Sales of Wuthering Heights

Sales of Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's classic gothic novel set on the Yorkshire moors, have quadrupled over the last year thanks to its appearance in the cult teenage film Twilight.

After 150 years of steady sales, the romance between Heathcliff and Cathy has started flying off the shelves thanks to a generation of teenagers discovering the book through the Twilight saga – a trilogy of books by Stephanie Meyer, which have been turned into hugely popular films, staring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. (...)

And now, thanks to the lead character Bella quoting Wuthering Heights and comparing her love for the vampire Edward with Cathy's passion for Heathcliff, some of the magic is rubbing off on Emily Bronte's great work.

Wuthering Heights, before the first Twilight books came out in 2005 sold 8,551 a year in Britain. However, the publishers Harper Collins reissued Wuthering Heights last year, with a cover inspired by the Twilight artwork and including the tag-line: "Bella and Edward's favourite book".

Following this reissue, sales peaked at 2,634 in one week and totalled 34,023 during the year, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which monitors book sales across the industry. This was a fourfold increase and it is now one of the best selling novels at Tesco, as well as more traditional book shops.

Discussion forums on the internet have not welcomed Harper Collins's marketing ploy, with reviewers on Amazon sharing their displeasure. One said: "How disgusting that they'll take a literary classic, and revamp it just so it looks like the "teen sensation" that is Twilight. Drawing this parallel is an absolute atrocity, Emily Bronte would be turning in her grave if she could see this.

However, booksellers said it was wonderful the classic had taken off once again.

Tesco's assistant book buyer Rachel Harcourt said: “It’s fantastic to see teenagers are reading a whole different genre – the classics – as well as fantasy novels because of the popularity of Stephanie Meyer’s books.

"The new sleek black gothic-style covers of Wuthering Heights clearly appeal to lovers of vampire romance stories and are helping them to try out a different read. Anything that encourages teenagers to read good books is welcome as there are so many distractions which prevent today’s youngsters from developing reading as a hobby." (Henry Wallop)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7570922/Wuthering-Heights-quadruple-double-thanks-to-Twilight-effect.html

Elizabeth Gaskell & Charlotte Brontë

In 1850 when Elizabeth Gaskell was staying in the Lake District, she met ‘a little lady in a black silk gown, whom I could not see at first for the dazzle in the room’. The little lady was Charlotte Brontë, and this meeting began a warm friendship between two contrasting personalities – Charlotte timid and withdrawn, Elizabeth outward-going and gregarious. Charlotte came to stay several times at the Gaskell’s home in busy Plymouth Grove, Elizabeth went to the silent parsonage at Haworth, and they collaborated to ensure that publication of their novels did not clash. When Charlotte died she had become such an important literary figure that the press, then as now, was full of misinformation about her. Her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Elizabeth if she would put the record straight and write his daughter’s biography. The result was the outstanding and controversial Life, which still today is regarded as an important literary biography.

Thornton Hall

An historic manor house in a village with links to the Brontes has gone on the market for more than £1.3 million. Thornton Hall is located next to St James’s Church in Thornton, Bradford, where Patrick Bronte, father of the three literary sisters, was perpetual curate between 1815 and 1820.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne, along with their brother Branwell, were born in the village, before the family moved to the parsonage at Haworth.
Barry Whitaker, who has owned the Grade II-listed property since 1980, said: “The Lord of the Manor would have had access to the church from the grounds and would have known Patrick Bronte.
“There’s a presumption that the young Bronte sisters played in the garden at the manor before the family moved to Haworth.
“There’s also a school of thought that the description of Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre bears architectural resemblance to Thornton Hall.”
Thornton Hall dates back to the 11th century, when the original wooden structure of the property, owned by Gemill of Thornton, was named in the Doomsday Book of 1086.
The property was rebuilt in 1598 and was renovated extensively in the late 19th century, by John Foster, owner Black Dyke Mills in Queensbury.
Mr Whitaker said: “The mills can be seen from the master bedroom of the manor so Mr Foster would have been able to look out and see the smoke from the chimneys and make sure everyone was working hard.
“He would have been taken across the valley by his coachman to the mills. All our children have grown up now and are living in America and France so we are going to downsize and spend time visiting them.
“We are giving someone else the chance to be Lord of the Manor in Thornton.”

'Aunt Branwell'



We do not have a clear description of Aunt Branwell. By the time she came to Haworth she was

forty-five years old and presumably a confirmed spinster. Her background in

Penzance had been privileged and comfortable. She had been used to polite society and balls, and, despite the break up of her family in 1811, she still had a private income of £50 a year. There were times when Aunt Branwell had wanted to leave the cold and draughts of Haworth and return to Penzance, but she never did. From her twenty one years in Haworth we have no record of her having any social contact with the village, and if her staunch Methodism caused any friction between herself and the Anglican minister that she shared house and family with, it is not recorded.

 

 

Aunt Branwell's shawl

After the Clergy Daughters' School disaster of 1824, Mr. Brontë kept his four remaining children at home for the next six years, sharing responsibility for their education with Aunt Branwell. Bringing up and educating four exceptionally bright children in a small house demanded that Aunt Branwell run a tight ship. The locals thought her 'a bit of a tyke', and claimed they could set their watches by the regularity of the Parsonage routine.

    Smelling Salts Bottles

Aunt Branwell's £50 a year was very much her own private money, so when, in 1841, Charlotte ventured to ask if Aunt Branwell might support Emily, Anne and herself in a venture to open their own school, Charlotte was pleasantly surprised when her aunt offered her £150. This venture never got off the ground, but Aunt Branwell was again forthcoming with funds the following year when Charlotte and Emily went to extend their education at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels.

     
Aunt Branwell's teapot and pattens.

 

Aunt Branwell had always enjoyed robust good health, but on the 25th October 1842, she suffered a constriction of the bowel, and died four days later. Charlotte and Emily were still in Brussels, and returned home too late for the funeral. But Aunt Branwell's two favourites' the 'baby' Anne, and the only boy, Branwell Brontë , were both there, and it is Branwell who has left us the warmest testimonial to his aunt. Writing to his friend Grundy on the day his aunt died, Branwell concludes " I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood." Elizabeth Branwell left most of her money to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. They used some of it to finance their Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), the beginning of their careers as published writers.

Aunt Branwell's  Japanese Dressing Case

EASTER FUN AT THE BRONTË PARSONAGE

The newly refurbished Brontë Parsonage Museum is hoping for a busy Easter break this year. The museum has had a brisk start to the year following a major refurbishment funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. There are various new displays featuring several newly acquired treasures including Emily Brontë’s artists box and an early Charlotte Brontë poetry manuscript as well as items not previously displayed; amongst which are some of the Brontës' stockings! There are also new items relating to Haworth Church and day to day life in the village in the nineteenth century that have been donated by locals following a recent appeal, and an exhibition of contemporary paintings based on Emily Brontë’s poems by local artist Jo Brown.

Charlotte Brontë passed away

Very sad day at the Haworth Parsonage today 155 years ago. Charlotte Brontë passed away in the early morning hours leaving a disconsolate husband and father behind, not to mention servants, friends and, eventually, admirers such as all of us through the years.

salary

The worst off was Charlotte Brontë. Her written work, like Kafka's, was influenced by her work-for-pay. Unlucky for her, Brontë's job as a governess paid terribly -- her adjusted annual salary would be less than $2,000 today -- and while meals were free, her employers deducted petty fees such as clothes washing. Lucky for us, her resentments surfaced in "Villette" and "Jane Eyre." (Carolyn Kellogg)

Tales of Angria

Tales of Angria
Charlotte Brontë
Edited by Heather Glen
ISBN: 9780141035628
Published : 04 Mar 2010
Publisher : Pocket Penguin Classics

In 1834 Charlotte Brontë and her brother Branwell created the imaginary kingdom of Angria in a series of tiny handmade books. Continuing their saga some years later, the five 'novelettes' in this volume were written by Charlotte when she was in her early twenties, and depict an aristocratic beau monde in witty, racy and ironic language. She creates an exotic, scandalous atmosphere of intrigue and destructive passions, with a cast ranging from the ageing rake Northangerland and his Byronic son-in-law Zamorna, King of Angria, to Mary Percy, Zamorna's lovesick wife, and Charles Townshend, the cynical, gossipy narrator.

feminist individualism

In its deployment of a variety of generic forms and strategies—romance, gothic, bildungsroman—Jane Eyre is representative of numerous eighteenth and nineteenth-century textual traditions, and as Gilbert and Gubar have remarked, also accessible to readers, as “we tend today to think of Jane Eyre as…the archetypal scenario for all those mildly thrilling romantic encounters between a scowling Byronic hero (who owns a gloomy mansion) and a trembling heroine (who can’t quite figure out the mansion’s floor plan)” (337). Yet, despite a growing interest in how didacticism shaped the reading public of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the acknowledged pervasiveness of advice books specifically addressed to female audiences, there has been no attempt to explore how didactic traditions influenced mid- nineteenth-century novels like Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.(1) Scenes of women teaching and learning comprise a substantial portion of Jane Eyre’s action and function to shape the terms of its discourse, but these scenes are generally overlooked in the interests of emphasizing Jane’s escape from this servitude, an escape associated with the novel’s influential portrayal of feminist individualism

http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue53/hanley.htm

Bronte films

Overgenomen uit: http://theartofclothes.blogspot.com/

It looks like there are some new Bronte films in the making. A new Jane Eyre is set to release in 2011 starring Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) Michael Fass bender (300), Judi Dench (Cranford) and Jamie Bell (King Kong).

There's also an upcoming film about the Bronte sisters entitled Bronte. I'm not sure if this film will come about or not as it's been on IMDB for a few years and is still in pre production.
It's good to know there are more costume dramas on the way! Even if Jane Eyre has been made a hundred times. I'm excited to see what they're like!

Elizabeth Gaskell’s bicentenary

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article7035482.ece

Charlotte Bronte and her association with Banagher

http://www.irishmidlandsancestry.com/content/offaly/people/bronte_charlotte.htm

http://www.charlottesway.com/

Charlotte's Way
Charlotte's Way (Hill House)Charlotte's Way, formerly known as Hill House, is located in a prominent setting close to Saint Paul's Church of Ireland church. This house was once the home of Charlotte Brontë's husband, Mr. Nicholls, who returned to Banagher after Charlotte's death. Nicholls remarried and lived at Hill House until his death in 1906. The house was sold to a Major Bell in 1919. He died in 1944 and his wife inherited the property. Florence Bell died in 1959. This connection to Brontë, one of the most renowned writers of the nineteenth century, is revealed in its present name, giving the house cultural interest. It is a detached three-bay two-storey house, built in 1753, with a gabled central bay to the façade with modern porch and single-bay two-storey wing to the south and two-bay two-storey wing to the north.[40] It is now used as a bed and breakfast and visitors can enjoy its restored appearance and sense the history of a place connected in a curious way with the Brontë family.

The History Girls present The Brontë sisters

Do you know authors who, as a child, wrote in tiny books?

Als kind schreven de Bronte Sisters in kleine boekjes

ik weet dat meer schrijvers dit deden

ik heb in Google gezocht

 en vond alleen de naam van 

Jenny Oldfield

weten jullie nog meer schrijvers?

Tot mijn verbazing blijkt er een hele ART vorm

rond kleine boekjes te zijn.

een voorbeeld is

http://www.beckyadams.co.uk/

je moet in Google eens

bij tiny books

zoeken

een wereld gaat open.

Arthur Bell Nicholls

He packed up his belongings and all his mementos of Charlotte and returned to Ireland taking Plato, Patrick's last dog, with him. In Banagher the Royal School was now being run by Dr. Bell's second son, James, who had taken it over on the death of his father. He was living in Cuba House, so his mother, Arthur's aunt, had gone to live in a small house at the top of the hill in the little town, with her daughter Mary Anna. After Cuba House, Hill House must have felt minute, hut it was pretty, opposite the church and stood in twenty acres of land. It is still there though much changed over the years.

Arthur made his way to Hill House where he joined his aunt and cousin, Mary Anna. He became a small farmer, giving up the Church altogether. Martha Brown, one of the faithful Brontë servants came over from time to time and took over the housekeeping. She had nursed Charlotte and was one of Arthur's last links with the old days. When he was forty three and Mary Anna thirty two they decided to get married. She had always loved her cousin and he was fond of her. They married in 1864 and the ceremony was performed by Rev. Joseph Bell, Mary Anna's brother, and Arthur's cousin. It seemed to be more of a marriage of convenience, a friendship than anything else. There were no children of the marriage. Arthur died in 1906 at the age of eighty eight and Mary Ann in 1915 aged eighty five. They are both buried across the road from Hill House in the Churchyard of St. Paul's. Arthur's aunt, Mary Anna's mother, lived to the great age of 101, dying in 1902, a wonderful old lady. Arthur never recovered from Charlotte's death. He loved her to the end of his long life. He and Patrick Brontë were very different personalities, hut it is curious to see how much they had in common, and of course Charlotte will always link them together.