Month: February 2016

Writers

Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman puts her unrequited romance at the center of her creative life

By Jody R | by Jody R

LA Times book review – LA Times After encouraging Charlotte’s talents, Constantin Heger, who has been teaching her French literature, has grown more formal, signaling that he “will never see her in a romantic light.” Ultimately, Harman writes, he will “cost her two years of intense heartache, humiliation and futile hope.” As she recounts in a letter to her sister Emily and, later, in the novel “Villette,” Charlotte wanders forlornly into a cathedral, an unfamiliar…

Continue reading

books

Fairy Tales Could Be Older Than You Ever Imagined

By Jody R | by Jody R

Via  | smithsonianmag.com | Smithsonian Jack may have been climbing that beanstalk for more than 5,000 years A few hundred years ago, fairy tale auteurs like the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault helped bring magical tales of princesses, evil ogres, dark forests, weird spells and thwarted love into the storybooks—and to the bedsides—of children, everywhere. But how old are the tales they transcribed? A new study suggests that their origins go all the way back…

Continue reading