A dark, disturbing trainwreck you can’t look away from

BBC History Extra features the Brontë sisters

Charlotte Brontë steps into her father’s study. In her hand, she holds a book – a hardback volume bound in cloth, with the words ‘Jane Eyre’ stamped on the cover. “Papa, I’ve been writing a book,” she announces, rather understating the true matter of her achievement. In fact, her novel is completed, published, and is selling at almost record speed. “Have you my dear?” the unsuspecting Reverend Patrick Brontë replies, without looking up. As Charlotte continues, the clergyman slowly realises that his daughter has become a literary sensation, in secret, right under his nose. After some time, Patrick calls in Charlotte’s younger sisters, Emily and Anne: “Charlotte has been writing a book – and I think it is better than I expected.” It is good that he approves of Charlotte’s tale, because he’s about to learn that his other daughters have similar stories to tell… (Mel Sherwood) (Read more)

Evening Standard shares 'A definitive guide to all the references' on Taylor Swift's new album Folklore because 'There’s no such thing as a straightforward Taylor Swift lyric'.

Invisible String

There’s a handful of standout references in Invisible String. First of all, literary-minded fans have wondered whether Swift had a copy of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre to hand while working in isolation, as the “invisible strings” of the song’s title echo Mr Rochester’s musings on his bond with the novel’s heroine. “I have a strange feeling with regard to you: as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you,” he tells her. And to continue the theme, the track which follows is titled Mad Woman - a phrase which conjures up Rochester’s first wife Bertha, literature’s ‘madwoman in the attic.’ (Katie Rosseinsky)

While Rolling Stone India thinks that

You can picture the candle on her piano flickering as the wax melts over her copy of Wuthering Heights and another song rolls out. (Rob Sheffield)

Querido Clássico (Brazil) thinks that the song My Tears Ricochet is about Wuthering Heights.

The Guardian shares the obituary published for William Wyler in 1981.

Between then and 1970 he made some 40 films, but it was in the mid-thirties, in a run of pictures produced by Samuel Goldwyn, that his reputation became firmly established.

These notably included Dead End, which made a star of Humphrey Bogart, Wuthering Heights, with Laurence Olivier as a memorable Heathcliffe (sic), and The Little Foxes, which gave Bette Davis perhaps her most notable screen role.

Mental Floss has selected 'The Last Lines From 19 Popular Books', including

19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Since female writers were so heavily discriminated against in the mid-19th century, Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights under the alias “Ellis Bell.” (Ellen Gutoskey)

While The Young Folks thinks that Heathcliff and Cathy are among several 'Classic Ships That Need a Revisionist Retelling'

Do: Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights

Speaking of hot messes, these two deserve that label more than anyone else. Since childhood, they have loved each other, but it’s an obsessive, unhealthy love. Instead of seeing themselves as two different people who complete each other, they see themselves as the same person. Even after Catherine marries someone else (itself problematic), Heathcliff continues to pursue her, and after she dies, he seeks revenge on her husband and even digs up her grave to look at her one last time. Despite the dysfunction, I think we can still learn lessons and this classic romance is still worthwhile, but the novel itself is dense, hard to read, and honestly drags at times. If this story were updated to a modern setting and voice, it could be fascinating—like a dark, disturbing trainwreck you can’t look away from. (Abby Petree)

Elle (Italy) echoes the news that Emily Brontë did actually write Wuthering Heights.