No coward soul is mine

For International Women's Day there are many, many quotes (whole books, actually) by the Brontës we could highlight but we will limit ourselves to a couple of verses by Emily:

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere

Scottish Book Trust marks the day with women's rights to read and write.

The Gothic novels of the nineteenth century, including Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (with the ‘madwoman in the attic’) used the theme of female insanity to explore their oppression within a patriarchal society, and to question the laws that allowed for a woman to be easily declared insane. [...]

Female authors at this time were similarly torn between societal expectations and the burning desire to express their inner lives through writing. They were aware of the battle they faced to be taken seriously, with many, like the Brontë sisters, opting to publish under the ambiguous Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell, and in the case of Mary Ann Evans, choosing George Eliot as a pseudonym. (Caroline Young)

Yahoo! Life has 'A Lesson in Mastering Anything From the Brontë Sisters'.

The Brontë sisters learned creativity precisely as they should have: not by trying to capture the most original idea ever known, but by borrowing.

The best ideas are often a recombination of clichés into novel concepts. For all its glory, Star Wars is an unapologetic patchwork of other stories, highlighting how creativity is an act of Frankensteining.

Yet it takes patience and time to do this without being tacky or derivative. When an aspiring writer holds Emily Brontë’s debut novel, the smash hit, Wuthering Heights, they may feel an avalanche of intimidation. They don’t realize Emily had been writing consistently for more than 15 years prior. [...]

One of the main characters in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, was first born in Emily’s childhood story in Gondal. And like Heathcliff, the rugged man had only one redeeming quality: his love for a woman. Emily found ways to make him more human and dynamic, then brought him over to another world. (Sean Kernan)

The Telegraph has an article on the 'modernisation' of house names at schools.

The Boswells school in Chelmsford, Essex, has six houses, which are named after British people who have shown “integrity, emotional intelligence, grit, resourcefulness, self-discipline and bravery”. There’s an Attenborough House, Hawking House, and a Brontë House. (Roland White) 

We have a couple of items left over from yesterday, World Book Day. Glasgow World had actor Billy Connolly pick his all.time favourite books and one of them was

5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

"When I was a teenager I saw Jane Eyre on television, and I immediately read it and then read all of the Brontës. They are such brilliant storytellers. They are great at writing about weather – when you read the Brontës you can feel life on the Yorkshire Dales, and the drizzle, and going to church on cold evenings. In actual fact, I went to the Brontës’ house in Yorkshire and bought all of their books for my daughters from there, and they absolutely loved them." (Declan McConville)

The Telegraph and Argus listed '5 Yorkshire locations all book lovers need to visit'.

Haworth

Where? The home of the Brontë sisters

“The Brontë parsonage museum was the home of the Brontë siblings, including Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who famously wrote classics such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

“The Brontë sisters lived most of their lives in the parsonage in Haworth.

“The home is now a museum where visitors can step into the rooms where the sisters wrote their novels and letters, see the clothes they wore and the drawings they once drew.” (Molly Court)