Judging on name alone, Branwell's juvenilia rediscovered and a hair salon

Lily Cole has responded to the 'rage', 'row' or however tabloids and the like have described the tantrum of some (one?) Brontë expert and some (a few?) Brontë Society members:

2018 offers us both the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in the UK, and the 200th anniversary of Emily Bronte's birth, so it feels poignant to begin the year on the topic of prejudice.
Emily Brontë, whose extraordinary novel Wuthering Heights has stirred the world for over 150 years, published her work under an androgynous pseudonym: Ellis Bell.
Writing in 1850, Charlotte Brontë explained why she and her sisters Emily and Anne all used pseudonyms: "We did not like to declare ourselves women, because we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice."
When I was asked by the Brontë Parsonage Museum to work on a piece to commemorate Emily Bronte's birth, I immediately thought of Emily's pseudonym, and what that gesture represented.
Why could a woman not publish under her own name? What was life like for women living in the UK in the 19th Century? What circumstances would also give rise to a child being found abandoned in a city in the 18th Century, as Heathcliff was?
Now I find myself wondering, fleetingly, if I should present the short film I am working on for the Brontë Parsonage Museum under a pseudonym myself, so that it will be judged on its own merits, rather than on my name, my gender, my image or my teenage decisions.
I would not be so presumptuous as to guess Emily's reaction to my appointment as a creative partner at the museum, were she alive today. Yet I respect her intellect and integrity enough to believe that she would not judge any piece of work on name alone.
In the meantime I am excited to see how much Emily still means to so many people, and I welcome 2018 to celebrate her.

BBC News adds some details of Lily Cole's involvement in Emily Brontë 200:

In her role, Cole is making a short film for the museum about Wuthering Heights anti-hero Heathcliff. It will also address gender politics and women's rights in the year that marks 100 years since women got the vote. (Ian Youngs)

The Guardian covers more or less the same topics adding:

Lily Cole responds to Brontë Society row as member who quit is branded a snob. (...) Holland’s response to Cole’s appointment has been widely criticised, with several writers calling it snobbery online. (Sian Cain)

Daily Express ends its article quoting Charlotte Brontë:

She also had some words that may ring true for Holland and those members of the Brontë Society so opposed to Cole’s appointment as champion of Emily’s work.
“We had noticed,” she wrote, “how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.” (Dominic Utton)

BBC News, The Bookseller, Il Corriere della Sera, The Telegraph, NME, Contactmusic, Evening Standard, Birmingham Mail, (many of them via Associated Press) also cover these late events. And The Cut, laughs not with us (Brontë enthusiasts) but at us (and we deserve it):

The Brontë Society is a group dedicated to running a museum about the Brontë sisters and “promoting the Brontës’ literary legacy within contemporary society.” Part of this mission seems to delightfully — but not all that surprisingly — entail being a group of messy bitches. Now, their latest bout of drama involves a supermodel, a disgruntled former member, an angry blog post, and invocations of Rita Ora’s name. (...)
Per the Bookseller, infighting has rocked the Brontë society for the past few years, which means their reality show is long overdue. (Gabriella Paiella)

Susannah Butter in the Evening Standard writes a fitting coda for this affair:

 Why can’t a supermodel be interested in books? The outrage over Lily Cole’s appointment as Emily Brontë’s champion for her 200th anniversary is academic priggishness in the face of a move that could engage people with literature.
The idea that only certain types can appreciate books is elitist and goes against what the Brontës believed. They worked to spread education, without discrimination. Incidentally, Cole has a first from Cambridge.
I was at the Brontë Parsonage over Christmas and saw Brontë-themed beer (Emily is an amber ale with a biscuit flavour) and tattoos. The Brontës didn’t down pints or adorn themselves with ink — but these are allowed, so let’s stop being stuck up about a supermodel.

Yorkshire Post gives details of the Branwell Brontë manuscript recently rediscovered in New Zealand:

The first Brontë manuscript identified in New Zealand has been restored to its place in literary history thanks to university researchers.
The fragment of Branwell Brontë’s work was misfiled as a letter in the Heritage Collections of the Dunedin Public Library. (...)
Dr Thomas McLean, of the University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics, and Dr Grace Moore, of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, researched Branwell’s life and work so they could properly explain the significance of the manuscript. Their findings have just appeared in the Oxford University Press journal Notes and Queries.
They discovered the Dunedin fragment provides the ending for a story written by Branwell in 1837.
The pair pieced together Branwell’s microscopic handwriting, sometimes word-by-word, sometimes letter-by-letter, and were able to place the fragment at the end of a scene in an inn,
identified as part IV (i) of Angria and the Angrians.
Dr McLean visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, near Keighley, in August last year and examined Branwell’s writing journal from which the page was taken.
He said: “I could see exactly where our page fit. The fragment provides the finishing touches to the story.”
They believe the piece may have become separated from the rest of the story because it is written on a slightly different sized piece of paper to the rest, as though it was an afterthought; it also bears a date eight weeks later than the chapter it concludes. The rest of the story, which has already been published, survives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. It is one of a collection of stories about the imaginary land of Angria that Branwell and Charlotte wrote about in their youth.
The fragment is part of the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts held in the Heritage Collections of the library, with records showing it was purchased in 1928. (Nina Swift)

This is a very curious and intriguing project. The Telegraph & Argus reports:

The Brontë sisters are alive and well and working in a Keighley hair salon.
That’s the premise of a new play due to receive its world premiere in the training salon at Keighley College on January 23.
Jane Hair: The Brontës Restyled features modern-day versions of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and portrays their rise to global fame.
The play, which is funded by the Arts Council and the Brontë Society, was created by Oakworth-born writer-producer Kirsty Smith and actor-director Kat Rose Martin.
Working together in a local hairdressers, the young women and their brother Branwell each have their own personal creative project – Emily is a slam poet, Anne writes a blog and Charlotte is working on TV and film scripts.
Kirsty Smith has previously worked as a television producer for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, and for this project has partnered with Bierley actor and director Kat Rose Martin.
Kat had a busy 2017 touring with renowned theatre company Northern Broadsides as well as playing Britain’s first-ever female boxer as part of Hull City of Culture.
The pair promised that in the interactive performance audiences would meet the sisters in their salon and have the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the actors.
Kat said: “Hair salons are the perfect setting to get all the best gossip so if you’ve ever wanted to find out who these women were, pop along and make an appointment with Jane Hair.”
Victoria Aird, head of department at Keighley College, said her staff were delighted to be involved with the project, adding: “We think our hairdressing salon will be the perfect setting for a play celebrating artistic excellence from Keighley.”
The play, which will be performed at 7.30pm at the college next to Keighley railway station, aims to both entertain and introduce new people to the work of the three famous sisters.
The production forms part of the 200th anniversaries of the writers’ births, which this year focuses on Emily Brontë, writer of Wuthering Heights.
Kirsty said she wanted to bring the Brontë story to life for people who had never read any of their books.
She added: “We want to show that you don’t need an A-level in English Literature to appreciate the incredible achievements of these three local women who became world famous.”
Jane Hair will also be performed at Bradford College’s hair salon January 26, at 2pm and 7.30pm, with a view to touring later in the year. (David Knights)

School Library Journal reviews the comic book adaptation Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna & Ramon K. Pérez:

This brilliant homage to the classic will enamor fans of the original and intrigue newcomers. A strong choice for graphic novel collections. (Shelley M. Diaz)

Egypt Today is thrilled with Emily Brontë's poetry:

One of the most emotional poems in the volume is “Remembrance”. It talks about different ways of departure and love.
Also, Brontë’s style is highly figurative and emotional, she coined different magical images through her words, and she depended on catchy sounds to attract the reader.

San Francisco Gate recommends A Secret Sisterhood by Midorikawa and Sweeney:

In separate narratives, Midorikawa and Sweeney provide a thought-provoking meditation on literary friendship, as well as engagingly intimate glimpses of four of the world’s finest writers in a pursuit that, for women of their times, skirted the edges of decency.

We are quite lost with this statement in The Telegraph (India):

So, when the Brontë sisters each assumed a Christian, male nom de plume, the reasons were pretty clear. As Charlotte put it, "we did not like to declare ourselves women, because - without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' - we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice..." The sisters, however, exercised agency in their own way. Their names, Currer, Acton and Ellis, were actually surnames of three women of the previous generation from the world of literature. (Shreyashi Ganguly)

The Globe and Mail talks about film director Paul Thomas Anderson:

In interviews, Anderson tends to squirm around in his chair, edgy, wide eyes darting anxiously, groaning dismissively under his breath whenever he's lavished with any kind of praise. He's much more comfortable discussing books – stories by Daphne du Maurier, Anya Seton, Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Brontë (at least by way of Robert Stevenson's 1943 film adaptation of Jane Eyre) fed into Phantom Thread's stuffy, sensuous milieu – and movies. Especially other people's movies. (John Semley)

Il Piccolo (Italy) interviews the writer and journalist Mario Baudino:

E i "cambi di genere", scrittrici che si fingono scrittori e viceversa? (Roberto Carnero)
«Ce ne sono molti nell’Ottocento, soprattutto britannico, quando vigeva nei confronti delle donne un generale pregiudizio negativo. Le sorelle Brontë lo aggirarono cambiando sesso, presentandosi e firmandosi cioè come i fratelli Bell. (Translation)

Foggia Città Aperta (Italy) has an alert for next Sunday, January 7:

Libri che parlano di libri: c’è niente di più dannatamente – e, per chi ne è persuaso, meravigliosamente – libresco? No. Anzi sì: uno scrittore che parla di libri traendo ispirazione da un libro che ha scritto. A teatro, magari. È il caso di Musica Civica, la rassegna diretta dal Maestro Gianna Fratta che, anche quest’anno, riparte dal consueto mix di suoni e parole. Ed è il caso di Paolo Di Paolo, primo ospite d’apertura di questa nona edizione, per la prima volta in programma sul palcoscenico del Teatro U. Giordano di Foggia. (...) Da Twain a Salinger, da Bassani a Mann, da Balzac a Foster Wallace, passando per titoli come “Jane Eyre” e“Il barone rampante”, “Sostiene Pereira” e “Il lamento di Portnoy”: di ognuno qualcosa, un’angolazione, uno spunto, un’idea: la scintilla, insomma, scattata a suo tempo nel lettore Paolo Di Paolo e raccontata come se non fosse “soltanto” un libro. Piuttosto, un vero e proprio incontro quasi – o senza quasi – in carne e ossa. (Translation)

Página 12 (Argentina) interviews professor Ernesto Camilli:

 Y me jodió el alma un padre Olivieri que nos mandó a un amigo y a mí al cura Laburu que decía (pone voz tonante de Pedro López Lagar haciendo de Heathcliff, en Cumbres borrascosas): “¡Hijo cierra, cierra, cierra! ¡Piensa en tu futuro casamiento! ¡Cierra que Cristo ya va a iluminarte!”. (Translation)

The mentioned version is a 1941 radio adaptation.

Country & Town House describes Wuthering Heights 2011 as 'visionary'.