All Your Tea Are Belong to Bronteana

It has been quite awhile since I posted about studying the Brontes. Long time readers will remember my distress when I received an acceptance from an excellent school I could not afford to attend. Well, I'm there! Thank God for the government of Canada and surprise scholarships! I've been here for over two weeks now. I believe I chose wisely. I spent the first week exploring. I could not ask for a more beautiful campus: on the first day I walked down the hill to the ocean, later I discovered a marsh on campus complete with a family of ravens, and there are plently of lovely spots to sit under an oak and write. The dinning hall is in a Victorian hall. I was let into the library which was precisely like a gentleman's study, except for the stained glass window of 'poetry and prose' inspiring a young woman to write. I even heard someone singing a 19th century art song to accompiament on the piano forte yesterday!

And there are actually books about adaptations of Jane Eyre- in the main library which has its own waterfall... I was able to compile a working bibliography of twelve sources! (An article I came across regarding the musical gave me a chuckle for how patronising it is to those who attend music theatre rather than opera). My work is off to a great start, but there are difficulties. Last night I discovered to my horror that I cannot play all of the 1973 BBC mini-series on my laptop! My first reaction was: how will I cope with not watching the repartee all year? And then I realised I also needed it for my thesis. I hauled out the other DVDs and they all work fine. This is simply one of those cruel turns of fate- I know it is.

But I hear my mother is sending me a care package with 300 bags of tea. (I was sick this past week). I also have a new text to guide my efforts to create a hypertext Bronte resource: Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age. Very exciting!

More genuinely exciting... one more hour until the BFI screening of Jane Eyre 2006!