Thornfield Hall

Norton Conyers 

It was Clare Balding’s love of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre that took her to Norton Conyers in North Yorkshire, a manor house owned by the same family since the 17th century and long thought of as a likely inspiration for fictional Thornfield Hall, where Mr Rochester kept his mad wife Bertha confined in an attic. 

In 1839, Charlotte was unhappily employed as a governess to a family at Lothersdale, not far away, when she accompanied them on a day trip to view the historic house. ‘I think she’d have been enchanted by its atmosphere,’ Clare explains.
It is easy to imagine this place being Thornfield Hall.’ Maybe it was a loquacious housekeeper who showed the visitors around the house and told them the darkest family legend, the story of a madwoman restrained in the attic back in the 18th century. The present owners of the house are Sir James and Lady Graham. ‘She was known as Mad Mary,’ explains Lady Graham. ‘We don’t know if she was a servant or a member of the family. Anybody considered mad was hidden from view.’ 

It makes me feel terribly sad being here... it feels so much like a cell, with just a glimpse of the outside world through the window

It was an astonishing discovery at Norton Conyers in 2004 that seemingly supports the Grahams’ claim. A door was discovered behind some solid Edwardian panelling, giving access to a previously unknown staircase. It led to a cramped garret with a small gable window. Could this be the madwoman’s chamber? 

‘It makes me feel terribly sad being here,’ says Clare, ‘because it feels so much like a cell, with just a glimpse of the outside world through the window. We’ll never know for sure whether Charlotte Brontë came up here. But I can’t tell you how strange it feels, how eerie to be allowed to wander through these rooms and imagine the screams and the groans of a woman locked away. And to feel the spirit of Charlotte Brontë and, in a way, the ghost of Jane Eyre.’

Read more:Daily mail Attic-inspired-Jane-Eyre-priest-hole-saved-Charles-II.html

bronte blog i-could-wish-she-used-simpler-language.html

Read also adelphi paper hangings 

 with an interesting story about 
 Norton Conyers: 

"The wallpaper was found behind 18th century paneling in a cupboard next to the house maid’s room. We know that the house maid’s room was originally much larger and grander but part of it was done away with when the 1780s ceiling was created. We do not know if this was the original place for the wall paper or whether it had been used in the grander rooms downstairs. This room had wallpaper which was stuck onto canvas and held together by a wooden frame and we found evidence of a soft woolen-type fabric which would have given it a much softer look which we are told was French”.

Muriel Spark

If writing came naturally to Muriel Spark - and she insists it did - so did her material. She specialises in paradox, danger, assumption, the Great Unseen. In her stories and novels, even in her biographies of Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë, the air crawls with treachery and half-truths. (...)
Her two biographies, do not forget, researched writers who experienced critical censure much focussed on their sex: Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had variously been called a "mere sponge who absorbed the ideas of the great men who surrounded her", a cypher of her talented husband and a hysteric, while Emily Brontë hid behind a male pseudonym (as did her sisters) to avoid the double dismissal of her work as not only tragically girly but also unwomanly in her immodest desire to parade it shamelessly before the public. (Janice Galloway) bronte blog i-could-wish-she-used-simpler-language and  Muriel Spark.

Patchwork by Ellen Nussey under the Hammer

Bronte blog/ patchwork-by-ellen-under-hammer

A fragment patchwork quilt worked by Ellen Nussey is going under the hammer on September 27th. As the Dorset Echo said, A COLLECTION of vintage clothing will go up for sale at Duke’s auctioneers in Dorchester.

There will be a selection of clothing, bags and accessories on auction on Tuesday, September 27. There will also be a good example of patchwork, which was worked by Ellen Nussey, a close friend of the Bronte sisters. Miss Nussey met Charlotte Bronte at Roe Head School when Charlotte was 15 years old.

The patchwork is bright and in good condition and is being sold with several provenance letters, including one from The Bronte Society relating to when it was on loan to them.

Jane Shawl

From the weblog

 Audrey Eclectic

Last week I saw the new Jane Eyre for the first time. There are the pretty dresses and the finery, but there's also the grime and soot, and dirty hems and simple clothes and knit wear--- ah, stop there! Knitwear :)

And what does my adoration of a gritted up Jane Eyre have to do with Tasha Tudor, you say? Well, I think Tasha would most heartily approve of it since the 1830s was an era she was particularly passionate about. Her costuming, in essence, is that of Jane Eyre. And in the movie and in Tasha's personal wardrobe was a very simple but so snug and comfortable looking little shoulder shawl.

Word on the knitting street is that other knitters have fallen for the 'Jane Shawl' (which might as well be the 'Tasha Shawl") and several patterns have popped up on Ravelry. 

The bicentenary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray

Information from: http://victorianleeds.wordpress.com/

THACKERAY IN TIME, 1811-2011

School of English, University of Leeds

Saturday 1st October 2011

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Professor Judith Fisher (Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas), author of Thackeray’s Skeptical Narrative and the ‘Perilous Trade’ of Authorship (2002)

Professor Richard Pearson (National University of Ireland, Galway), author of W.M. Thackeray and the Mediated Text (2000)

2011 marks the bicentenary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray. This conference offers an opportunity to reassess Thackeray’s place in Victorian culture and in the history of novel, as well as the development of his critical reputation over the past two centuries. The conference will examine both Thackeray’s position within time and the importance of time – including questions of temporality, history, and modernity – within his writings. The concept of ‘time’ proposes a focus – with numerous permutations – for enquiry into Thackeray’s works and cultural status. By interpreting the relationship between Thackeray and time in different ways, we anticipate that scholars will be able to consider his writing in challenging and exciting ways, to reposition Thackeray on the map of Victorian studies, and to build on the existing body of scholarship.

Jane Eyre 2011 Region 1 DVD and Wuthering Heights.

On http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/: you can find a lot of news about:

Jane Eyre 2011 Region 1 DVD and Andrea Arnold's upcoming Wuthering Heights. After being presented at the Venice Film Festival, the film will enter the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Presentation. The festival's website says about the film: 

No starched lace, no panoramic views, no sweeping score — Andrea Arnold takes Emily Brontë’s classic novel and strips it to the root of youthful passion, restoring its stark power for a contemporary audience. Following her bracing portraits of female desire in Red Road and Fish Tank, Arnold pushes even further here, portraying love as a rush of heart-stopping beauty, cruelty and impulsive acts.

And it includes a few promotional pictures (which can also be found on Collider) uncredited, although we suppose them to be the work of Andrea A. Nitecka:

Wendy Craik

Separate chapters are given to each of the seven novels. The author’s aims and techniques in each are assessed and Dr. Craik shows what light the books throw on each other, how they are related to the novels of the Brontë’s predecessors, and how the Brontë novels compare with their great contemporaries in the nineteenth century novel.
Wendy Craik

Patrick Brontë and Cambridge

Library of   St. John's College

Patrick Brontë, father of the famous literary sisters Charlotte, Anne and Emily, was born in the Banbridge District in 1777. Born in a tiny whitewashed cottage at Emdale kleurrijkbrontesisters patrick-bronte birthplace, he was the first child of Hugh and Alice Brunty. Patrick was apprenticed to a blacksmith, then to a linen weaver and draper. Patrick was tutored at an early age by Reverend Andrew Harshaw, who taught him in the early mornings before Patrick went on to his job as a linen weaver. By the time he was sixteen he was already teaching in the Presbyterian school at Glascar and then in the Parish Church School at Drumballyroney.

The Rev. Thomas Tighe, Rector of Drumballyroney, genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry/Drumballyroney was evidently much interested in young Bronte since he entrusted to him the education of his own children.

 

St. John's College The Great Gate  

Patrick moved to Cambridge in 1802 to study theology at St. John's College. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about/tour/   He gained his 
BA degree in 1806.

The following is a list of notable people educated at St John's College Cambridge. 

Arts and Literature

• Douglas Adams, author
• Samuel Butler, author
• William Wordsworth, poet
• Patrick Brontë, curate, father of the Brontë sisters
• Robert Greene, arguably the first professional English author of plays, poems and novels
• Thomas Nashe, pamphleteer, satirist & playwright
• Robert Herrick, poet.
• Louis Cha, famous Chinese novelist and newspaper editor
• Frederic Raphael, screenwriter, novelist and journalist
• Sir Cecil Beaton, photographer
• Herbert Howells, English composer (college organist).
• Geoffrey Paterson, conductor (college organist).
• Tom Rob Smith, award nominee author of Soviet-era novels; erstwhile writer for Channel 5's defunct soap opera Family Affairs.

St. John's College Cambridge