Ha, Meg, studying a book at A-level is more than enough to put you off it for life, I’m sure. Ha!
IsFuzzy, the book you’re thinking of, which tells the tale of the first Mrs Rochester, is probably Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I love that book too. Well, I don’t love everything about it, but it’s very interesting, and I would highly recommend it as an example of post-colonial literature that ‘writes back’ to the white British literary canon. I now feel like maybe I’m a bit of a freak and you have to have weird Christian fundamentalist parents in order to adore Jane Eyre! But I do think she’s an amazing character. And I find the final scene where Jane and Rochester are reunited to be breathtakingly sexy. (I’m kind of embarrassed about that, but what turns one reader on is obviously not the same as what turns another reader on, ahem)
Sadik, thanks for an interesting review of the Johann Hari book Stolen Focus. I’m sure he has some good points to make, but he has a history of significant plagiarism and that has blackened his reputation forever in my book (maybe it’s because I’m an academic that I’m super touchy about these things). Plus, I think he has a history of denigrating anti-depressant medications, and anti-depressants have probably saved my life on multiple occasions, so there’s that…
Speaking of plagiarism, this might be of interest to people who read Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, even though it’s very niche… Medieval Twitter is currently buzzing with a scandal dubbed ReceptioGate. Basically, the scholar Peter Kerr, who does the same kind of thing as Hamel but is less famous, discovered that some of his work had been plagiarised by a Swiss scholar called Carla Rossi. Her defence was basically, “Why do I need to cite your stupid blog?”. But Kerr’s blog isn’t just any old blog; he was curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library, for starters. Medievalist friends of Kerr on Twitter probed further and discovered that the publishing house and academic institution founded by Rossi (namely, Receptio) seemed to be at least partly or wholly FAKE. A lot of supposed academics on the board of the Receptio publishing house had made-up names and stock photos pilfered from different sites across the internet. The publishing house (entirely owned by Rossi?) had received substantial grants from the Swiss government in order to publish Rossi’s ¬¬–stolen—academic work. This has all unfolded over the past few days, and medievalists are riveted, I tell you. Riveted.
twitter.com/mssprovenance/status/1608178414262820865
Part of the drama lies in the fact that Peter Kerr, white-bearded and geeky, has been invariably classy and factual in his account of events, while Prof. Dr. Rossi and her (murkily identified) husband have completely lost it and have been accusing him of all sorts. Academia at its finest. (Or not.)