The Brontës' home office

The Wall Street Journal finds 'home office design ideas' at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

I first chanced on photos of the Brontë Parsonage, home of the liteary family, while edging toward a redesign of my own tiny writer’s quarters in my London apartment. Having developed a block induced by 30th-birthday anxiety, I’d become convinced a change of scenery—or at least, a change of the scene around my desk—might rev up my output.

A two-story, stone-faced Georgian completed in 1779 atop a remote hill in Haworth, West Yorkshire, the house looks unassuming enough in pictures. But by the middle of the 19th century, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë had whipped out eight books between them under its roof, including “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre.” Might “I’ll have what she’s having” carry over to wallpaper and productivity? I wondered. [...]

“Georgian houses are so satisfying because architects were trained to be very aware of proportion, ratios and how different shapes related to one another,” London interior designer Brandon Schubert told me when I relayed how restful I found the evenly repeated sash windows and column-bracketed doorway. [...]

[Patrick's] study’s furnishings reflect the family’s self-image, according to Steve Summersgill, art director of the biopic “Emily,” which opens in England this month and in 2023 in the U.S.: “Even though [the Brontës] didn’t have much money, they were pretty spick and span—they took pride in what they had, and the few pieces of furniture they did have were quite nice.”

Nice, yes, but mostly…serious. The office could inspire some kind of work but surely not novels packed with the earthly, colorful muss of real human feelings, I thought, hurrying across the way to the dining room, where the sisters did most of their writing. Here, rigorous architecture and formal furnishings are tenderized just enough that I could imagine working here happily and productively.

A wallpaper pattern of slender floral vines—their frivolity tamed by a tidy, tan trellis—climbs the walls. In the hefty bookcases that frame the marble fireplace, the worn spines of their occupants add welcome texture. Beside the mahogany dining table sit two smaller writing desks. When I showed my photos to Lucy Hammond Giles of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, an English design studio familiar with the wants of modern-day classicists, she noted that the long window drapes add cushiness, but a curtain rod with rings would look more relaxed than the squared-off pelmet that tops them.

Some of the home’s welcome softer touches make their presence known through one’s ears. A pair of grandfather clocks tock rhythmically throughout the house. “In a way, it’s more about how they sound versus how they look,” said Mr. Schubert, who nonetheless favors styles like the leaner, less decorative of the two clocks in the parsonage.

In the kitchen, heavy mahogany seats yield to delicate rockers in William Morris’s Sussex style: a rush seat and spindled back. These sit atop a fuzzy, multicolor rag rug. I couldn’t help but want to drag the carpet into the study to add a little coziness. “There are a lot of legs in that room, but a rug would make the room feel cohesive,” Ms. Hammond Giles said of the bare-boarded office. (Lauren Joseph)

Good Housekeeping shares 'An ultimate guide to exploring the beauty of Britain' and it includes

5. Experience the railways and walking trails of the Yorkshire Dales

If a walking holiday takes your fancy in 2022, let it be in the mesmerising Yorkshire Dales, where epic views and charming villages await. It's also a fantastic place to experience English railways, like the heritage Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (which stops at Oakworth, made famous in The Railway Children) and the Settle-Carlisle Railway.

Wildlife fans can enjoy walking along the Bolton Abbey River Loop, while exploring the world of Wuthering Heights at Haworth and on a Brontë-themed walk across Yorkshire's wild moors is another must-do. You can experience the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales on an exclusive five-day staycation. (Roshina Jowaheer)

The Times features the 1921 novel Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim.

Everard Wemyss spots Lucy Entwistle, looking lost, gazing over the gate of her Cornish cottage. Her father had died just that day. Everard has problems too; he is desperately lonely, shunned by society after his wife died having fallen from an upper window of their home. Naive and adoring, Lucy is swept into marriage by him, only to find herself expected to live in the Surrey house where Everard’s first wife died, surrounded by memorials to their marriage. “Wuthering Heights written by Jane Austen,” was the essayist John Middleton Murry’s description of this 1921 novel; “witty and well-constructed, a sort of sparkling Euclid,” wrote the novelist Rebecca West. (Christina Hardyment)

The Guardian reviews The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph.

In his foreword to the novel, Joseph says, perhaps with a little of the theatrical grandiosity he injects so well into Sancho’s character, that his aim is to depict the presence of Black people in British history “in the form in which I met Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Jane Eyre”. It’s a tough task for a writer to set themselves, but the care and research shine through in every chapter. This is a tragicomedy of the first order, and not to be missed. (Natasha Pulley)

The film Emily is one of '50 things to look forward to in autumn 2022' according to iNews. Ouest France lists three reasons why Charlotte Brontë is worth rediscovering.