Brontës at the Brigantes

The York Brontë Group is now under way, meeting once a month at The Brigantes Bar, Micklegate, York.  The first, very informal get-together, began with a very short talk about laudanum and other common nineteenth century remedies.  The discussion which followed widened to cover a number of related topics including what Mr Brontë did and – perhaps more significantly - did not annotate in his copy of Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine and whether Emily’s final illness really was consumption.

The next meeting of the group will be on Thursday, 27 February at 2 pm when a discussion about modern responses to the works of the Brontës will be led by Belinda Hakes who is Head of English at Wyke College.

In addition to discussion session a programme of visits is planned and full details will be released soon. For further information please email Chris Went (Trustee) at brontemania@gmail.com and you can follow the Group on Twitter @YorkBronteGroup 

Wuthering Heights - a new musical

Adapted from the novel by Emily Brontë

Music, Book and Lyrics by Catherine McDonald

Dates - 11th - 15th February 2014 @ 7:30pm (plus a matinee on Saturday @ 2:30pm)

Venue - The Barons Court Theatre, London.

Tickets - £10 / £8.50 concession

Link - http://www.offwestend.com/index.php/plays/view/10867  

Box Office - 0208 932 4747

About the Writer / Composer

Catherine McDonald completed David Edgar's Playwriting Masters Degree and has enjoyed a number of successes with play scripts and musicals being produced across the country and on ITV1.  Her play Once Upon A Winter is published by Eldridge Editors in the US, and she has recently won the nationwide Mardibooks World War One Short Story competition for her story Homecoming.

Catherine was short-listed for the BBC Writer's Academy for her play The Kittens in the Bag, after which Theatre 503 programmed her short play What Sam Told Me as part of their Rapid Write Rewind night, celebrating the best of their Rapid Response evenings over the past few years.  

Catherine received critical acclaim for her musical adaptation of Peter Pan Never Land at the Edinburgh Fringe, which went on to be performed outdoors in Kensington Gardens, and was then featured on ITV1's Fortune, winning £15,000 to donate to Gt Ormond St Children's Hospital.  

**  Catherine and her theatre company came to Haworth in 2008 and performed her adaptation of Jane Eyre for the Bronte Society AGM weekend, to great applause. This should be well worth seeing!

Catherine McDonald's website: http://catherinemcdonald.org

Playwright - Composer - Author

Read her play: http://www.histage.com/playdetails.asp?PID=2501

Watch this short film: http://vimeo.com/43416368

Kindle Download: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magwires-Christmas-Ghost-Story-ebook/dp/B00AESMO34/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362056328&sr=8-1

Wuthering Heights in Postwar Japan

Mizae Mizumura

Several people have emailed the blog about this article - A True Novel - recently published in The Japan Times. French Literature scholar Mizae Mizumura has updated Wuthering Heights and relocated it to Japan soon after the Second World War, which brings to mind novels by David Peace like Occupied City. Mizumura's novel is described as 'a real page-turner' and also 'in some respects, more interesting' (!) The article continues: 'A True Novel is mostly told by a servant named Fumiko to a young man she happens to meet, who tells it in turn to a character called Minae Mizumura, a novelist writing a book not unlike this one and living a life not unlike the novelist Minae Mizumura’s. Fumiko is certainly Mizumura’s Ellen Dean, but Scheherazade seems present as well. Fumiko is as unreliable a narrator as Ellen Dean, and just as some have seen Ellen Dean, rather than Heathcliff, as the true villain of Bronte’s novel, so it is hard to find Fumiko blameless...'

Translation into English is by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Reviews welcome. Thanks to Paul Daniggelis, Naoko Ota and Keiko Abe for informing us.

Article can be read in full here.