymoon develops into an intense love affair in Dominica.

Monday, August 30 Episode 6
Antoinette and Rochester's intense love affair in Dominica is threatened by rumour and betrayal.

Tuesday, August 31 Episode 7
Antoinette asks her old nurse Christophine to help restore her marriage.

Wednesday, September 1 Episode 8
Rochester accuses his new wife Antoinette of betrayal and their ravaged Eden falls apart.

Thursday, September 2 Episode 9
Antoinette returns to her faithless husband who now has control of her estate.

Friday, September 3 Episode 10
Rochester has imprisoned Antoinette in the attic of his English home.

THE NEW VACCINATION ACT.

This "act, further to extend and make compulsory the practice of vaccination," has been in operation since August last. Under its provisions, the parents or guardians of every child are required to have it vaccinated within three months from the date of its birth, and afterwards inspected by a medical officer, so as to receive from him a certificate of the success of the operation. We propose briefly to narrate some of the interesting facts which have rendered such an enactment necessary.
    The title of the act implies two things: first, that the safeguard against smallpox has been too little used; and, secondly, that it is thought by the government no longer advisable to leave the use or neglect of vaccination to the discretion of the great body of the people. The want of education makes itself felt in this direction also. Vaccination is practised wherever individuals recognise the full value of health, and know how it may be most effectually conserved; but it is neglected to a lamentable extent among the uninstructed poor. In some countries, where education is more generally diffused than in England, it has been compulsory for a long period; and these localities have been comparatively free from smallpox in consequence. If we have suffered from the disease to a larger extent, however, we may ascribe it, perhaps truly, to the slight abuse of agreat good the wholesome fear our rulers have of legislating upon matters which admit of being settled by the force of public conscience and judgment. But, in this instance, abundant evidence might be adduced to prove the wisdom of interference on the part of the legislature. The private law of parental affection and prudence has not been found strong enough to render unnecessary the help of the external public enactment. We propose now to glance rapidly at some of the evidence on this subject which was laid not long since before the House.
   It is now fifty-five years ago since Dr. Jenner published the result of his investigations into the nature of the vaccine disease, and introduced the practice of vaccination into the world. To estimate duly the value of his discovery, we must remember the fact, that one out of every four or five persons attacked by small -pox, in its unmitigated form, used to perish ; and that if death were escaped, the victims of the disease were liable to disfigurement, deformity, and other physical ills, to an amount frightful to contemplate. When lady Wortley Montague found the practice of innoculation in Turkey, she rejoiced at the mitigation of evil its introduction into her own country promised. She wrote from Constantinople, in 1718, as follows :- " The French ambassador says, pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by, way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died of it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I would not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a con- siderable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to them, not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live to return, I may, however, have courage to war with them. Upon this occasion, admire the heroism in the heart of your friend."
    When Lady Mary returned, in 1721, and put in practice this determination, she was sorely tempted to repent it. Torrents of abuse assailed her : she was denounced from the pulpits, and upbraided as an unnatural mother by the ignorant ; and so virulent was the feeling of the faculty against her, that when her daughter was inoculated, and four eminent physicians appointed to watch the progress of the experiment, she says she feared to leave her child a moment alone with them, lest they should in some way mar its success, and injure her. The court and people found out, at length, however, the value of lady Mary's knowledge and courage, and the practice of inoculation spread through England and many parts of the world. It was a very imperfect mitigation of the original evil : it took for granted that every individual must have the disease ; and though, when produced thus artificially, it appeared in a milder form, and ended fatally very much less frequently, it spread the infection, and left behind the saute liability to other illnesses and disfigurement, though in diminished severity. But it turned the attention of medical science towards the discovery of further remedies, and this perhaps was its moat valuable result.
    It was a happy thing that Dr. Jenner resisted the allurements of a partnership in London, and settled down quietly to a country practice in his native town. Had he accepted John Hunter's offer, the dairymaids in Gloucestershire might probably have enjoyed immunity from smallpox for no one knows how many years, without the world at large gaining by it. But Dr. Jenner had a love for country things ; and at Berkeley, it seems, possessed a large power of patient observation and research ; he studied the vaccine disease for twenty-three years, and then announced to the community that he had discovered a safeguard against small-pox. Inoculation had paved the way for the new wonder, and it was received with less opposition than falls to the lot of many fresh discoveries. The duke of York introduced the practice of vaccination into the army : it spread through England, was welcomed on the continent, in South America, the United States, and China ; and its beneficent influence has been extending ever since, more and more generally.
   To mark its appreciation of Dr. Jenner's services, parliament voted him a sum of 10,000l., in 1802, and an addition of 20,000l. five years afterwards, and the national vaccine establishment was instituted to promote the knowledge and extension of them. And so, at length, poison met poison, and the virulence of the most destructive was abated. The pestilence, that had been generated under the fierce sun of Africa, and had stalked through the nations to lay them waste, met its antidote in the peaceful meadows of Gloucestershire.
    So simple and so efficacious is the remedy thus introduced, that it may well excite our wonder that it has not long since been universally used. That many of our poor people were not fully aware of the value of vaccination, or that they neglected to avail themselves of it, is clearly shown in the disproportion between the vaccinations and births, exhibited in "Returns, made by the Guardians of the Poor relative to the progress of Vaccination in 1851-2 in England and Wales." In the former year, 592,347 births were registered, while the number of vaccinations was only 349,091; in 1852, the births amounted to 601,839, the vaccinations to 397,128, Of the children vaccinated, a very large proportion indeed were registered as being above one year old.. This is a somewhat serious matter, for diseases are most likely to seize infants under that age, who accordingly ought to be guarded against smallpox as early as possible after birth.
     In 1850, the board of the vaccine establishment, after regretting "that the protective power of vaccination was still so much neglected as to permit a frightful amount of mortality from smallpox in the united kingdom," reminded the government that the progress of vaccination was more rapid in countries where it was promoted by legislative enactments, and expressed their conviction that the legislature alone could effectually help to extinguish the pestilence. In that year a bill carrying out the views of the board was introduced into the house; a variety of valuable information relative to small-pox and compulsory vaccination was collected and arranged by the committee of the Epidemiological Society; and in the results set forth in their report, the act now in operation has been framed. This report contains much that is interesting. We find from its tables, for instance, that mortality from small-pox exists everywhere in proportion to the greater or lesseg lest of vaccination ; wherever the latter is compulsory there are fewer victims to the disease. Thus, in England and Wales, while the average number of deaths from small-pox, compared with the total mortality during eight years ending 1850 or 1851, was 21.9 per 1000, that in Saxony (the highest of the averages returned), was 8.33 per 1000 ; while in Bohemia Lombardy, and Sweden, it was little above 2 per 1000. The continental states have various methods of enforcing vaccination : some, as Prussia Bavaria, and Hanover, by fines or imprisonment others, by requiring the production of a certificat testifying the success of the operation, from apprentices, servants, candidates for admission into public schools, alms-houses, etc. Zealous public vaccinators are rewarded with gold and silver medals in France and Belgium. In Austria, no child is allowed to attend either public or private schools, and no person is permitted to seek relief from the charity boards, without having been vaccinated. In Denmark, we find it stated, on the highest medical authority, that variola had at one time disappeared before the defensive influence of compelled vaccination, though, it is added, "that chance, and a careless security engendered by the absence of the pest, have led to its re-introduction there."
   Dr. Cannon, of Simla, states, "that in June, 1850, small-pox broke out along the left bank of the Sutlej. Dr. C. immediately set his vaccinators to work along the right bank. The results were, that the disease along the left bank, where there was no attempt made to arrest it, destroyed from fifty to sixty per cent., but along the right bank from five to six per cent. only ; and in many of these cases the proper performance of vaccination was doubtful."
    All the facts in the report from which we have quoted have one tendency—to prove to any who yet entertain any doubt of it, the efficacy of vaccination, and the necessity of enforcing the use of the safeguard upon those who, from carelessness or ignorance, neglect to avail themselves of its protection. "If it admit of doubt," write the committee, " how far it is justifiable in this free country to compel a person to take care of his own life and that of his offspring, it can scarcely be disputed that no one has a right to put in jeopardy the lives of his fellow-subjects. The principle of using one's own so as not to injure another's is one which has always been acted upon in our legislation as regards property and personal nuisances, and we submit that it is but an extension of this principle to apply it to the questions of life and health."
    Yes, legislation must step in while education grows! When the latter spreads through our land with its enlightening and elevating influence, such enactments as the one under consideration may, we trust, become obsolete. The parents who have knowledge as their handmaiden, an enlightened conscience as their guide, and duty as their watchword, will need them little. Let present educators take heed that they be training such!

A recrudescence of smallpox at Gloucester and elsewhere has recently caused alarm, which would have been no smaller had it been possible to throw on the screen some of the sights I knew when a boy. Persons badly pitted by the disease were too numerous to excite remark, while those blinded by it were many. At a butcher's in Camberwell there was a shopman whose face and neck were so covered with marks that certainly not a square half-inch of original skin remained; and there were others within my purview nearly as bad. An insect undertaking a voyage over such a countenance would have been like an Arctic sledge party in the presence of very hummocky ice. Persistent vaccination - then much less satisfactory than now, for lymph was taken from one person for use on another, and mothers were wont to be cheered by the family doctor saying that he knew a splendidly healthy baby "coming on" and she might depend on her own darling getting a supply from it - so improved matters, however, that, had it not been for the forgetfulness and carelessness inherent in British human nature, the disease would probably have entirely disappeared. And conscientious objections - a phrase more blessed than even Mesopotamia to shirkers of every class -  helped not a little in keeping it alive.

Large Masada ―― outline ― Day 2

Rose at 6. Penned. Rain at times.

Worked till 2 ― Nunehams, & outline of big Masada ― wh. I did all wrong & must do over again.

Called on Mrs. Beadon, at Wynnes, & Cock’s on Daddy Hunt, Eggs. Bus to Sloane St. & cab to Severns ― left book, out. ― back to Sloane St. & falling in with P.E. Coombe, walked to Trafalgar Square with him.

Fanny C. is very unwell. But on the whole the evening passed very pleasantly.

Bus back by 10.30.

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

• Children should be taught to use the left hand as well as the right.
• Coarse bread is much better for children than fine.
• Children should sleep in separate beds, and should not wear night-caps.
• Children under seven years of age should not be confined over six or seven hours in the house, and that time should be broken by frequent recesses.
• Children and young people must be made to hold their heads up and their shoulders back while sitting, standing, or walking.
• The best beds for children are of hair, or, in winter, of hair and cotton.
• From one to one pound and a half of solid food is sufficient for a person in the ordinary vocations of business.
• Persons in sedentary employments should drop one-third of their food, and they will escape indigestion.
• Young persons should walk at least two hours a day in the open air.
• Young ladies should be prevented from bandaging the chest.
• We have known the worst diseases, terminating in death, which began in this practice.
• Every person, great and small, should wash all over in cold water every morning.
• Reading aloud is conducive to health.
• The more clothing we wear, other things being equal, the less food we need.
• Sleeping-rooms should have a fire-place, or some mode of ventilation besides the windows.
• Young people and others cannot study much by lamp-light with impunity.
• The best remedy for eyes weakened by night use, is a fine stream of cold water frequently applied to them.

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

• Pub. Date: July 2010
• Publisher: WingSpan Publishing

• ISBN-13: 9781595948410
• ISBN: 1595948414

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

• Pub. Date: July 2010
• Publisher: IndoEuropeanPublishing

• ISBN-13: 9781604442915
• ISBN: 1604442913

The Garden Bench by James Jacques-Joseph Tissot

Painting of the Day Archive

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China loves Jane Eyre? Reader, I understand it.
(...) By far the majority, however, if Thursday’s Times is to be believed, will be worrying most of all that if it goes on much longer they will not be home in time for the latest instalment of of Jane Eyre, and thus may never find out who is making the racket in the attic up at Thornfield Hall. “Surely,” they will say to themselves, as they tear off and chew another scrap of floor carpet for sustenance, “It cannot be that Mr Rochester has a crazy first wife who has been locked up there for years without it having been previously hinted at? No, that would be mental. It’s only the dehydration that’s making me think like that.”
For the Chinese have gone crazy for the 19th-century English novel. Or, rather for BBC adaptations thereof. “Chinese fall in love with Jane Eyre — the egalitarian heroine”, this paper reported, and went on to announce that a digital broadcaster in China has snapped up BBC films not only of Charlotte Brontë’s post-Gothic romp but also of novels by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and William Makepeace Endellion Thackeray. It is the first sale of BBC digital content to the world’s newly crowned second-biggest economy and, along with the huge success of a stage version of Jane Eyre in Beijing last year, points to a surprising fascination with 19th-century English literature in a land where you would not have thought it had much to say. But clearly Chinese audiences see something that they can identify with. Can it really be, as The Times report suggested, that Jane Eyre’s assertion of the heroine’s “equality” with Mr Rochester strikes an ideological chord in the land of Mao? That it is seen as a tacit endorsement of the principles of communism? Of course not. It is because English writers of the 19th century were responding to socioeconomic conditions that, while long forgotten here, are absolutely in place over there. The Chinese are taking the literature of of our industrial revolution and “reading” it during uring theirs. It’s a fantastic piece of cultural recycling.(...)
But a Marxist critique of the rise of the novel (which is presumably the kind the Chinese Government approves of, moribund though it is in universities here) would see her work, and the Brontës’, very much as a response to the emergence of a modern capitalist economy whose material freedoms helped to generate a bourgeois notion of self that led directly to the rise of the “psychological” novel. (...) It’s no wonder Jane Eyre is suddenly so popular, with its tale of an abandoned girl child who survives her deprivations to come good in the end. China, with its mushrooming power stations, its dark satanic mills, its rapid deruralisation, its burgeoning foreign interests, is just exactly where Britain was at our time of greatest literary fecundity. (Giles Coren)

Now, perhaps you imagine that I have a photographic memory of every book I’ve ever read. You imagine that I could be my very own parlour game: go on, shout “T. S. Eliot” at her and she’ll launch into The Wasteland, “Charlotte Brontë” and she’ll give you Wuthering Heights till she’s blue in the face. Not to put too fine a point on it: No.

This year a part of my life is ending. The part that has signed endless school forms and replied, on occasion, to admonishing teachers' notes. The part that has dutifully attended open houses, science fairs and high school football games. The part that has nagged, harangued and threatened. The part that has declared, ``If you want to spend your life behind the counter at McDonald's, then go ahead. Don't read Jane Eyre.'' (Ana Veciana-Suárez)

Tour guide Colin Frost says visitor numbers this summer are up, and - despite the fact the cameras have stopped rolling - he predicts TV repeats and DVDs will win over new generations.
"Ask yourself - how long have the Brontës been dead? And how busy is Haworth?" he grins. "There's still interest from all over the world. It'll never die." (James Alexander)

At Session "An Analysis of the History of English Literature" of the "Literary History of Nations" held Tuesday evening with presence of Amir Ali Nojumian at the House of the Literati, Reza Najafi said (...) "Among prominent figures of this period one can mention Thomas Hardy – with his Naturaist work 'Jude the Obscure', Robert Louis Stevenson – with his 'Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde' [sic], Brontë sisters – particularly Emily Brontë writer of 'Wuthering Heights' – and Jane Austin [sic] with the well-known 'Pride and Prejudice'."

The writer, on the other hand, duels with her deep seated insecurities and reveals the sort of marriage she is likely to have — “wifeless, motherless and husbandless” — which simply means that neither would be obligated to fulfil the traditional role of housekeeper or breadwinner. It also means that she will proudly defend the decision to join an “Auntie Brigade” instead of enlisting in the “Mommy Corps”. Members of the exclusive brigade will be pleased to learn that they are in great company — Tolstoy, Capote, Lennon and the Brontë sisters, all raised by doting aunts.

We have "the holy 14" that we have to play all the time. And then we have to plug in other ones. Spyder and I have worked on a lot of different things. We have a bunch of medleys this year. But I do have to tell you, when you make 13 records and you spread out the big anthems? Easy. When you string them together at 57? I want to cry. (Laughs). I sing "All Fired Up," "Shadows of Night," "Invincible," "Let's Stay Together," and "We Belong" in one big chunk. I don't have to work out ever. It's such gymnastics, it's insane. Every night someone yells out "Wuthering Heights" and I tell them "you sing it." (Sarah Rodman)

Editada por primera vez en 1847, en Londres, la novela Jane Eyre de Charlotte Bronté [sic], cuenta la historia de una joven que debe luchar para sobrevivir y realizarse sin ayuda del dinero, la familia o el privilegio de clase. La huérfana Jane está atrapada entre dos impulsos contradictorios. Por un lado es estoica, modesta y abnegada. Por el otro, es una persona apasionada, independiente, disconforme y rebelde frente a la injusticia que se encuentra en todas partes. El camino hacia el verdadero amor con el señor Rochester constituye un argumento romántico que permite seguir hablando en favor de las mujeres inteligentes y con aspiraciones en el contexto patriarcal de la Gran Bretaña victoriana. (Bellés) (Microsoft translation)

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Ah - or Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Large Masada. ― 1. day

Rain at times ― & gloom always.

Letter from ET. Lady Simeon is dead!

Penned out a good deal ― & finished all the 1858 Palestine views.

Worked a little at the 2 Nunehams.

Later began the squaring of the great Masada.

Edwards came at 6 ― & at 7.30 we dined at the Blue Posts. He goes tomorrow.

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

I know Brussels very well (I live nearby) and I hope to to describe the city in that time (the history, everyday life, politics) and how it influenced them.
The Flemish and Dutch Fund for Literature (Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren) has given me a scholarship for my novel on the Brontës.

Janzing identifies herself with Jane Eyre, because she was a bit of an outcast as a child (being Dutch but growing up in Belgium). She recognizes in herself the belief in true love that Jane Eyre had. And she talks about how Charlotte Brontë inspired her to become a writer herself.

Head of a Woman by Fernand Khnopff

Painting of the Day Archive

A chronological listing of book titles is useful for readers who want to graze the centuries of prose that Donoghue has uncovered, writing that ranges from the heights of Shakespeare and Jane Eyre to some truly horrific potboilers. (Richard Labonte)

'Jane Eyre' a famous novel written in 1847 by Charlotte Brontë an English writer and poet. One of the themes, in a male-dominated society the character attempts to assert her personality. In 1847 hmmm, have things changed that much? (Mary Ann Fiebert)

You wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that the literary canon is made up of fan favourites that gradually got adopted by the literary establishment. From Shakespeare, to Austen, to the Brontës, to Dickens, and many points in between, we see smash-hit plays and novels being retrospectively gathered into the bosom of the establishment and granted a recognition they lacked in their own time. (Fiona Snyckers)

The Wide Sargasso Sea author Jean Rhys said she only wrote when unhappy: “When I was excited about life, I didn’t want to write about life at all, and when I was happy I had no wish to write.
“I have never wanted to write about being happy. You cannot describe it.”

Jean Diedrich, attorney, Hinsdale: "Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë."

What is your favourite book? Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

No matter what you've heard, this is not a love story. It's a story about a passion, an obsession, and the depressing, often terrifying effects it has on the people involved. The love, if it is love, between Catherine and Heathcliff is very intense and very serious, but it certainly didn't make anyone happy.

As the drama unfolds, Dyer describes how TB ravaged Europe’s working class during the industrial revolution. More personal accounts from the Romantic Age are especially interesting. She tells us how 6 siblings of the famed literary Brontë family died of TB. (Rachel Albalak)

Tuberculosis (Biographies of Disease)
Carol A. Dyer
Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2010
ISBN-10: 031337211X
ISBN-13: 978-0313372117
Pages: 146; Price: US $45.00

Tuberculosis is a complicated medical condition that has a rich and important history, a distinctive social context, and an active and destructive present. The disease appears in Greek literature as early as 460 BCE and was a favorite of 19th-century novelists whose heroines often succumbed to “consumption.” Through history, the development of TB diagnosis and treatment has been synonymous with events in the development of medicine.

Tuberculosis presents TB from the perspective of the people and events that shaped its past and the factors that influence its current global state. The book begins with an essay discussing the importance of the social factors that influence the transmission and progression of TB. The following eight chapters focus on disease-specific information, historical and biographical perspectives, influence on the arts, the current state of TB in the world, and future directions. Throughout, medical information about the disease is intertwined with a historical and cultural perspective to illustrate the state of the disease today.

Raining, of course. However, the B.p of Oxford has decided on praying for change of weather ― λοιπον ― ειναι να ελπιση, τος.¹ ―

Unwell: ― indigestible & rheumatic.

X10

Worked at penning out remaining Palestine sketches ― & also at the Morning Nuneham ― off & on ― dilatinly

at 5 Gibbs, 6 N. Johnson came ― they are off to Messina ― so we made “notes of travel.” The are good huming=beans.

At 7 to W.F. Beadon ― the last day before Mrs. B. returns. Little Willie goes [] Wellington College. ―W.F.B. fades, poor dear fellow, fades away.  His 20^th child is near at hand. His talk of his father, & of his sister Bruce was touching in the extreme.

X11

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

1. Therefore, there is hope, [] (GT).

"Trafalgar Square was then being laid out, and the area was surrounded by an immense hoarding, which, notwithstanding minatory notices of "Stick no Bills," and "Bill-Stickers, Beware," was continually plastered over with placards relating to all kinds of things, theatrical and commercial, and at election time with political squibs. There were in those days no bill poster advertising-contractors. The bill-stickers were an independent race, whose main objects in life were first, to get a sufficient number of bills to stick up, and next, to cover over the placards pasted on the hoardings by their rivals. Thus the perpetually superposed bills led to a most amusing confusion of incongruities. If you tried to read, say, six square yards of posters, the information was conveyed to your mind that Madam Malibran was about to appear in the opera of Cockle's Pills; that the leader for Westminster was the only cure for rheumatism that Mr. Van Amburg and his lions would be present at the ball of the Royal Caledonian Asylum; and that the Sun evening newspaper would contain Rowland's Maccassar Oil, two hundred bricks to be sold at a bargain; and the band of the Second Life Guards would be sure to ask for Dunn's penny chocolate at the Philharmonic Concert, with Mademoiselle Duvernay in the Cachuca."

Bill-posting —The ordinary charge for hoardings is from a penny to twopence per sheet of “double crown” or “ double demy,” but very great judgment is required both in selecting stations and composing the bill itself. One chief point to bear in mind is to have as little in your bill as possible. Another is to have something novel and striking to the eye. All the best stations are in private hands, and must be treated for in detail. Be careful in all cases to have a written agreement. “Fly posting” – ie. Bills placed broadcast on unprotected stations – may be done very cheaply.

Hope in the Prison of Despair by Evelyn Pickering De Morgan

Painting of the Day Archive

It was with interest that I read 'Your Say', August 10th: 'Charlotte Brontë came to Halifax for Wedding Dress' [regrettably this article is not online, as far as we know]. The article was handed to me by a friend some days later.
The marriage ceremony was indeed conducted by the Rev Sutcliffe Sowden, incumbent of St James's Church, Hebden Bridge from 1841-1861, until his untimely death by drowning in the nearby canal.
The choice of vicar for this important occasion was not accidental, as Sutcliffe Sowden and the Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls were intimate friends. Indeed, after Sutcliffe's death, the Rev Nicholls remarked in a letter of condolence to George Sowden, Sutcliffe's brother, that he had regarded him more as a relative than a friend.
In later years, Sutcliffe Sowden officiated at Charlotte's funeral, and the Rev Nicholls at the service and burial of his dear friend Sutcliffe, whose grave and head-stone occupy a prominent place in our churchyard at St James's.
These Brontë links will form an important part of our forthcoming festival 'Treasures Revealed', which takes place at St James's Church, Hebden Bridge, from the 11th to the 19th of September. Indeed, the festival begins on Saturday 11th with a showing of the film Jane Eyre within the church building. We invite you to join us for the film at 7.30pm, after which, supper will be served. (Anna Lomas)

It’s the landscape that inspired the Brontë sisters and the late poet laureate Ted Hughes and, though not as well known as the national parks that sandwich it, it offers landscapes and villages steeped in history. (...)
The fourth South Pennines Walk and Ride Festival opens on 11 September with walks on Ilkley Moor, cultural heart of the West Riding and setting for the unofficial Yorkshire anthem On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘At. (Liz Roberts)

When Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, her gothic Victorian tale of love and insanity in rural England, it is reasonable to assume that she was not tailoring her prose for readers in 21st-century China. But the Middle Kingdom has become so keen on the story of the archetypal madwoman in the attic that a Chinese broadcaster has bought the digital rights to to the BBC’s adaptation of the book.
Sohu.com, an internet broadcaster, has acquired Jane Eyre along with four adaptations of novels by Jane Austen, four by Charles Dickens and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The deal, which is the BBC’s first sale of digital content in China, is the latest Chinese flirtation with Brontë after a stage adaptation of Jane Eyre in Beijing last year. The popularity of Brontë’s love story also prompted the winner of China’s equivalent of The X Factor to name herself “Jane Z” after the Victorian heroine. A spokeswoman for BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, was at a loss to explain the popularity of period dramas in China, but said that the bestselling BBC DVD in the country is Pride & Prejudice.
Some Chinese have identified with Jane Eyre because of her egalitarian principles, in particular her wish to be treated as an equal by Mr Rochester despite her lowly status as an orphan. Yuan Quan, who portrayed Jane Eyre on stage at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, said that the title character captured the experience of all girls who were born into poverty. “In my personal opinion, what Jane affirms is her position in society, even though she aspires for equality, she is also realistic,” she said. “It’s a conflict we all encounter, especially in today’s society. How other people view her doesn’t matter. If Rochester loves her, he must treat her as an equal.” Chinese enthusiasm for the Brontë sisters ates back to the 1930, when Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was first translated as Xia Lu Yuan Jia. Brontë’s novel Villette appeared in China in 1932 (as Luoxue Xiaojie Youxueji) and Jane Eyre followed three years later (as Guni Piaolingji, which translates as A Record of of an Orphan Girl who Drifts About Alone).

“For example Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, which is a big song in the UK, is also massive in Australia, which we didn’t know, and though the Australians didn’t understand who Kate Nash was, they understood what we were trying to do with the song and loved it."

Of course the books are well written, not to mention cleverly paced, but with all the comparisons to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, there is a sinister theme throughout: the hopelessness of women and the all-saving power of men. (Catherine Gale)

Drac knows there's plenty of pints in the teen vampire-horrormone Twilight Saga to mock: formulaic shots, cheesy F/X, the bizarre effort to merge Bram Stoker and Wuthering Heights in 21st century America, the Mormon sucktext, the series' anti-feminism. But since this is a goof-spoof from the Friedberg and Seltzer factory (Scary Movie, Epic Movie, etc.), the movie tosses off some blunt-force one-liners, coasts on character impersonation, riffs off the originals' plot points, and pretends its cheap imitation of the Saga's mopey, slow scenes are parody. In other words, Vampires Suck bites. (Brian Gibson)

From Brontë sisters to Musketeers, in the literary world, good things come in threes. (Hillary Kline)

Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" is a towering achievement of English romantic literature. See if Christina Calvit's world premiere adaptation for Lifeline Theatre (Sept. 10-Oct. 31, lifelinetheatre.com) brings out all of the pent-up passion of the stormy Yorkshire moors. (Scott C. Morgan)

No sooner has Kaye left the building, than her daughter, actress Gaynor Faye, takes to the stage as Cathy in Wuthering Heights, alongside former Coronation Street actor Rupert Hill.

I was hoping for someone a little more articulate. Time to expand the possibilities. I put in Philip Roth, Emily Brontë, Kafka, but the pickings were still slim.

The largest production based at the Company’s studios during the period was Hugo Cabret (GK Films/Sony Pictures). Other productions using Pinewood Shepperton facilities included John Carter of Mars (Disney), Jane Eyre (Ruby Films), Clash of the Titans (Warner Bros) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Warner Bros).

Despite superb music by Hemant Kumar, 'Kohraa' (1964), a desi version of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, collapsed at the cash counters. So did the Dilip Kumar-Waheeda Rehman-starrer 'Dil Diya Dard Liya' (1966) based on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. (Meenakshi Sinha)

The three sisters grew up in Moscow and long to return there to escape the frustrations and confinements of life in the small village where they live. Their situation mirrors that of the Brontë sisters, Chekhov’s initial inspiration for the play.

Reminders of a "Wuthering Heights" type fate-against-the-lovers and the "Picture of Dorian Gray" narcissism is in the mesh of this particular story. Setting, surroundings described in voluminous detail a tangible force. Think a slightly toned-down Baz Luhrman's "Moulin Rouge" atmosphere. (Veronika)

Churchyard Challenge! Take our special pack to the Haworth Churchyard; follow the graveyard trail, try your hand at grave rubbings, and have a close up view with our special bug catcher / magnifiers at some of the tiny living inhabitants of the churchyard...

A fine day!!!!!!!!!!

(But it clouded at 6 & rained at 8.)

Drew: garden ― & dined.

At 3 W.N. & I walked to West Green & walked at the old house ― now a Tulip-fancier’s one Mr. Williams. ― Back to Woodberry ― & tea. Guy Pelly N. ―

Brougham to Islington. Called again on Ann who is better. Found a letter at home from Fanny Coombe & wrote to her.

West Green, Woodberry ― Holloway & “the Ride” ― Hornery Lane, Hintons ― Haywoods &c. Holloway road ― Arnolds, Francis’s, Mr. Hicks &c. &c. & so to Grays Inn Road ― 38 Upper North Place ― & what a vast crowd of small memories from years of past life!!

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

"Sitting opposite to Samuel, she avoided his persistent glances by reading the rows of advertisements above his head. Somebody's 'Blue;' somebody's 'Soap;' somebody's 'High-class Jams;' and behold, inserted between the Soap and the Jam--'God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Nancy perused the passage without perception of incongruity, without emotion of any kind. Her religion had long since fallen to pieces, and universal defilement of Scriptural phrase by the associations of the market-place had in this respect blunted her sensibilities."

'In a few hours yesterday, two boys worked off the washing of the whole institution, containing nearly two hundred inmates.'

'My servants wash more clothes and much better in one day with your Machine than they used to do in three days without it.'

'ESSENCE OF JINGOE. - Is the remedy for Archbishops.
ESSENCE OF JINGOE. - Is a of great assistance to Amateur Actors.
ESSENCE OF JINGOE. - Is a necessity for Acrobats.'

'JUST READ THIS:
"I have been a martyr to Nervous Irritability for upwards of seventeen years. The slightest contradiction at dinner caused me to throw a soup-plate at the head of anybody I could see. I have got through whole services, and was nearly ruining myself when I sent for a double-sized quantity of your ESSENCE, and gave the whole of it in a cup of coffee to my mother-in-law. The effect was marvellous. We buried her last Tuesday, and I am an altered man. I find myself singing without knowing why. You are at liberty to make what use you like of this, witholding my real name for fear of the Police. - X. The Swallows, Herts."

'Parrysland' is the title of his debut as an artist in his own right, a concept album based upon a series of turbulent relationships - "They always start like fairytales, and then everything just slowly descends into chaos!" The record's title is taken from the writings of Emily Brontë, whose novel Wuthering Heights features a similarly turbulent relationship and is set on the Yorkshire Moors where Ashley grew up.

The Abandoned Town by Fernand Khnopff

Painting of the Day Archive

Technologies of Power in the Victorian Period Print Culture, Human Labor, and New Modes of Critique in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and George Eliot's Felix Holt
By John C. Murray
Cambria Press
ISBN-13: 9781604976687
ISBN: 1604976683

This study examines the ways in which technological changes initiated during the Victorian period have led to the diminution of speech as a mode of critique. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests. It enabled the creation of a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a industry and the emergence of a technical language and culture, a culture that precedes and predicts post-modern society.

The purpose of this study is to employ Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), and George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866) to evidence how the growth of capitalist production and the development of new technologies of industry within the early- to mid-Victorian periods inspired the prioritization of the printed word over oratory and speech as a means for fulfilling the linguistic power exchanges found common in spoken discourse. Inventions such as Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer’s high-speed printing press enabled mass production and low-cost readership among the working class, who experienced literacy on multiple levels: to educate themselves, to experience leisure and diversion, to confirm their religious beliefs, and to improve their labor skills. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests that would create a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a new technical society and would eventually perform the routines of mechanized labor. Rather than merely romanticizing pre-technological cultures, the author suggests that the emergence of technologies of production and print culture within the early- to mid-Victorian periods precipitated the diminution of linguistic exchanges as techné or modes of revealing and critiquing transferences of power, and also for rivaling print culture’s representational claims of how linguistic exchanges had been conceptualized and experienced.

This book employs Victorian novelists such as Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to address representations of speech in fictional discourse. Critics like Nancy Armstrong and Garrett Stewart have considered these representations without addressing the ways in which print culture engendered and valued new forms of speech, forms which might re-engage critique of the human condition. More recent publications like The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, by John Plotz, do not respond to the ways in which individuals use the collective voice of crowd formations to redefine and resituate their subjective identities. This book serves to fill this gap in Victorian studies.

Victorian novels are not, of course, pure representations of Victorian reality. However, many working-class Victorians engaged texts as authentic representations of society. How working-class readers then reconstructed their personal narratives in actuality suggests the affects of social assimilation upon subjective identity and advances the claim that Victorian novels did not provide solutions to the social and economic maladies they reported. Rather, they contextualized social and cultural problems without recognizing the dangers of how the decontextualized imagination of the reader locates placement within the same ontological and epistemological assumptions.

Technologies of Power in the Victorian Period is an informative study that will appeal to members of academic groups such as the British Women’s Writer’s Association and the North American Victorian Association. Although the book bears relevance to scholars and students of Victorian studies, it will also serve as a point of reference for curious readers engaged in studies of the effects of industrial technologies on language acquisition and dissemination during the nineteenth century.

Extreme torrents of rain all day long: & very dark.

Painted but little at the 2 Nunehams.

At 2 went to Dr. Rimabault’s ― & on to Ann who is better. Back to Stratford Pl. ― & then W. Nevill’s, with whom to Woodberry ― & dined. “Penned out.”

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

Decadent Poetics

Centre for Victorian Studies,  University of Exeter, UK  -  1-2 July 2011

Deadline for proposals: 10 November 2010

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Abstracts of 300-500 words should be sent to Dr Alex Murray and Dr Jason Hall via email at <decadent-poetics@exeter.ac.uk> by 10 November 2010.

“Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites”

University of Delaware
Winterthur Museum & Country Estate
Delaware Art Museum

7-9 October 2010

“Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites” will be the subject of a conference and related exhibitions to be held 7-9 October 2010 at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society in the United States, “Useful & Beautiful” will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware’s rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur’s important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum’s superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century.

In addition to sessions featuring internationally known scholars and experts, there will be a keynote lecture by noted biographer, Fred Kaplan; demonstrations by leading practitioners who make and design Arts and Crafts objects; special exhibitions; a concert of early music; and a performance of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” by the University of Delaware’s critically acclaimed Resident Ensemble Players.

Registration fee: $150 or $75 for students. No fee for University of Delaware faculty, students, and staff.

Online registration and more information–including a list of speakers–is available at  www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb

Related exhibitions include:

DELAWARE ART MUSEUM
“A Belief in the Power of Beauty: A Selection of Work by May Morris (1862-1938)”
“On Assignment: American Illustration 1850-1950″
“Leonard Baskin: Art from the Gift of Alfred Appel, Jr.”
also permanent display of the Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art

DELAWARE CENTER FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS
“David Mabb: The Morris Kitsch Archive”
“In Canon”

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE LIBRARY
“London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870-1916″
“The Multifaceted Mr. Morris”

OLD COLLEGE GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
“Ethel Reed and American Graphic Design of the 1890s, From the Thomas G. Boss Collection”

HISTORIC COSTUME AND TEXTILE COLLECTION, ALISON HALL, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
Display of women’s fashions of the Aesthetic movement, from the University of Delaware’s Historic Costume & Textile Collection, Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies

“Useful & Beautiful” is supported by Delaware Art Museum; Winterthur Museum & Country Estate; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; William Morris Society in the United States; William Morris Society (UK); University of Delaware Library Associates; Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events; the following University of Delaware units, departments and programs: College of Arts and Sciences, University of Delaware, University of Delaware Library, Art, Art Conservation, Art History, English, Fashion and Apparel Studies, History, Institute for Global Studies, Frank and Yetta Chaiken Center for Jewish Studies, Center for Material Culture Studies, Music, Office of Equity and Inclusion, Resident Ensemble Players/Professional Theatre Training Program, University Museums, and Women’s Studies; Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau; and Routledge Visual Arts Journals.

Call for Papers

PANEL:

VICTORIAN BODIES AND MACHINES
42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-10, 2011
New Brunswick, NJ – Hyatt New Brunswick
Host Institution: Rutgers University

This panel will examine representational and material relations between bodies and machines in the Victorian era. Papers may approach this topic from the direction of industrialization and economics to examine labor power; the laborer’s body as machine or appendage of the machine; or the effects of machine labor on the worker’s body, including factory accidents and developmental deformities. Specific Victorian technological innovations may be addressed through examination of scientific texts (or science fiction) and the ways new technologies are figured in relation with (or as extensions of) human bodies, including networks and human communications; prostheses and appendages; or robots and automatons. Papers may also examine the connections between machines and specific kinds of bodies (classed, gendered, etc.) or forms of embodiment (for example: How does the worker’s relation with the machine construct a specifically gendered and/or classed body?). In addition to texts of the Victorian era, the panel welcomes papers that examine relations between Victorian bodies and machines in Steampunk texts and contexts.

Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Jessica Kuskey   jekuskey@syr.edu
Deadline: September 30, 2010

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 42nd Annual Convention will feature approximately 360 sessions, as well as pre-conference workshops, dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2011 Convention will be posted in June: www.nemla.org.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. Do not accept a slot if you may cancel to present on another session.

Purple felt and paper flower corsage. Made from the pages of Charlotte and Emily Bronte books.

Flower is approx 6 1/2cm.

Please be aware that the corsage is made with book paper and Felt. The paper is suprisingly durable, however it doesn't like getting wet very much. It's therefore not suitable for wear on outer jackets/coats, unless it's lovely weather of course!

This beautiful and collectible pocket mirror features a revamped painting of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë painted by their brother Branwell.

Each pocket mirror comes fabulously packaged individually as shown. If you would like more than the quantity available let me know and I will revise the listing to make more mirrors available.

* Pocket mirrors come packaged complete with a velvet bag for safe keeping.
* Dimensions: 2.25 Diameter.
* Design on one side with real glass mirror on the other side.

Spring Spreads One Green Lap of Flowers by John William Waterhouse

Painting of the Day Archive

UNIVERSAL's coming year is packed full, with [...] Mia Wasikowska starring in Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre (April 7). (Michael Bodey)

So it isn’t particularly surprising that sometimes, authors take the somewhat safer option. They “borrow” characters from other writers’ works – the more famous, the better – and place them in their own books. The most notable, and successful, example is Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea; essentially a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, we discover the previous, colonial life of Mrs Rochester, before she is shut away in the attic of Thornfield Hall, supposedly mad.
Wide Sargasso Sea works because Mrs Rochester is an intriguing character for whom imagining an interesting backstory is easy – and Rhys is a fantastic writer. But all too often, borrowing characters in this way is a dangerous game to play. The wrath of precious fans of the originals is easily incurred and the books will always be compared with their more illustrious predecessors. (Ben East)

"I smell fish," Salt sniffed, "and I'm not talking about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea Bass: 20 Lite N' Easy Meals. (Stephen Gertz)

shockhorrorDJ
Hi Yoko, have you ever been to Scotland?
Yes. I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful country, It always makes me think of Weathering Heights, my favorite book.

Beaton's background makes her webcomic especially entertaining and (bonus!) educational. If you're not reading Hark! A Vagrant, you should check it out -- topics range from Benjamin Franklin to Henry VIII to the Brontë sisters.

Quit calling it the modernized “Romeo and Juliet” or “Wuthering Heights.” That’s an insult to authors, screenwriters and readers worldwide. (Kelly Hotard)

As usual, the church was packed with tourists, our class straining to see the ornate tombs of numerous monarchs, and the memorials of distinguished authors, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, T.S Eliot, John Keats, and many more. (Caitlin Alisa Coyiuto)

Chalk-white cliffs, rolling downs covered with thick mists. Green fields outlined by great hedges, cities combining Roman walls, Gothic cathedrals, and modern skyscrapers.
This was what I thought of when I thought of England. I also thought of Shakespeare’s theatre, Jane Austen’s ordered country homes, the Brontë sisters’ romantic moors, and the sleepy shire nestled in the quiet hills. [...]
The English students among us were thrilled to visit Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, where Shakespeare, Austen, Carroll, the Brontës, Lord Byron and dozens of other British authors and poets are honored or buried. (Casey Meserve)

Brontë country was an obvious place to base his fiction, partly out of nostalgia, the need to write from knowledge and because Robinson liked the kind of regional English detective story that "throws in an inspector and a sidekick to look at the mores and social make-up of an area and the human psychology of its inhabitants". (Linda Morris)

Illustration by Francis Carruthers Gould from "The Westminster Alice"

Two more curiosities from the generous house of Evertype Publishers:

The Westminster Alice, by Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), and illustrated by Francis Carruthers Gould, New Edition 2010.
These political parody vignettes were first brought together in 1903 in the Westminster Popular, and then published again with forward and footnotes in 1927. This edition provides additional historical background and photographs of the Victorians lampooned.  Amazon.com, $12.95

New Adventures of Alice, by John Rae, New Edition 2010.
John Rae, author, illustrator and portraitist from New Jersey, really wished that Lewis Carroll had written a sequel to Through the Looking-Glass, so he wrote and illustrated one himself. Published first in 1917, these new adventures see Alice visit a number of Mother Goose characters. Amazon.com, $21.95

Rose at 8. Rain all day ― & quite dark, could hardly work at colors ― but penned out.

Captain Jameson. Mr. & Mrs. Coleridge, ― Major Edwards & Mr. Hawker, Mr. Morier & Burnet M. called. Dined at Blue Posts with C.F. who returned with me.

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

THE HOUSE TELEGRAPH 

    A Telegraph all over London? The wires brought to within 100 yards of every man's door? A Company established to carry it out?
    Well - I don't know. There's a good deal to be said on both side.
    It certainly would be pleasant to be within five minutes of such a message as "Dine at the Club with me at seven;" or "SQUATTLEBOROUGH JUNCTIONS" at six premium; I've sold your hundred, and paid in the cash to your account;" or "Little stranger arrived safe this morning at twelve; mamma and baby doing well;" and one might occasionally be grateful for such a warning as "KITE and POUNCE took out a writ against you this morning - Look alive;" or "JAWKINS coming to call on you; make yourself scarce."
    But think on the other hand of being within five minutes of every noodle who wants to ask you a question, of every dun with a "little account;" of every acquaintance who has a favour to beg, or a disagreeable thing to communicate. With the post one secures at least the three or four hours betwixt writing the letter and its delivery. When I leave my suburban retreat at Brompton, at nine A.M., for the City, I am insured against MRS. P.'s anxieties, and tribulations, and consultings, on the subject of our little family, or our little bills, the servants' shortcomings, or the tradesmen's delinquencies, at least till my return to dinner. But with a House Telegraph, it would be a perpetual tete-a-tete. We should be always in company, as it were, with all our acquaintance. Good gracious, we should go far to outvie SIR BOYLE ROCHE's famous bird, and be not in two places only, but in every place within the whole range of the House-Telegraph at once. Solitude would become impossible. The bliss of ignorance would be at an end. We should come near that most miserable of all conceivable conditions, of being able to oversee and overhear all that is being done or said concerning us all over London! Every bore's finger would be always on one's button; every intruder's hand on one's knocker; every good-natured friend's lips in one's ear.
    No - all things considered, I don't think society is quite ripe for the House-Telegraph yet. If it is established I shall put up a plate on my door with "No House-Telegrams need apply."

Pan by Franz von Stuck

Painting of the Day Archive

The chief reason to see this remake, and sufficient reason to have made it, is for the spectacle of the bony Charlotte Gainsbourg nibbling away at the meaty title role. (...)
Her face, perfect for the part, is not such as to contradict the character completely, much less deride her supposed sensitivity and intelligence and veracity, when she must describe herself as "plain." (We have "supermodel" Elle Macpherson, with Shirley Temple dimples and ringlets, for emphatic contrast.) All the same, we are free to disagree. Plainly exquisite, Jane. Exquisite, plainly. The natural pout of her outthrust chin, chipmunky stuffed cheeks, swollen lower lip, makes the slightest smile ("Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?") all the more precious and touching. And her neck, seemingly in a state of constant craning, gives to every facial expression and every glance an extra increment of curiosity, uncertainty, innocence, strain. Gainsbourg may be a somewhat limited actress, but her limits far surpass the rudimentary demands of this Ugly Duckling-cum-Cinderella archetype. The same cannot be said of William Hurt, who lacks some of the ruined nobility required in the role of Rochester. He doesn't lack the required adjective. (Duncan Shepherd)

The origins of the 19^th century Thomas family are buried up there in the old chapel at Blackshawhead. My ancestors on the Thomas side were hill farmers and road makers up on the Wuthering Heights moors; before they all moved down into the valley to get away from the rain; find work in the mills and factories of the Industrial Revolution and get the bus to Turf Moor. (Dave Thomas)

This was what I thought of when I thought of England. I also thought of Shakespeare’s theatre, Jane Austen’s ordered country homes, the Brontë sisters’ romantic moors, and the sleepy shire nestled in the quiet hills. (Casey Meserve)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."
I picked this one because Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books and Heathcliff is one of the great bad boys of literature. The book spoke to my teenage self with a story of soul mates bound together but kept apart by circumstance – it was the Twilight for my generation, really.

Read Full Post

Rose before 6. Penned out till 8. ― Fine early ― but as usual cloud & rain after 12.

X

Letter from Emmy Penrhyn.

Deadly “low spirits” ― but I worked at the Nuneham Church-field picture & at Cedar Lebanon sketches all day off & on. W.N. came at 2: always pleasant & good. Then I took leave of Gush, who goes to America on Saturday. ― Certainly these are most comfortable lodgings.

At 5.30 ― to Egg’s ― 6.30 dinner.

Mrs. Egg: ―――

Holman Hunt ―― Wilkie Collins & ― Pigott.

Dinner & wines very good. ―

We staid till 11.15. Then W.C. & I set off to walk, but Daddy did so too & talked ever ― & ever “willful=obstinate.” ― So I got onto a cab, & came home.

XXXX9

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

Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837–1925
by Cathrine O. Frank

* Imprint: Ashgate
* Published: June 2010
* Binding: Hardback
* ISBN: 978-1-4094-0014-1

Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of “curious wills” in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank’s examination of works by Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Art and Life by Walter Crane

Painting of the Day Archive

When our cousins the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil held their first “Alice Day” in May this year, one of the main events was the live performance of a new soundtrack to the silent Alice in Wonderland (1903). The music was composed by Paulo Beto and performed by the band Frame Circus on keyboards, cello, percussion and Theremin.

Thank you to Adriana Peliano for sending us news of the event. Adriana tends Alicenations, the blog of the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil. The above video featured in her Alice Day blog post, along with another soundtrack by Frame Circus, and a video of Leon Theremin playing his own instrument.

In Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” Rochester locks his mad wife Bertha in the attic. Mary is the mad/invalid monster locked in the root cellar. And like Bertha in the 19th century attic, Mary stays locked up. (Reva Blau)

The author mentions Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens and PG Wodehouse as some of the writers he likes. But his fascination for the words of Rudyard Kipling is well known. (Ashlesha Athavale)

Nintendo has high ambitions for its clientele of teenage zombies, and has launched a "100 books collection" of great works of literature, for its DS console. All very noble. A pity then that whoever wrote the advert got a bit muddled and tells us the list includes "must-read novels" such as Moby Dick, Jane Eyre and, er, Hamlet.

I’m pretty sure I absentmindedly ate almost an entire fruitcake when I read Jane Eyre. Even now, just thinking about Mr. Rochester brings on a curious craving for candied fruit and pecans. And I’m not a big fan. (Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

In the chilly and dusky Cornish Coast and Ruins, she explores the bluffs and cliffs of southeastern England. The depiction is lively and theatrical, the stage perfectly set for a heroine such as Jane Eyre to appear. (Amy Adams)

Absolutely pouring rain till 10 ― then dark gloom, & wet more or less till 6: then half an hour’s sun ― & rain again!! ―

Letter from Ann ― I think somehow better.

― Mrs. Greville Howard ― very nice & kind & I will go if possible next week.

― [pm] F.L. who writes from Berwick: he only comes here Nov.br 1. ―

So I sate down to breakfast not over beaming. At 10 Dickenson took away Gibbs’ Cerbara ― so goes that! & I went & saw it hung at 24 Mount St. ― Returned ― arranged Sicilian drawings of 1842, & worked at sheep in the Nuneham picture from 2 to 7.

At 5.30 J.B.E. came & sorted drawings: & went at 7. At 8 I dined alone on cold beef: & 9 to 10.30 penned out.

X8

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

Wuthering Heights
by Bernard Herrmann

April 16, 17, 19, 21 and 23, 2011
A gothic romance by a Hollywood legend.

Wuthering Heights is based on Emily Brontë's gothic romance. Unable to bridge the chasm of social class, Heathcliff and Catherine are consumed by a love that can never be, and its legacy haunts the windswept Yorkshire moors. The music of the opera, composed by Hollywood legend Bernard Herrmann, underscores the novel's passion, prejudice and mystery.

Bernard Herrmann was an Academy Award-winning American composer whose unforgettable collaborations include Psycho with Alfred Hitchcock, Citizen Kane with Orson Welles and Taxi Driver with Martin Scorsese. Minnesota Opera's new production of his only opera celebrates the centennial of the composer's birth and is the first major revival of this forgotten masterpiece since it was written in Minneapolis in 1951.

Music by Bernard Herrmann
Libretto by Lucille Fletcher after the novel by Emily Brontë

Conductor: Michael Christie
Stage Director: Eric Simonson
Set Designer: Neil Patel
Costume Designer: Jane Greewood
Lighting Designer: Robert Wierzel
Projections Designer: Wendall K. Harrington

The Cast

Catherine Earnshaw ... Kelly Kaduce
Heathcliff ... Lee Poulis
Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother ... Ben Wager
Edgar Linton, the Earnshaws' neighbor ... Eric Margiore
Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister ... Adriana Zabala
Nelly Dean, the housekeeper ... Victoria Vargas
Joseph, a farmhand ... Rodolfo Nieto
Mr. Lockwood, a neighbor ... Jesse Blumberg
Hareton, Hindley's son ... tba

St George and the Dragon by Briton Rivière

Painting of the Day Archive

The venerable British film company is covering 20% of the budget for Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold’s new version starting shooting this autumn. Kaya Scodelario from UK teen series Skins is the only cast member attached so far. Co-financiers include Film4, UK Film Council and regional agency Screen Yorkshire. Hanway Films is selling this Ecosse Films project internationally. (Tim Adler)

And it's working on Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Emily Bronte's tome "Wuthering Heights."
"She's a very interesting filmmaker," Rae says, "very centered, very focussed and very individual."
Bernstein adds that while the project is period, it's not traditional: "I think if you're going to do something period, you have to do something that has a skew to it, something different." (Diana Loderhose)

And, Mr. Rochester, if he isn’t an asshole, he’s a psychopath–or, simply creepy and duplicitous. I can’t believe he was voted most romantic literary character in a British poll last year. That’s messed up. Are they kinkier in England? (The Telegraph article on the subject, by the way, mentions that the results were revealed at a literary festival, where “guests were served pink champagne by scantily-clad waiters.” Oh dear.)
Let’s consider some points against old Edward, shall we? (Read more)

But once Jane has declared that her love for him still remains, he reveals that for the past year, he’s been wearing the pearl necklace (ahem) he had given her during their engagement. Some might call this romance, I call it a problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rochester likes to wear Jane’s underwear, too. Or, let’s be honest: Bertha’s. (Edan Lepucki)

Finlay was also a voracious reader. Her favourite authors weren't canonical greats like Jane Austen, Emily Brontë or George Eliot. (Thomas Hodd)

In 1978 he was my tutor at Glasgow University – passionate about Emily Brontë and Milton's Areopagitica, that great defence of freedom of speech ("I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue"). (Robert Crawford)

The son of Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, he’s practically thespian royalty – and has appeared in some pretty decent dramas in his time (the BBC’s Jane Eyre among others). (Patrick Smith)

Moody’s characters engage in long, funky speeches that I didn’t find excessive in the least, having just come off reading (and crazily enjoying the earnest Gothic excesses of) Jane Eyre, in which characters don’t so much have conversations as provide an ongoing exegesis of the state of their souls. The tortured Capt. Jim Rose in Four Fingers of Death could easily be a literary descendent of the puritanical and monomaniacal St. John Rivers, Jane’s erstwhile suitor. (Zsuzsi Gartner)

El particular timbre y el modo de decir de Pedro López Lagar hicieron célebre su reiterada invocación en la versión radial de Cumbres borrascosas , de Emily Brontë: "¡Cathy, Cathy, Cathy!", por radio El Mundo. Lo que le acarreó también tomadas de pelo en los programas cómicos. (Ernesto Schoo) (Google translation)