The following is an excerpt from Without the Veil Between: Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit — a novel by DM Denton:
When I set out, well over two years ago, to write a fiction about Anne Brontë, youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily, I doubted I would find enough material to produce something longer than a novella. Before the first part was finished, I was convinced there was more than enough for a novel.
My objective didn’t change as pages filled and multiplied. I wanted to present Anne as a vital person and writer in her own right, as crucial to the Brontë story and literary legacy as her more famous and — in her brother Branwell’s case — infamous siblings were. Read More→
How can Charlotte Brontë’s masterwork be crammed into a time frame of just over an hour and a half? This feat of compression was accomplished by Hollywood for the 1943 film Jane Eyre.
The film was released at the end of 1943 in Great Britain, and had its American premier in February, 1944.
Nearly a quarter of the film covers young Jane’s torturous experience at the Lowood School, based on the actual place that Charlotte and her sisters attended in Yorkshire. The experience proved fatal for one of the Brontë sisters, Maria, who became gravely ill and died. Read More→
The 1940 film version of Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel of the same name, is a psychological thriller with a nod to the literary gothic tradition. The black-and-white film, which captured the moody, mysterious feel of the book, was the first American film by director Alfred Hitchcock.
Joan Fontaine starred in the role of the naïve young woman who marries the brooding widower Maxim de Winter, portrayed by Laurence Olivier.
Rebecca, the deceased first wife of Maxim de Winter, is never seen in the film. Yet she casts a powerful shadow over the inhabitants of Manderlay castle. The suspense builds until we learn just why she continues to have such a grip on the living. Read More→
Jane Eyre is considered a classic of English literature and the masterwork of Charlotte Brontë. The selected quotes from Jane Eyre that follow speak to the author’s sensibilities and strong opinions about the lot of women in an unforgiving world.
Jane Eyre was published in October, 1847 under Charlotte’s pen name, Currer Bell. The novel was unusual for its time, as an exploration of the inner world of a female narrator.
The story touches on several themes — Jane’s desire for a sense of belonging after having grown up orphaned; romantic love (in her case for the inscrutable Mr. Rochester, who employed her as a governess for his ward); and the quest for independence and personal identity. Read More→
The 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, based on the novel by Emily Brontë, is considered an American movie classic.
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by William Wyler, the screenplay took some liberties with the original stories to streamline it into a film whose run time is less than two hours.
It covers barely half of the novel’s 34 chapters, cutting out the second generation of characters. Despite the liberties taken with the story, the film retained the dark, brooding mood of the book, and was generally praised by critics. Read More→
The heart of any compelling story or novel is its characters. Without memorable characters, a story will fall flat and the reader won’t care. Here we’ll explore how three classic authors approached the question of developing characters in fiction, followed by some contemporary resources.
Characters don’t need to be good or even sympathetic, but they do need to be driven by their beliefs and motivations to create a strong narrative arc, and to create and resolve conflict. Read More→
Lois Lenski (1893 – 1974) was an incredibly prolific author and illustrator of children’s books, many featuring regional themes. Children were often shown in terms of the work they did to help their families survive.
The series that put her on the map was the Regional Stories, which began with Bayou Suzette. Strawberry Girl (1945) was the second in the series, and the one for which Lenski is perhaps best remembered. She won the 1946 Newbery Medal for this book. Read More→
Lois Lenski (October 14, 1893 – September 11, 1974), American children’s book author and illustrator, was best known for realistic depictions of childhood in regional settings around the United States.
A Newbery Medal-winner, she secured a respected place in children’s literature for both her writing and art. She published nearly one hundred books in her career (as well as posthumously, starting with Skipping Village and Jack Horner’s Pie: A Book of Nursery Rhymes, both released in 1927.
Born in Springfield, Ohio, she was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, and with family, moved to a small village that was to be her home for the duration of her childhood. Growing up in this setting would eventually have a profound influence on her calling as a writer and illustrator. Read More→
