Congratulations to the Brontë Parsonage Museum on receiving the Sandford Award

Even The New York Times (as well as many other news outlets in several languages) has an article on the newly-dotted Es at Poets's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

For 85 years, the names of three of English literature’s best-known writers, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, were featured in Poets’ Corner, the Westminster Abbey nook dedicated to great poets, authors and playwrights, but something wasn’t quite right: They were missing the accent mark.

This week, the error was fixed when the diereses — umlaut-like punctuation dots, each just about a third of an inch in diameter — were added above each E of the famous last name.

It’s a small but sizable victory for three sisters who could not publish under their own names nearly 200 years ago, even as their novels “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” helped change the portrayal of women’s lives in fiction.

“Those three women fought harder than most to have their voices heard, to have their work understood on its own merits, and it endures,” said Sharon Wright, who discovered the mistake while visiting Westminster Abbey in London in January. “We can at least get their names right.”

Ms. Wright, who describes herself as a stroppy Yorkshire woman like the literary sisters, was researching her upcoming book “The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar,” when she visited the plaque. Ms. Wright, who also edits the Brontë Society Gazette, a periodical for Brontë fans, compared the plaque with how the women had signed their own names, and saw the discrepancy.

“Three of our greatest writers, and their names are spelled incorrectly,” Ms. Wright said at the abbey on Friday. “You can’t make it up.”

She promptly emailed the Abbey’s dean, and he responded by the next morning. In a matter of months, the plaque was amended.

Now, the punctuation indicates that the last vowel is pronounced separately: “BRON-tay” rather than “BRONT” or “BRUNT.” But the accent mark was actually the result of some poetic license by the writers’ father, Patrick Brontë.

Originally Patrick Brunty, he made the change upon arriving at Cambridge University as a student, in an effort to indicate a higher social standing and eschew prejudice against his Irish roots, said Sandie Byrne, a professor of English at the University of Oxford.

The Westminster Abbey plaque itself is made from Huddlestone, a cream-colored stone quarried in Yorkshire, the area of northern England where the sisters lived and wrote the books that would become part of the English language’s literary canon. It was commissioned in 1939 by the Brontë Society, a group dedicated to preserving the sisters’ legacy.

A letter from the time includes the correct spelling of Brontë, according to an excerpt released by Westminster Abbey on Thursday. Ms. Wright believes the error was introduced by the surveyor, whose correspondence about the planned plaque misspelled the name.

The error may have initially gone unnoticed because no formal ceremony was held to unveil the plaque. World War II had broken out, and Paul de Labilliere, who was dean of Westminster, wrote at the time that “anything of that sort is out of the question,” according to the abbey.

These days, the Brontë sisters’ plaque sits at the heel of a life-size statue of William Shakespeare.

Nearby is a bust of Robert Southey, England’s poet laureate during the Brontës’ lifetime, who had discouraged Charlotte Brontë from pursuing a writing career. “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life,” he wrote in a letter to Ms. Brontë after sampling her writing, “and it ought not to be.”

Only a handful of women are among the more than 100 writers honored in the abbey. To the left of Shakespeare, Jane Austen has a modest plaque, and George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) is around the corner.

An inscription on the Brontës’ plaque, “With Courage To Endure,” is a testament to the sisters’ arduous journey to publication in the early 19th century. They used the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell to avoid being dismissed for their gender. It was only after Emily’s and Anne’s deaths that Charlotte revealed their identities.

On Friday, a day after Westminster Abbey unveiled the amended plaque, hundreds of visitors filed into Poets Corner, as they do each day. Most aimed their cameras at the Shakespeare statue or posed by William Wordsworth, and tour guides pointed out the plaque for the actor Laurence Olivier, a more recent name.

After the grammatical tweak, though, guides had a novel reason to bring attention to the Brontë sisters.

“They’re in the shadow, and you’d have to take them over to point them out,” said Nick Morrison, who has led tours through the abbey for 23 years. “Now that we’ve got a good excuse to go over, it’s great.” (Lynsey Chutel)

More good news from Brontëland as Keighley News reports that the Brontë Parsonage Museum has received the Sandford Award, from the Heritage Education Trust.

Awards lead assessor Lucy Hockley visited the parsonage earlier this year, observing school workshops, reviewing documents, inspecting resources and interviewing staff and volunteers.

In her report, she described the museum as a "rich environment for learning" and its offering as a "truly memorable experience".

Sue Newby, learning officer at the museum, says: "It has always felt a great pleasure and privilege for me to work with learners here.

"The Bronte sisters were remarkable women with a creative genius, and I feel very lucky to help share their legacy with pupils and students of all ages."

Museum director, Rebecca Yorke, said the team was "extremely pleased and proud" to receive the award.

She added: "Learning is at the heart of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

"We are home to a powerful story and world-class collection, and we value learning as a two-way process where our visitors and audiences bring their own unique responses to the experience.

"We're extremely pleased and proud to be given the Sandford Award."

A presentation ceremony will take place at Kensington Palace in December. (Alistair Shand)

A columnist from The Telegraph claims that Wuthering Heights 'may not make much sense psychologically' (?) but his column, part of the ongoing debate about Heathcliff's race, is a bit rambling too:

The advertisement is going out soon: “Calling all Lascars! A chance to star in the hearthrob blockbuster of all time – Wuthering Heights. Liverpudlian background essential. No experience in wuthering required. Spawn of Beelzebub welcome. Cruelty to animals an advantage.”

This week saw a confected row over the casting of a new film of Emily Bronte’s overheated (though well ventilated) Yorkshire Gothic classic. Margot Robbie from Barbie will play Catherine Earnshaw, but it’s her fellow Australian Jacob Elordi who has been denounced as not dark enough to play Heathcliff. It could have been worse; the pale Ryan Gosling from Barbie might have been chosen.

In 2011 a film came out with James Howson, who was the first black actor to play Heathcliff. I don’t quite know what has become of him since.

If we did want a film true to the deep Victorian fantasy novel, we’d need someone with a Liverpool accent, since that’s where the boy Heathcliff was found and kidnapped for a life of agricultural labour, an act regarded in Yorkshire as a favour, at least in those days. As the novel specifies someone black-haired, Derek Hatton, the one-time Trotskyist deputy leader of Liverpool Council would fit the profile, though at 76 he might be a trifle old.

As for “Lascar” it is one of the tantalising clues that Emily Bronte gives for the Byronic Heathcliff’s ethnic affinities. A Lascar was an ordinary term for an able seaman from the East Indies. The East Indies were a bit vague, running from India east. The word comes from an Urdu term for a military camp and there is no reason to take it as derogatory.

Nor is there with gipsy, the word frequently associated in the book with Heathcliff. Joseph, the most Yorkshire character in the novel, calls him a “flaysome divil of a gipsy” (flaysome meaning “dreadful”), and the gipsy references must be to a sort of swarthiness. Even in windburnt Yorkshire, however, anyone of a Mediterranean appearance would have counted as sallow.

A hellish complexion, however, is one that comes over strongly in the book. The infant Heathcliff is called “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” and an “imp of Satan”.

Emily Bronte’s novel may not make much sense psychologically, but it is stuffed full of Gothic horror: hauntings, opening coffins and mundane madness on the moors. I’m afraid it’s this aspect added to romantic love that attracts such adulation for the book. At best Catherine and Heathcliff are chthonic forces, moulded from volcanic rock. “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be,” she declares. “I am Heathcliff!” At worst Wuthering Heights is like a holiday let of the Manson Mansion.

So perhaps someone with horns and a tail might be found for the part. Except that it’s all nonsense limiting actors to roles that resemble their home life. Remember that Heathcliff has to hang a dog, and not many actors would want to admit to that in auditions for fear of a jail term.

If Heathcliff is dark-haired and gipsy-like, could that not be achieved by hair dye and – uh, hem – make-up? Yet that would set aside the attractions of radical blind casting. If Bob Dylan could be played by Cate Blanchett, why not have a woman play Heathcliff?

Or Heathcliff could be played as a woman, even if that makes it harder to explain the existence of his son Linton. Though now I come to think of it, Linton is described as a “pale, delicate, effeminate boy”, unlikely if Heathcliff is, as some literary experts now appear to believe, black or mixed-race. So perhaps his biological father was someone else.

Whatever happens, most of the complicated, generation-jumping book won’t make it to the screen. Perhaps, then, a film Wuthering Heights is best taken lightly, at a level far below Kate Bush’s interpretation. But in the name of all that wuthers, keep away the diversity quota police from this and every other screen drama. (Christopher Howse)

Giant Freaking Robot tries to sum up the controversy.

After the death of Dame Maggie Smith, Daily Mail and other news outlets takesa look at her sons' lives and careers. All mention Toby Stephens's role as Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre 2006.

Stephens is the youngest person to have played a Bond villain, starring as Gustav Graves in Die Another Day.

He also won over fans as Jane Eyre's lover Mr Rochester and the evil Prince John in Robin Hood. (Eleanor Dye)

Women's Prize has writer Rukmini Iyer pick her most influential books and one of them is

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

I read Jane Eyre when I was quite young, and immediately felt a connection with the young Jane, sitting in a window seat alone, reading a book rather than engaging with children her age. She’s misunderstood, put upon, and brave in the face of injustice from her cruel Aunt Reed and the tyrannical Mr Brocklehurst – a proper child heroine. (I shared Jane’s early unsociability followed by a devoted friendship, and even suffered similar feelings of injustice thanks to a borderline sadistic chemistry teacher – she was basically me.)

Restless lists '18 things you might not know about Jane Austen' and one of them is that

11. Charlotte Brontë was not a fan of Jane’s

While Jane Austen’s work has garnered plenty of praise over the centuries, one writer who wasn’t exactly a fan was Charlotte Brontë. While the Jane Eyre novelist believed that Austen’s writing was skilful, she thought Jane’s books were too superficial.

Of Emma, Brontë thought that Austen “ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound[.]” And, writing to a friend about Pride and Prejudice, said it was…

“[A] carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.” (Sam McLoughlin)