SHEILA HANCOCK, A JOURNEY TO THE BRONTES' COUNTRY AND INTO HERSELF

Perspectives: The Brilliant Brontes was on ITV  at the end of March and it is still available in streaming on their iPlayer. 

What was really touching while watching it was how deeply the commenter, actor Sheila Hancock,  was connected both with the Brontes and with their works. 

Watch the clip I've added for you below to get an idea. You can feel how moved she is, her voice broken more than once and eyes filled with tears . It is as if she is undertaking an honest journey into herself while visiting the places where the Bronte sisters lived, wrote, dreamt and died.

Impossible not to be  moved by the tragic series of deaths their official biographies are charachterized by, but following Sheila Hancock in her gripping journey to Yorkshire and into herself has been much more than that.

She starts the documentary remembering how much in love she was with Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff as a young girl and how she felt betrayed when later on she re- read the book Emily Bronte had written. 

ROMANCING MISS BRONTE BY JULIET GAEL - BOOK REVIEW

If you love Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë, this novel is unmissable. If you are interested in the lives of the Brontë family, so full of sorrow and talent, you'll love it.
I've just finished reading it and, by chance, I'm also working on the Brontës and their novels with my students at the moment. So Romancing Miss Brontë has come out a great source of anecdotes in order to bring  Charlotte, Emily and Anne to life for my pupils, with the aim to make today's teenagers see them as unique human beings as well as great writers. 
Practical advantages apart, reading this novel was a real treat and a great pleasure. I came to discover it after meeting  the author Juliet Gael in Rome not long ago (see my post) and I'm really happy I did it. 

Impossible not to be fascinated by the story of the three sisters who managed to get to fame thanks to their strength, talent and ... stubborness. Yes, stubborness. Because,  if we have Jane Eyre, Villette and Shirley,  Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,  we owe that especially to Charlotte's stubborness. She fought to make it and made it at last. This is the prevailing trait of  her personality revealed in Juliet Gael's portrait: a certain tenacity,  we might even recognize as stubborness.

The romance  suggested in the title is a constant element in the story. Charlotte spent most of her life trying to forget Monsier Heger, the married professor she fell in love with, unrequited, when she was studying in Brussels. She tried to recognize his stern stare and his strong personality in any man she met, and when she couldn't find them anywhere around her, she depicted those traits on paper, attributing them to her own iconic hero, Mr Rochester.

"The Brontës and the Shelleys - Crafting Stories from Lives" : A talk by Juliet Gael at Keats-Shelley House in Rome

Juliet Gael at Keats and Shelley House - Rome

It's been a very pleasant afternoon spent in one of the most spectacular landmarks in Rome, Piazza di Spagna, and more precisely at the Keats and Shelley House. Janice Graham, writing as Juliet Gael, is the author of the critically acclaimed historical novel Romancing Miss Brontë, and is currently working on a follow-up novel that deals with the fascinating lives of the Shelleys. She was the guest author at today's meeting and she gave a  talk  about crafting stories from the lives of iconic literary figures like Charlotte Brontë and Mary Shelley.

Part literary reading, part discussion, and part work-in-progress seminar, Juliet Gael addressed the creative problems involved in romanticising the lives of authors and gave us some tantalising sneak previews into the process of writing her book about the Shelleys.

Starting with E. M Forster's definition of events and story, Juliet conveyed the sense of great respect with which she approached her research and then her creation of a  story - line for Romancing Miss Brontë  .

GIVEAWAY - WUTHERING NIGHTS BY SUMMER DAY - A MODERN VARIATION OF EMILY BRONTE'S CLASSIC NOVEL

Wuthering Nights, Summer Day's new novel is inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.  Both her latest releases Wuthering Nights and  Pride and Princesses are modern variations of classics, written for Young Adults. 

At Summer's blog you can find the first three chapters of each novel 

You'll find   Wuthering Nights  &  Pride & Princesses  at Amazon.com  but... what about winning a free copy of Wuthering Nights? Summer Day has granted us 1 digital copy of her latest book! Just leave a comment + your e-mail address and then be patient until June 20th when the name of the winner is announced. This contest is open internationally.

Wuthering Nights Synopsis

When Heath and Kate meet as children they form a bond that lasts forever...

Read the first reviews of the book at Amazon

DESY GIUFFRE' - A YOUNG ITALIAN WRITER IN LOVE WITH A LITERARY ROMANTIC HERO - I AM HEATHCLIFF, BOOK PRESENTATION, GIVEAWAY & POLL

I met Desy Giuffrè on Facebook as we are both members of Bronte fan groups and I was immediately curious to discover more about the book she was launching: I am Heathcliff, a modern sequel of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a paranormal romance.

I asked her to present her first published book, IO SONO HEATHCLIFF (I AM HEATHCLIFF),  to you readers of FLY HIGH - though it is an  Italian book - and to explain the reasons of her fascination for Heathcliff and Catherine. She accepted to do it  and her publishers, Fazi  Editore,  have even granted you  (even if  NOT living in Italy) the chance  to win a free  copy.  To be entered in the giveaway contest,  leave your comment,  add your e-mail address and choose  your favourite Heathcliff in the poll below.   The winner will be announced on  28 April. NB. THE BOOK IS IN ITALIAN

Here  are Desy’s answers

Desy Giuffré

Why Wuthering Heights? Why writing  a sequel, a  paranormal sequel, of a literary classic that has already in itself an inexhaustible fire of emotions?

Well, the protagonists of Wuthering Heights can breathe immortality. And that is why  I chose them as a source of inspiration for a new story, a new love story which turns  life upside down.  Io sono Heathcliff  changes its atmosphere respect to the original novel, moving  from the  past to the  present, which is chaotic , carved on rocks,  spread in the heath and  blown in the wind which sings the eternal love between Cathy and Heathcliff.  

A love that hurts, that is beautiful and ruthless,  for his beloved Cathy Heathcliff is  a root  and , though an  unhealthy  one,  this root drags  something pure and precious. Not a villain, but a magnificently flawed man  in its stark reality. It is from this feeling, which is unique and memorable, and its shocking twists and turns that my story begins   and comes to life in the protagonists of  Io sono  Heathcliff:  Elena Ray and Damian Ludeschi.

SEPTEMBER 2011 - CHARLES DICKENS IN MANHATTAN AND EMILY BRONTE IN VENICE

After hosting a successful exhibition dedicated to Jane Austen ,   A Woman's Wit - Jane Austen's Life and Legacy, in 2010, The Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan, NYC opens a new great one to celebrate Charles Dickens's 200th birth anniversary. This is how they present the event: 

Alfred Bryan (1852–1899). Caricature of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was Britain's first true literary superstar. In his time, he attracted international adulation, and many of his books became instant classics. Today, his popularity continues unabated, and his work remains not only widely read but widely adapted for stage and screen.

The Morgan Library & Museum' si collection of Dickens manuscripts and letters is the largest in the United States and is one of the two greatest collections in the world, along with the holdings of Britain's Victoria and Albert Museum. Charles Dickens at 200 celebrates the bicentennial of the great writer's birth in 1812 with manuscripts of his novels and stories, letters, books, photographs, original illustrations, and caricatures. Sweeping in scope, the exhibition captures the art and life of a man whose literary and cultural legacy is unrivaled. 

(September 23, 2011 through February 12, 2012 )

ENGLAND JULY 2011 - THE LITERARY TRAIL

Walking to Ripon Cathedral

Today I’m blogging about the literary trail of my recent journey through England, that is, about  all the places I visited linked to authors or literary works. My friends and I  visited  places someway connected to Lewis Carroll, The Brontes, Shakespeare, Jane Austen  and the legendary Robin Hood. 

The choir stall which is thought to have inspired Lewis Carroll

 1.    1. Ripon and Lewis Carrol - Our first day in Yorkshire was spent visiting York , as I told you before (HERE) but in the evening before going back to our lovely B&B in Easingwold, we made a stop in Ripon to visit the cathedral. Our guidebook  funnily described it as a squat medieval building, and the idea of a squat cathedral made us laugh all the time all through the week. It was actually rather “squat” if observed from the outside and from the main entrance,  but it looked beautiful and seemed to soar into the sky, as any Gothic cathedral does, from the inside.  The literary connection is with Lewis Carroll, whose father was a Canon here from 1852 to 1868. In one of the choir stalls – completed in 1494 by Ripon woodcarvers -  the carved figures represent a griffon chasing a rabbit whilst another rabbit hides down his hole. This is believed to have inspired Lewis Carroll while writing his Alice in Wonderland (1865)