Brontë Studies. Volume 51. Issue 1. January 2026

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 51  Issue 1, January 2026) is available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts: 

‘With unabated vigour’: Brontë Studies in 2026
pp 1-3  Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire

Research Articles

Helen Huntingdon Did Not Slam Her Bedroom Door
pp. 4-12 Author: Kirk, Laura
Abstract: 
In 1912, May Sinclair famously described a ‘slamming’ of Helen Huntingdon’s bedroom door against her husband in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) as part of her feminist analysis of the novel. However, this ‘slamming’ is only ever metaphorical in Sinclair’s analysis, since in the text of the novel, Helen does not slam her door. Despite this, feminist critics over the past century have reproduced Sinclair’s description of the scene to the point where a literal slam has become something of a critical myth surrounding the novel. This article proposes an alternative interpretation of this scene in light of the novel’s feminist virtue ethics.

When the Private Becomes Public: Involuntary Disclosure in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 13-27  Author: Chew, Caelan
Abstract:
Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) thematises involuntary, third-party disclosure—the unauthorised revelation of personal information, whether artwork, letters or secrets—which is built into the form of the novel through its narration and framing device. This article explores incidents of involuntary disclosure and argues that Brontë’s treatment of them is ethically complex. While the novel portrays the serious nature of violating another’s privacy, such violations are attributed even to characters who are meant to be sympathetic to the reader. The possible justifications and motivations for disclosure lie in the cultivation of relationships and the communities in which an individual is enmeshed, but moral ambiguity remains. Appreciating these ethical dilemmas complicates Brontë’s characters and her writing, and counters critics who find the work didactic. Additionally, attending to involuntary disclosure in the novel broadens our understanding of privacy in the Victorian era and invites consideration of the less frequently discussed rights and roles of the autonomous liberal subject.

Reading Jane Eyre as a Hagiographic Romance
pp.  28-43 Author: Schiavone, Matteo
Abstract:
This article uses queer medievalism as a critical method to interpret Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), reading it as a hagiographic romance, a hybrid text that blurs clear-cut generic boundaries. As the fictionalised autobiography of a character who finds the strength of self-belief through mystical experiences and the Christian doctrine of endurance, the narrative is akin to medieval hagiographic and visionary literature, which the comparison with The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430s) demonstrates. At the same time, however, similar to Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, it follows the pattern of a chivalric quest romance, as Jane physically moves outwards and goes through several stages of development before being ready to marry Mr Rochester. Ultimately, queered genres create a space where Jane can develop a queer gender identity beyond stifling societal expectations.

‘Wild thoughts’: Emily Brontë in Contemporary Biofiction
pp. 44-59 Author: Russo, Stephanie
Abstract:
Emily Brontë has proven a perpetual mystery to readers, critics and biographers, who have struggled to account for the woman who wrote Wuthering Heights since its publication in 1847. Brontë’s intense need for privacy and her limited relationships with people outside her family have also proven tantalising for writers of biofiction: she is the ideal subject because there is plenty of space to speculate about her interior life and how it might have informed her art. Twenty-first-century biofictions create a distinctly contemporary vision of Emily Brontë inflected by shifting understandings of authorship. These novels are significant not only for what they reveal about her afterlife but also for the way they function as interpretations of Wuthering Heights, given their preoccupation with attempting to find an ‘answer’ for how and why she came to write that novel.

Resurrecting Heathcliff: Examining Racial and Familial Trauma in Michael Stewart’s Ill Will
pp. 60-78 Author: Ntola, Georgia
Abstract:
This article examines how Michael Stewart’s Ill Will (2018), a neo-Victorian reinterpretation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), tackles racial and familial trauma by reimagining Heathcliff’s three-year absence from Brontë’s novel. Heathcliff tells his own story while searching for his origins, and is portrayed as a part-Black, illegitimate Earnshaw. Informed by key texts of neo-Victorian scholarship, this article explores how Ill Will revises Wuthering Heights in today’s cultural climate, with a focus on the persistent legacy of nineteenth-century institutionalised racism and its impact on contemporary British society. It asserts that Ill Will addresses the erasure of Black subjects by white historiography while voicing the trauma of slavery and sustained racist abuse. It also demonstrates how, through Heathcliff’s illegitimacy, the novel examines familial politics in the nation while criticising its treatment of Black subjects then and now, thereby highlighting the ongoing dialogue of past and present in neo-Victorianism. 

Book Reviews

No Net Ensnares Me: An Anthology of Prose Poetry Inspired by the Brontës and the Wild
pp. 79-80 Reviewed by Curzon, Rachel

The Brontës as Gothic Writers: ‘The Afflicted Imagination’
pp. 80-82 Reviewed by Marsden, Simon

Critical Insights: The Brontë Sisters
pp. 82-85 Reviewed by Pearson, Sara L.

Let Me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar
pp. 85-87 Reviewed by Watson, Graham

Charlotte Brontë: A Medical Casebook
pp. 87-89 Reviewed by Waugh, Jo

Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes
pp. 89-92 Reviewed by O'Callaghan, Claire

Call for Articles: Brontë Studies Special Issue

From Haworth to Eternity: Adapting the Brontës on Stage, Screen and Beyond
pp. 93-94

To Be Forever Known: The Brontës and Poetry
pp. 95-96