Branwell in New Zealand

Today marks the 169th anniversary of the death of Emily Brontë (as commemorated by Libreriamo (Italy), for instance), even if we all have our eyes set in next year's bicentenary of her birth. It is in fact one of The Telegraph's recommendations for next year:

3. Hit the (Wuthering) heights
Everyone loves a birthday, and a 200th birthday is a very big birthday indeed. Step forward, then, the spirit of Emily Brontë - the second youngest of the Brontë siblings, and arguably the author of their finest literary offering in 1847's Wuthering Heights (devotees of Charlotte's Jane Eyre - feel free to leave an appalled comment below). Emily breathed her first on July 30 1818 - and will be the focus of bi-centennial celebrations throughout 2018 (see bronte.org.uk/bronte-200). One of the centrepoints will be the Parsonage Museum (bronte.org.uk; £8.50), the Bronte family home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, where Britain's most famous literary sisters lived and wrote. (Chris Leadbeater)

Still locally, Keighley News reports that Haworth school children were visited by the team behind the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Haworth school children gained an insight into what goes into producing a film when they were visited by actors and the director of a new film in the making.
Year five children from Haworth Primary met Elisaveta Abrahall, director of the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, together with members of the cast.
Actors accompanying Elisaveta on the visit included Paul Eryk Atlas (playing the role of Heathcliff), Sha'ori Morris (Cathy), Richard Dee Roberts (Edgar Linton), Henry Douthwaite and Claire Cooper King (Mr and Mrs Earnshaw), Helen Fullerton (Ellen Dean), David Macey (Joseph) and Alex De Luca (Dr Kenneth).
This version of Wuthering Heights is due for international release in July next year, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë.
Filming for the final scenes for the movie has been taking place on the moors surrounding Haworth.
Haworth Primary head teacher Helen Thompson said: "It was a truly inspirational visit. The children asked a wealth of questions both about the characters in the film and about what it takes to make a film.
"Our children will be using the visit as a stimulus for their own writing about Heathcliff, which follows on from the work that the class did with the Brontë Parsonage earlier this term.
"We're incredibly grateful to the team for taking time out of their busy schedules to come and work with us."
During their time in Haworth the cast and crew of the new film were guests of the parsonage museum, where they conducted a photo shoot with their production's official unit photographer Keith Johnson to celebrate the end of filming.
The last frames of the film were shot in the snow at Top Withins on November 26.
All principle cast members were at the parsonage for the photo-shoot and to write a line for Clare Twomey's art project, Wuthering Heights – A Manuscript, which is creating a handwritten copy of Emily Brontë's famous novel.
Sha'ori Morris said: "It's been such a privilege to take part in what is the most iconic story of passion against the brutally beautiful backdrop of the moors.
"Seeing and working with it in the snow on our final day here was a unique and breath taking experience."
Elisaveta has promised a Haworth premiere of the film in August 2018 in conjunction with the 200-year celebratory events.
She said: "The film has been five years in the making in total with two years of filming. So to film the last day in Haworth seemed very apt.
"We've been overwhelmed by the support of the local community, and the kindness of the Brontë Parsonage and Bronte Society.
"We hope to do Emily's story justice with the most authentic version of it to date, and hope that a Haworth Premiere will go some way towards saying 'thank you' to the community and everyone who has so kindly given us their support."
Ponden Hall outside Stanbury, inspiration for Thrushcross Grange, also featured in the last day's film shoot.
Leading cast member Paul Atlas said: "I've spent two years walking in Heathcliff’s boots, and what a trek it has been!
"Filming on the moors here felt right. The warmth shown by the Brontë Society and the community in Haworth has been like an open hearth against the winter cold."

A while back, we posted about a paper on a fragment of Branwell's writing which had been found in New Zealand. There's an article about it on the University of Otago website.

The first Brontë manuscript identified in New Zealand has been restored to its place in literary history thanks to a University of Otago researcher.
The fragment of Branwell Brontë’s work was hiding in plain sight, misfiled as a letter, in the Heritage Collections of the Dunedin Public Library.
Coincidentally, the announcement of the previously unknown manuscript in Branwell’s hand occurred in the same year of the bicentenary of the writer’s birth. Branwell Brontë was born on 26 June 1817, and conferences and a special exhibition devoted to his life and work have been held in the United Kingdom this year. [...]
Dr Thomas McLean, of the University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics, and Dr Grace Moore, of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, researched Branwell’s life and work so they could properly explain the significance of the manuscript.
Their findings have just appeared in the Oxford University Press journal Notes & Queries.
They discovered the Dunedin fragment provides the ending for a story written by Branwell in 1837.
The pair pieced together Branwell’s microscopic handwriting, sometimes word-by-word, sometimes letter-by-letter,
and were able to place the fragment at the end of a scene in an inn, identified as part IV (i) of Angria and the Angrians.
Dr McLean visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, UK, in August this year and examined Branwell’s writing journal from which the page was taken.
"I could see exactly where our page fit. The fragment provides the finishing touches to the story,’’ he says.
They believe the piece may have become separated from the rest of the story because it is written on a slightly different sized piece of paper to the rest, as though it was an afterthought; it also bears a date eight weeks later than the chapter it concludes.
The rest of the story, which has already been published, survives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.
It is one of a collection of stories about the imaginary land of Angria that Branwell and Charlotte wrote about in their youth.
"Branwell would write one story, and then Charlotte would write the next. It was a kind of practice ground for the siblings, and it surely helped Charlotte refine the storytelling skills that would come together so remarkably in Jane Eyre.
"When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, its readers were astonished that a first novel could be so good. But the truth is, Charlotte and her siblings had been writing for each other for almost two decades before Jane Eyre appeared.
"The Dunedin fragment is, quite literally, a page from that remarkable history,’’ Dr McLean says.
The fragment is part of the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts held in the Heritage Collections of the library, with records showing it was purchased in 1928.
The collection is the work of businessman and publisher Alfred H. Reed, who died in 1975, and includes work by Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Gaskell and Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
Dr McLean says the collection also includes a clipped signature of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Branwell’s father, though its provenance is uncertain. The father’s signature took pride of place in one of Reed’s ornately decorated autograph albums, while the son’s manuscript languished in a folder, incorrectly catalogued as a letter.
The manuscript was displayed earlier this year in a University of Otago library exhibition, “Keeping it in the Family,” which examined famous British literary families.
It will remain at the Dunedin Public Library, though future publications of the story will need to include the Dunedin page.
"It’s incomplete without it. Any scholar working on Brontë juvenilia or on Branwell’s writings will want to know about it.’’
The fragment is also an "encouragement for more research’’, Dr McLean says. "There are other missing pages in the Brontë archives. So who knows what else is out there?’’

This columnist from Meanjin Quarterly (Australia) writes about reading Jane Eyre for the first time.

There’s a gap between my last couple of years in school and my time in university, a period during which my reading habits dropped down to the bare minimum: assigned texts. But one  name on the list of recommended texts in my creative writing class caught my attention. Jane Eyre. Classics have never been my cup of tea, yet the premise of this Bronte novel intrigued me. Whether it was the feminist undertones, the independence of Jane, or the complicated romance, it was hard to tell. My tutor, a lovely woman who wore huge hoop earrings, helped me find a copy in the university library and said, ‘This is one of my favourites.’
Jane Eyre brought about one of turning points in my young adult start. For a long time, I was prone to being easily flustered and aggressive. Maybe my Zoloft wasn’t working anymore, but anything stirred up a storm in my stomach. I’d finished class and was sitting on a mossy rock outside one of the art buildings when I saw an ex-friend I had fallen out with. My heart thundered in my chest, my palms were slippery with sweat as I contemplated whether to throw out an obnoxious insult or run. But I thought of Jane, of her resolve and strength, and I met his eyes. Our time throwing sand at each other on the beach, sharing clothes and food, making our Economics teacher laugh was gone. The flicker of recognition between us passed was swift. I turned back to my work and finished my coffee, edging his face out of my memory, off the cliff.
I don’t wish ill on him. If he broke a leg I might laugh. I haven’t seen him since that day. I don’t have any more memories to cast away. (Sofia Casanova)

The Barry Gem features local author Vivien Freeman, whose

inspiration for her novel [Rose Alleyn] stems from her deep appreciation of such authors as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier.

The Guardian reviews a performance of Harry Christophers and his choir The Sixteen.

And there were new carols, too – a setting of Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Eve by Kim Porter, who is one of the altos in the Sixteen (actually 18 singers for each date of this tour), and the specially commissioned On Christmas Morn, by Marco Galvani, with its bell-like suspensions contrasting nicely with moments of introspection, using a text by Anne Brontë. (Andrew Clements)

While The Stage reviews the play The Wolves of Willoughby Chase at Jack Studio Theatre, London and finds

echoes of Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett (Julia Rank)

Vogue suggests giving a Jane Eyre t-shirt to your 'Newly Engaged Friend' because

As she embarks on her own marriage plot, remind her of some more well known ones. (Chloe Malle)

Perhaps Jane Eyre is the one marriage plot she doesn't want to be reminded of right now, though.

The Objective (Spain) recommends some books by women writers to give for Christmas. One of them is Wuthering Heights.

Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. La única novela escrita por una de las afamadas hermanas Brontë, Emily, es una de la obras más aclamadas de la literatura romántica inglesa, donde las pasiones y los odios, a partes iguales, centran la trama protagonizada por el inolvidable Heathcliff. La obra ha sido llevada al cine en varias ocasiones. (Bea Guillén Torres) (Translation)

Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are among the books you should read before you're 30 according to VNews (Italy). Captive Dreams Window has a post on Wuthering Heights.