Pay a call to Bertha Mason; dine with Alice, Gregor Samsa, or Nick Carraway

The secret attic that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s vision of the madwoman in the attic is now open for visits in Yorkshire. The real Thornfield, it turns out, is the manor of Norton Conyers, which dates to the Middle Ages; its present architecture is mid-18th-century.

Brontë paid a visit in 1839 – 8 years prior to the publication of Jane Eyre – and there heard about the 18th-century “Mad Mary” who had purportedly been imprisoned in one of the attic rooms, accessible by a hidden stair…

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For anyone who’s ever lingered over a particularly vivid description of food in a book: Dinah Fried’s photobook Fictitious Dishes features meticulously styled and photographed recreations of notable fictional meals. You can see photo selections and some background on the creation of the project here at Brain Pickings. (And then, if you’re feeling like cooking something up yourself, check out Kakaner’s collection of loving and lavish book-inspired recipes, Booklish!)

I actually laughed at the first photo featured at Brain Pickings because I had just the day before re-read the bit with the crab salad food-poisoning crisis in The Bell Jar: “There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends…”

There’s also something quite perverse about the bright lighting and colorful bits of produce in Gregor Samsa’s meal.

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