Extremely Influential

Helen Small celebrates Emily Brontë on the OUPBlog:

Only one birthday is “celebrated” in Wuthering Heights. It doesn’t go well. The young Catherine Linton begins her 16th birthday with a modestly optimistic plan to buck the established family pattern of solitary mourning to mark the date when she came into the world (“a puny, seven months child”), but her mother died two hours later. “On the anniversary of [Miss Cathy’s] birth,” Nelly reports, “we never manifested any signs of rejoicing, […]. Her father invariably spent that day alone in the library; and walked, at dusk, as far as Gimmerton kirkyard, where he would frequently prolong his stay beyond midnight.” (...)

Next month's Brontë Society bicentenary conference in York is announced in Keighley News:

Brontë enthusiasts will descend on York next month to celebrate the life and work of Wuthering Heights writer Emily.
A Peculiar Music is the title of this year’s Brontë Society conference, at the Marriot Hotel, which marks the 200th anniversary of Emily’s birth.
A society spokesman said Emily had been variously described as visionary, determinedly private, and singular.
She said: “Emily is the most enigmatic of the Brontë siblings, and this conference affords in us opportunities to delve deeper into the complexities of her personality and her limited but extremely influential literary output.
“Professor Stevie Davies, Professor John Bowen, and Dr Hila Shachar have been announced as speakers, and full details can be found on our website." (David Knights)

Scroll.in celebrates Guy de Maupassant's 168th anniversary:

Yet, many of Maupassant’s best stories are about the lives of women, and some of his strongest characters are those of prostitutes, actresses, working girls and women of nobility. Maupassant’s best novel, as its title A Woman’s Life makes clear, also revolves around the life of a woman, which could easily have been written by Emily or Charlotte Brontë, or Virginia Wolf or George Eliot. (M. Saad)

Maupassant and Brontë's styles we rather think are quite different, though.

The Times presents the upcoming BBC documentary Life Inside the Bell Jar. 

Ah, Ted [Hughes]. “Look. The story of [Emily Brontë’s] Heathcliff in the US then was the most romantic thing in the entire world,” Klein says. “All of us wanted to meet Heathcliff and be loved for ever. When I was with them, at the very beginning, they were very happy. She was a woman who was very deeply in love with her husband.” She was in love with her vocation too. “She was always flogging him for publishers and editors. It was always about Ted’s poetry, then she would say, ‘Take a look at mine.’ ” (Elinor Klein quoted by Melissa Katsoulis)

Adam Helliker's column in the Daily Express mentions Zoë Ball:

Zoë Ball adores the summer holidays, chiefly because it gives her more time for reading.
“I start collecting summer reads way ahead of holidays.
And I prefer actual physical books – I like to underline inspirational quotes and re-read bits.”
The perky presenter, 47, who is separated from DJ Norman Cook, loves browsing in secondhand bookshops.
“I collect old editions of favourites like Wuthering Heights and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. 
Books are a huge help in making me slow down. I love getting lost in someone else’s world.” 

Pitchfork reviews the latest album by the band Primo!:

And “Bronte Blues” is an empathic antidote to the kind of “very very very small problem” that threatens to stack up and topple over when you least expect it. “Balance it out with walks by the sea/Balance it out with little luxuries,” Primo! sings, with encouraging “Try it!”s shouted in the distance. (With that excellent title, I imagine these lyrics emerging while reading Wuthering Heights near a body of water.) (Jenn Pelly)

The Craven Herald announces the upcoming Pendle Walking Festival 2018 which includes several Brontë-related routes:

Mr [Council’s tourism officer Mike] Williams added: “We want people from near and far to enjoy stunning far-reaching views and our fascinating history from the Pendle Witches of 1612 to visionary George Fox and the Brontës.”

CharlotteFive lists some of the parks of the city, including The Green:

What you’ll find: A manicured three-tiered landscape full of whimsical artwork with a literary theme. Concrete fish spout water kids can play in. Tall, bronze sculptures were fashioned to look like stacks of classic books like “Roots” and “Wuthering Heights.” And colorful signposts point to real places that combine to form well-known authors’ names, such as Edgar, Wis., Allan, Canada and Poe, Alberta. (Caroline Portillo)

PlayerFM's What Page Are You On podcast is devoted to Wide Sargasso Sea:

Alice and Bethany grapple with Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. They don't necessarily agree on it but have a lot to say about it anyway, before going on a meander towards classics, contemporary classics, the literary legacy of Jane Eyre and more. Join us at 8pm on Tuesday 7th August for the Twitter chat on the hashtag #WPAYOSargasso.

Barry Egan in the Irish Independent vindicates whiskey and begins his article with the well known  'I must keep in good health and not die' Jane Eyre quote. El Punt-Avui (in Catalan) returns to the reading of Wuthering Heights after the Virginia Woolf detour. A Persian translation of Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre's Library (in Spanish)