Brontë News

Jane Eyre is playing London: "Jane Eyre'' plays from May 9 through July 9 at Trafalgar Studios. Tel. (44) (870) 060-6632 or click http://www.theambassadors.com.

'Bookslut' has another review of The Brontë Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR.

This is probably a better idea than encouraging your children to write fictional thank you letters for fictional gifts of Jane Eyre: a mother-daughter book club!

The Chocolate War, The Outsiders, and The Secret Life of Bees are novels written by contemporary writers, but the group has tackled classics that include A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Jane Eyre, as well.

"It's not hard to read a book each month," said Katie [aged 11], "but Jane Eyre was so long."

Author Sara Paretsky talks about her attraction to a certain breed of heroine: Women like Jo March of "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott and the title characters of "Anne of Green Gables" by Lucy Maud Montgomery and Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre"
"Heroines who engage me had to suffer before they succeeded," said Paretsky.

And lastly, Yorkshire has the dubious destinction of being #4 on a list of places to avoid visiting...
Lovely scenery, but there are people in the West Riding who have lived there since 1106 but are still not accepted as true Yorkshiremen because rumour has it that their mother bought clogs from a pedlar who had a cousin in Prestbury, thereby blighting the bloodline forever. They make Londoners look like Hawaiian greeter girls. Plus you can't stray within 50 miles of Haworth sodding Parsonage without being assailed on all sides by Bronte bilge. The Branwell Tea Shoppe. The Helen Burns Sunbed Centre. Mr Rochester Opticians. Grace Moon Loft Conversions. What a load of Wuthering Shite.

I cannot but laugh at the thought: who the deuce is 'Grace Moon'? They... did at least inadvertently promote two other places associated with the Brontës: The Peak District, home to at least one of the halls said to have inspired Charlotte's description of Thornfield, not to mention the location for now two version of Jane Eyre. Also, the Mourne Mountains, in Northern Ireland. Visible from Patrick Brontë's birthplace. So, it's not all so bad? ...

ETA: These this a better link for the London Jane Eyre production: http://www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios/sp_p2702.html

Adapted and Directed by Polly Tealefrom the novel by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre is poor, plain and unloved. But locked up in the attic of her imagination lives a woman so passionate and so full of longing she must be guarded night and day for fear of the havoc she would wreck. Who is this woman who threatens to destroy Janes's orderly world? A world where Jane has, for the first time, fallen in love.

Last seen in the West End with its award winning play After Mrs Rochester, Shared Experience is one of the country's most successful and inventive theatre companies, making a long awaited return to London with its heartbreaking, utterly compelling and unique interpretation of a great novel.

'You feel you are looking into the heart of Bronte herself' The Times
'Brilliant. A big, stormy play' Sunday Times
'Keeps making me cry in the street. Startling intelligence, passion and humour.' Daily Telegraph