Thursday 30 April 2009

Charlotte Brontë and her sisters

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in Thornton, the third of six children. She was born into a literary and intellectual household and the children were encouraged to read and take an interest in the world.

She did not have an easy life:

In 1821, at the age of 5, Charlotte lost her mother to cancer, leaving her father with six children aged eight and under.

In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte's two elder sisters, fell ill at Cowan Bridge school and returned to their home in Haworth, only to die. Charlotte and Emily were then also removed from the school.

In 1848, the year after Jane Eyre was published, Charlotte's sister Emily and her brother Branwell died, while her sister Anne died one year later in 1849. Charlotte herself died in 1855 - while pregnant with her first child.

Clearly she did not have an easy life. Yet, despite all the suffering and despite her short life, she managed to create a wealth of literature. Jane Eyre, The Professor, Villette, Shirley... Quite an achievement! Not to mention Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which the three sisters collaborated on.

This truly was an extraordinary family. Their books can help us understand them, and equally, understanding them and understanding the context they lived in can help us appreciate their books.

For more information on Charlotte Brontë's life visit her biography section with timeline on Crossref-it.info.

Monday 27 April 2009

Re-vision – or vision?

It is always scary when you finally respond to the pressure of looming exams, dig out your notes and then realise that they are not as complete / helpful as they need to be!

Revision is meant to be exactly that – looking again at work previously covered. But what to do when you find yourself looking at material for the first time?

At this stage, your teachers simply won’t have time to be wading through the basics – their job now is to help you pull it all together. Luckily, there are many web resources such as Crossref-it.info that provide helpful summaries of texts, scene by scene, chapter by chapter so as to remind you of how events fit together. Good ones should also pose questions that focus your thinking about the text.

In the new The Winter’s Tale guide, for example, you will find sections that give an overview of individual characters, as well as linking themes and sequences of images – great help if you are time poor.

For higher A Level grades examiners want to see that you can draw all your knowledge together into a ‘wide-ranging’ answer – backed up by specific examples too of course.

Thursday 23 April 2009

Full text of Jane Eyre

Is it not funny how we still cling to doing things the old way. I mean, who still sits around trying to revise while frantically trying to hold open two books - the text and the synopsis / commentary. Desperately trying to remember where they left off each time they go back and forth between the two books... The answer is probably: most people. As if revising for exams wasn't hard enough as it is!

Enter Crossref-it.info. In the Jane Eyre text guide, you can now bring up the full text of Jane Eyre with just one click in the red 'Related texts' box. Better still, instead of navigating away from the synopsis page, it simply opens an overlay box - when you're done reading, simply click on 'close' and you will find yourself right back where you came from - the synopsis page.

We are looking at rolling this feature out more widely across some of the text guides. Are there any texts you would particularly like us to cover? Either post a comment on the blog, or email info@crossref-it.info.

Monday 20 April 2009

Back to school

The holidays are over, and it’s back for an intensive few weeks where your teachers will be pulling out all the stops to help you do your best in the exams.

Your best chances of success lie in attending these sessions rather than doing your own thing.

Every lesson is crucial:
  • Many weeks’ worth of learning will be summarised so that you get the sweep of the whole text
  • You get to go back over ideas covered earlier in the course and, with a better understanding, see how they can be applied in potential exam answers
  • Disparate themes and images will be drawn together to make sense
  • It’s a great opportunity to get help on areas you are not confident in
So, make notes like crazy, ask lots of questions and reflect on how far you have already come. This is a time for sharing knowledge, before hunkering down on your own during study leave.

If for some reason you do miss a revision session, if the text features on Crossref-it.info you’re in luck. Otherwise, get a friend to lend you their notes, but don’t be surprised if they don’t want to let them out of their sight for very long…

Thursday 16 April 2009

Death be not proud, though some have called thee by John Donne

We want this blog to be fun to read. Occasionally, we are thus posting short literary 'snippets'. Today's 'snippet' is a poem by John Donne - Death be not proud. Enjoy!

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.


For synopsis, commentary and a discussion of the themes and language of this poem please go to
Poem analysis > Death be not proud

If you have a suggestion as to which poem you would like to see as the next 'snippet', please do let us know by leaving a comment...

Monday 13 April 2009

Reading around the character

Before things get too intensive in the run up to exams, try and make time to gen up on some secondary sources. This is the kind of wider information that will show you understand how the texts you have studied fit into the culture of their time. For example:

Jane Eyre – an extraordinary child

The thing about Jane is that she is a far richer child character than had appeared in literature previously. Children were rarely attributed with much psychological depth in the narratives of the seventeenth century and even in many nineteenth century novels functioned mainly as two dimensional subjects who served merely to affect the protagonist.

If you go to the Charlotte Brontë and childhood page you can see that there were conflicting ideas about the innate innocence or sinfulness of children. In that novel, Brocklehurst is convinced that Jane is a wicked child in need of reform, though both he and Mrs Reed mistakenly believe in the purity and innocence of their own little darlings!

The idea of the innocence of childhood was given impetus by the Romantics, but they too didn’t quite appreciate that an infant might be neither fully good nor fully evil, rather a rounded individual capable of personal choice and morality.

The first person narrative of Jane Eyre gave the story from a different angle – that of a young girl who was quite capable of perceiving injustice in the treatment meted out to her by adults. She calmly assessed those around her and made moral judgements about herself and them, in a way that simply had not happened in novels before.

Today we are entirely up to speed with the idea that children have their own innate ‘voice’ – lots of U.S. sitcoms are devised from the perspective of the child protagonist, whilst entire holiday centres focus on it (think Disney resorts).

It is only when you place Brontë’s central character against the background of her times that you see how distinctive, even shocking, her original portrayal was. Briefly mention that in a relevant exam answer and you’ll be on your way to an A grade!

Thursday 9 April 2009

Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale - new text guide!


We are happy to announce the launch of a new text guide on Crossref-it.info! There is now a full text guide on the site for Shakespeare's A Winters Tale. One of the later plays of Shakespeare, it is a Romance play, and involves stories of loss and reconciliation, love and magical elements. It is a story that shows how faith, hope and unselfish love can overcome self-centred obsession and irrational jealousy. It examines important issues, such as:
  • The relationship between parents and children, and between master and servants
  • The question of what we mean by nature, and what is natural or unnatural
  • The nature and significance of time
  • The effects of suffering
  • The place of humankind in the universe
  • The extent and limitations of human power
  • The nature and the significance of love in its various manifestations.
  • These issues are addressed in scenes which bring created characters to life through the use of powerful language and extraordinary poetry.
The new text guide, (like all other text guides on the site) offers a Timeline, an Author section, a Context section, Synopsis and commentary, Themes and significant ideas, Characterisation, Essay and exam help, and more.

We do hope you will find this text guide really helpful for your studies - we always love to hear comments or suggestions! Either post your comments here on the blog, or send an email to info@crossref-it.info.

Monday 6 April 2009

Are A-Levels getting easier?


You are unlikely to agree if you are in the middle of taking them! However, the problem for employers and universities is that, as more students come out with a raft of A grades, they don’t know how to select who is the best when places are restricted.

Two recent solutions are:

  • Reducing the coursework component - partly a bid to return exams to clearer tests of an individual’s ability under pressure, as well as trying to cut the impact of ever pervasive plagiarism (aka cheating).
  • Introducing A* grades and ‘high powered’ courses like the CIE Pre U
Faced with this, what can help you make it to the top of the pile?
  • Prioritising study, rather than squeezing it around your social life, will mean you have a greater sense of how each subject fits together
  • Making time to read around the central texts / information will give you a wider perspective and impress the examiner
  • Using web resources designed to help at A Level can give you the breadth of info your teacher may be too pressured to cover. That’s certainly the idea behind Crossref-it.info which aims to give Eng. Lit students the edge over their peers.
Unfortunately, as jobs become more scarce, so more students will opt for higher education places, and the need to differentiate students becomes even more pressing…

How are you going to get yourself noticed?

Thursday 2 April 2009

Who is Henry Clerval?


Frankenstein's friend. The Monster's victim. A sword-wielding hunk with a goatee?

Perhaps. But if you are doing an essay on Henry Clerval or preparing for an exam, I would strongly recommend checking out a few alternative sources of information, such as:
How do you picture Henry Clerval?

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