Events at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

Diane Fare from the Brontë Parsonage Museum writes about the latest goings-on at the museum for Keighley News.

As Haworth recovers from its 1940s weekend, we’re gearing up for our Summer Festival weekend in June.
We are very excited about the return of a very important picture to the Parsonage, and the installing of a new temporary exhibition.
Between June 1 and August 31 , one of the National Portrait Gallery’s most important pictures returns to its original home.
The only known surviving portrait of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë together was painted by their 17-year-old brother Branwell in 1834.
The painting was kept by Charlotte’s husband, Mr Nicholls, and after his death it was discovered folded up on the top of a wardrobe, hence its creased appearance!
It was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1914, and this will be its first return to the Parsonage since 1984, so this is a great opportunity to see the original back where it was created.
And another reason to visit the museum in the summer months is to see our new temporary exhibition, Wings of Desire, by Kate Whiteford, a must for lovers of birds of prey.
The exhibition explores Emily’s hawk, Nero, through film and photography, and runs until July 23.
Visitors will be able to watch a short film depicting a birds-eye view of the landscape around the Parsonage and across the moors to Top Withins, and enjoy a series of photographs.
The exhibition is free with admission to the museum.
Our Summer Festival weekend events are selling fast, but if you’re interested in hearing a talk about Haworth in the 1920s (when the Parsonage museum first opened), and being enlightened about all things gothic by a History Wardrobe presentation, then we have tickets for both events on Friday, June 8.
If you’re an early bird, you might enjoy a Saturday morning talk on 9 June by Carol Dyhouse on Women’s Fantasies and Heathcliff
On the Saturday night, we have the Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan playing quizmaster at the ultimate Brontë mastermind quiz.
Participation is not compulsory – come along and have fun watching others struggling to answer questions on all things Brontë!
We have something a little unique on Saturday June 23 – a walk with swing!
If you fancy a short walk up to Penistone Hill, which involves an element of spoken word and performance, then join poet and children’s writer John Agard, poet Sarala Estruch and actor and writer Joe Williams (founder of Leeds Black History Walk).
They will lead a walk of Brontë pathways and moorlands.
The walk will last approximately one hour and once it is finished, will be followed by chat, commentary and performances in the aptly-named Branwell Suite, Old White Lion, Haworth.
If any local community groups are interested in taking part, please get in touch – you’d be more than welcome to join us on this fascinating walk!
Details of all the above events and ticket prices are available on our website.
Visit bronte.org.uk/whats-on or call 01535 640192 to find out more about all the upcoming events at the Parsonage Museum in Haworth. (Jim Seton)

The Telegraph and Argus also looks at what's to come.

The Brontë Society has hinted at events to come during the second half of Emily Brontë’s bicentennial year.
Experts will explore links between the Wuthering Heights author and Japan, whilst celebrities getting involved in the celebrations include Kate Bush and Jeanette Winterson.
Staff at the Brontë Parsonage Museum are currently putting together a packed programme to follow the successful first six months of Emily’s 200th anniversary year.
Some of the planned events have already been revealed in detail, including a high-profile weekend to celebrate Emily’s actual 200th birthday.
But the society’s latest press release also briefly mentioned other events for the last part of the year, including workshops from Keighley-based Whitestone Arts to explore the links between Emily Brontë and Japan.
Singer-songwriter Kate Bush, who leapt to fame in the 1970s with hit single Wuthering Heights, will write a piece of poetry or prose to be engraved onto a ‘Brontë stone’.
There will be one stone for each sibling, the others contributed by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish maker Jackie Kay and novelist Jeanette Winterson.
The stones will be placed at different points in the Haworth and Thornton area that have a significant connection to the Brontës and can be explored via either a three-mile, four-mile or 14-mile walk, linking each stone. (Jim Seton)

Keighley News features the Emily Brontë rose at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018.

A new rose named after Emily Brontë has proved an immediate hit at the Chelsea Flower Show.
The Emily Brontë rose, created by renowned grower David Austin to celebrate the writer’s bicentenary, became a bestseller with the public.
The shrub rose was showcased in the Gold Medal-winning 2018 Welcome to Yorkshire garden at the internationally-renowned flower show.
Rebecca Yorke, from the Brontë Parsonage Museum, was among visitors to the garden, carrying a copy of Emily’s classic novel Wuthering Heights.
Emily Brontë, also known as Ausearnshaw, is described as an exceptionally beautiful rose with distinctive, strongly fragrant blooms of a soft blush colour with central petals deepening to apricot.
It has a strong tea fragrance, which is complemented by hints of old rose, lemon and grapefruit.
Brontë Society executive director Kitty Wright said: “Over many years of piecing together Emily’s short but plenteous life, we know that she was completely at one with nature and the outdoors, so this is a really fitting tribute and celebration.
“David Austin Roses has created a beautiful bloom with charming colours and delicate details and its free-flowering nature makes it a perfect match for Emily.”
David Austin Jnr, managing director of David Austin Roses and eldest son of founder David Austin, said the company introduced only a few new roses each year.
He said: “This follows a nine-year breeding programme and therefore naming a rose is exceptionally important and personal to my father and I.
Visit davidaustinroses.co.uk to buy the rose. (Jim Seton)

The Times asks author Maggie O'Farrell about her cultural life.

I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors . . . Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rebecca Horn, Frida Kahlo, Albert Camus, Wes Anderson, Trygve Wakenshaw, Jane Campion, Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce, Tove Jansson, Judith Kerr, Isabella Lucy Bird and Yotam Ottolenghi, who could double as the chef.

SyfyWire celebrates a literary anniversary:

May 26, 1897, saw the publication of Dracula, a gothic horror novel written by Irish author Bram Stoker. The book was not a commercial hit upon release, although critics of the time compared it with mighty praise to writers like Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë. (Kayleigh Donaldson)

The Christian Post shares an excerpt from Where I End: A Story of Tragedy, Truth, and Rebellious Hope by Katherine Elizabeth Clark.

I would always rather be happy than dignified. —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is perhaps one of the finest female characters in all of literature. But if you're familiar with her tale, you will remember Jane as being quite dignified. She is an orphan, but she unabashedly shares her thoughts with those in authority. She is cast off by her aunt and treated cruelly during her orphan days, yet she is neither diffident nor feeble.
Twice she refuses to enter into marriage—in the first instance, she loves and is deeply loved by another. . . .With the second proposal of marriage, she resists the despotic pressure to marry another out of duty rather than for love.
Dignified. Passionate. Mournful. Expressive. High-spirited. Serious. Noble. Each of these adjectives describes Jane. Happy, on the other hand, is not the defining word that springs to mind for the character whose story is indelibly marked with sorrow. And yet curiously inserted into this tale is the brief phrase, "I would always rather be happy than dignified." Dear Jane, what are you trying to tell me?

Madrid's Book Fair opened yesterday and El País (Spain) reminds readers that this is the year of Emily Brontë's bicentenary.

Y ya que estamos de lleno en la feria, permítanme un recordatorio y un par de primerísimas recomendaciones para abrir boca. El recordatorio es el del bicentenario de Emily Brontë, de la que Alba acaba de reeditar su única novela, Cumbres borrascosas (1847), en la estupenda traducción de Carmen Martín Gaite. La novela, a la vez un hito universal de la narrativa romántica y una obra maestra del gótico tardío, es de esos clásicos que nunca acaban de dar todo lo que contienen. La historia de Heathcliff, los Earnshaw y los Linton en los ventosos páramos norteños admite a cada lectura nuevas interpretaciones, desde la estrictamente feminista (Brontë se habría apropiado de lo gótico para representar las ansiedades de la mujer ante el frustrante y amenazante espacio doméstico) a la lacaniana (la relación de identificación de Heathcliff y Catherine remite al “estadio del espejo”). (Manuel Rodríguez Rivero) (Translation)

The Stanford Daily discusses literature and race.

Classical literature praises this peach-shade figment: Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Anna Karenina. These adventurous yet respectful white women — I eventually branched out to white men — became my muse. (Natachi Onwuamaegbu)

IGN reviews the new miniseries Picnic at Hanging Rock.

If Peter Weir’s version of Picnic at Hanging Rock is Twin Peaks - and given its emphasis on inexplicable horror, the obsessive aftermath of tragedy, dreamlike logic and montages of total despair, it was almost certainly an influence - then the miniseries is more akin to a Brontë novel, as filmed by Dario Argento. (William Bibbiani)

That sounds something we would like to see. A Brontë giallo.

ArtsAtl reviews the film Beast.

That community is on the English Channel isle of Jersey (gorgeously shot by Benjamin Kracun, giving the movie a Wuthering Heights wildness). (Steve Murray)

In an article about Peter Kay’s Car Share, iNews wonders,

would Shakespeare have changed the ending of Romeo & Juliet if he’d been alive now, or Emily Brontë the plot of Wuthering Heights? (Gerard Gilbert)

El Periódico (Spain) reviews El Bosque Sabe tu Nombre by Alaitz Leceaga:

 “La casa es un personaje más”, admite, omnipresente también en sus otros referentes: “Ya de niña leía todo lo que caía en mis manos y recuerdo el páramo, el viento, la casa aislada y los personajes ambiguos, que no sabes si son buenos o malos, de ‘Cumbres borrascosas’. Todo eso lo trasladé sin darme cuenta a la novela”. (Anna Abella) (Translation)

The Huffington Post (Italy) reviews the film God's Own Country:

C'è stato davvero un tempo in cui i nudi frontali maschili erano al bando? Qui è struggente il primo amplesso furioso nel fango, e l'imbarazzo, lo stupore dell'innamoramento, la scoperta della dolcezza, gli sguardi, l'ostilità da affrontare, che non è solo quella della natura... "Cime tempestose" non è poi così lontano. Come tutti i film riusciti, "La Terra di Dio" non è una love story gay, è una storia d'amore e basta. (Teresa Marchesi) (Translation)

Jyoti Arora posts about Wuthering Heights.