"Haworth, forever tied to the Brontë sisters, inspired seminal novels like Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The village’s cobbled streets preserve its 19th-century grace while its stone-built houses, often constructed from locally quarried gritstone, give the buildings their distinct earthy hue," writes Love Exploring, which placed Haworth at number five on its list of England's prettiest villages."The neighbouring South Pennine moors – central to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – feature wild moors, which in summer are painted purple and green by blooming heather and bilberry."The Brontës are the world's most famous literary family and Haworth Parsonage was their home from 1820 to 1861. Charlotte, Emily and Anne were the authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. The museum holds the world's largest collection of original Brontë items, including furniture, books, paintings and clothes.Haworth's traffic-free high street is glorious, laid with setts and curling down the hill from the church to central park, with the moors rising behind the sandstone houses on the other side of the Worth ValleyThere's surely no more romantic way to travel the moorland of Brontë Country than in a steam-drawn carriage. The railway has strong cultural links too — the beautiful Oakworth Station appeared in the 1970 children's classic The Railway Children.Haworth is surrounded by the moors, making it a great place for walks, with trails leading through landscapes that inspired some of the greatest works in English literature. The most popular walk is to the Brontë Waterfall, easily reached from Penistone Hill country park. It is mainly flat with fantastic views of the moors.Above Haworth, a little way up the Brontë Way from the waterfall, stands the desolate ruin of an old farmhouse. A plaque was placed here by the Brontë Society in 1964, musing that the moors here may have been in Emily Brontë's mind when she chose a location for Wuthering Heights.Haworth is a hub of unique independent shops, from art to clothes, jewellery to fine gifts, fancy toiletries, books and homewares . Its main street is made up of immaculately kept old-fashioned shop fronts and welcoming shopkeepers. Visit BradfordHaworth also has a great pub scene serving traditional Yorkshire ales. Some of the old pubs like the Black Bull are believed to be haunted by Branwell, the only brother of the Brontë sisters and a family black sheep. (Milo Boyd)
Dying for You” by Charli XCX“Charli XCX knows pop music. As one of its hardest-working pioneers, she can alchemize a hook out of any emotion—a skill she wields to great effect on her companion album for Emerald Fennell’s cinematic adaptation of Wuthering Heights. On ‘Dying for You,’ she clearly understood her assignment, deploying frenzied strings and a bombastic chorus to capture the headlong rush of Cathy and Heathcliff’s onscreen relationship. It also wouldn’t sound out of place on The CW’s Gossip Girl, which makes it a perfect soundtrack song.”—Daniel Taroy, director, social and video
The origin of it all is a question: "You, who are so feminist, how is it that you like Jane Austen or the Brontës?" they told her. "Precisely because of that!" Pujals replies. "There was a need to explain that behind the image of teacups there is a lot of feminist activism". "We have talked about economics, class struggle, the position of women, very serious things and with rigor, but adapted to the millennial and Z generations," adds Freixenet. After all, "Jane Austen invented the "ghosting" and Anne Brontë warned of the red flags of toxic masculinity, as we learned on Wednesday, who cited Rosalía and the Starks.The last chapter is an hour and a half of juice about the life and work of the youngest of the Brontë sisters and her "moralistic and raw" Agnes Grey. For Pujals, it is "a great guide to navigating your thirties; there are phrases that seem to be taken from Substack, and as a good millennial, she clearly has imposter syndrome." Despite the literary quality of the work, however, she is not the most popular author. It turns out that it was the elder sister, Charlotte ("Jane Eyre), the last of the Brontës to die, who blurred Anne's image as simply "pious and bland" and curbed the dissemination of her work, especially that inspired by her alcoholic brother. "She was the sister with more class consciousness, the most radical," they argue. And that is why she is chosen to close the podcast, which ended with the same phrase as Agnes Grey": "I feel like I've talked enough." (Laura Serra)
A first edition of Wuthering Heights together with Agnes Grey has sold at Christie’s London for £1,206,500 in its live The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures auction setting a new world auction record by Emily Brontë.The set is one of the finest examples in private hands, and no textually complete copy has appeared at auction in publisher’s cloth since 1908. It survives in its original 1847 publisher’s cloth binding and retains the distinctive textual and printing irregularities of the first edition. It is also the highest price ever achieved for 19th century literature and for any printed book by a woman.Only 250 copies of the first edition of Wuthering Heights were printed and examples in their original full-cloth binding are scarce with only five other examples known (The Blavatnik-Honresfield copy at Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; University of Oxford; British Library; Charlotte Brontë's annotated copy with pages missing sold at Christie’s New York in 2009; and Anne Brontë's annotated copy at Princeton University Library).This copy bound in diagonally ribbed green-grey cloth with floral patterns and arabesques stamped on the cover has been kept in the same historic house library in England since just after its publication in 1847.
‘The Brontës’ by Juliet Barker (1994)A giant, door stopping account of an entire literary family, Barker’s book is a monumental achievement. But it is also riveting and tragic, telling of the passions, failures, and early deaths of the four Brontë siblings, with a specific focus on Emily and Charlotte, the authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
7 "Wuthering Heights" by Kate BushInspired by 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily BrontëEmily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" follows the turbulent romance between the orphan Heathcliff and the affluent Catherine Earnshaw. Having been adopted by the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff develops a close bond with Catherine — only to have his heart broken when she marries the wealthy Edgar Linton. Years later, Heathcliff returns to society, this time as a man of status and eager to exact revenge.Kate Bush puts the novel to music with "Wuthering Heights," written from Catherine's perspective after her death. From direct references to the Yorkshire moors — "Out on the wily, windy moors" — to self-confessional lyrics reflecting the couple's passionate yet emotionally draining romance, "Wuthering Heights" reflects the same volatile nature of Brontë's seminal work. (Dyah Ayu Larasati)
Queen Camilla has accepted an invitation to become Royal Patron of a museum and educational centre at the location where the Brontë sisters were born.The Queen officially opened The Brontë Birthplace in Thornton, Bradford, in May 2025 after it was opened to the public for the first time in its 200-year history following a fundraising campaign.Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, as well as brother Branwell, were all born in the house on Market Street, now under public ownership, between 1816 and 1820.Cathy Boyden, chair of the Brontë Birthplace, said: "Her Majesty's patronage is a wonderful endorsement of what has been achieved so far and gives us great encouragement as we look to the future."Boyden added: "Our first year has been a remarkable journey, made possible by the dedication of volunteers, supporters, members, funders and visitors who believed in the vision of bringing this historic building back to life."A spokesperson for the museum, which also offers overnight stays, said since it had opened, it had welcomed "thousands of visitors from across the UK and around the world".The siblings later went on to write poetry and novels, with the women originally writing under pen names.Some of their most famous works include Emily's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.The Brontë Parsonage Museum, based in the house where the sisters grew up after the family moved to Haworth in 1821, is also now a museum.According to a spokesperson for the Royal Family, having a Royal Patron "provides vital publicity for the work of these organisations, and allows their enormous achievements and contributions to society to be recognised and promoted".
In 2021, Sotheby’s in London announced the sale of a precious literary manuscript, feared lost for so long that it had acquired near-legendary status. A notebook into which Emily Brontë copied 31 of her poems had remained where it was last heard of in the 1930s, within the private literary collection formed by a 19th-century Lancashire industrialist, William Law of Honresfield House.As well as containing the only-known manuscript versions of some of Brontë’s most famous lyrics, the notebook bears pencilled annotations made by her elder sister (and posthumous editor) Charlotte, who, when later recalling the fiercely independent, contrarian will behind Brontë’s reserved outward manner, claimed that “an interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world”.Many biographers have welcomed the challenge of standing as “interpreter” to Emily Brontë, but all have had to confront the slight extent of her literary remains. No manuscript or draft material of her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is known to survive. Only a few of her letters and essays have been preserved, while all that is left of her long-running collaboration with her younger sister Anne on the chronicles of their imaginary empire of Gondal are her poems voiced by its impassioned, amoral protagonists.But the American literary scholar Deborah Lutz’s new biography has benefited from the successful fundraising campaign to purchase the “Honresfield Library” for the British nation – including the rediscovered poetry notebook, now preserved in the British Library. Lutz’s insights from accessing this original document, and her expert critical reappraisals of the poems, are among the highlights of this fresh and engaging account of Brontë’s career.The title of This Dark Night, taken from Brontë’s poem opening “The wind I hear it sighing”, announces Lutz’s focus on Brontë as a poet of nocturnal reveries and affinity with nature, who also achieved a sensational innovation in prose with Wuthering Heights, combining a Gothic atmosphere of romance and supernaturalism with grim, confrontational realism in the depiction of madness and violence.While fully honouring Brontë’s genius, Lutz re-examines her domestic and working life with the same human sympathy, and attention to the materiality of 19th-century writing and publication practices, previously displayed in her group biography of the Brontë sisters, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (2015).All the familiar anecdotes are here, with Brontë again seen abandoning teaching opportunities for managing her clergyman father’s household; studying German while baking bread; cauterising her own wound from a dog bite; rescuing her laudanum-addicted brother Branwell after he set fire to his bed, and stoically enduring, aged 30, her own consumptive death agony in 1848.But the standard narrative gains texture from both first-hand and closely researched engagements with the natural phenomena Brontë experienced, in keeping with Lutz’s quotation of Gertrude Stein’s assertion that “anybody is as their land and air is”.A discussion of Brontë’s poetry and artwork inspired by her captive merlin falcon is enlivened by her father’s description of handling a merlin, jotted into his copy of Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds (another Honresfield treasure).The Brontë family vault in St Michael and All Angels, Haworth, with its frequently necessitated reopenings, becomes a powerful motif in Lutz’s explorations of how Brontë’s preoccupations with mortality and decay grew out of her awareness of the Haworth gravediggers’ activities, and of the corpse-preserving properties of the peat bogs on the Yorkshire moors.Lutz’s project of reconstructing Brontë’s lived experience succeeds best when grounded in direct personal observations of place, or in close readings of extant literary manuscripts and other written records. Less convincing are some speculative commentaries on topics including Brontë’s sexuality, and her process of composing Wuthering Heights, where evidence is sometimes lacking even for conjecture (whether by Lutz, or by earlier scholars whose work she cites).At the same time, important contexts with relevance to Brontë’s geographical and social influences are left unexplored. Considerations of what her father’s Irish heritage might have meant to her, or of how the Romantic-period Methodist movement influenced both her parents’ Anglicanism, and her own unorthodox religious and aesthetic sensibilities, are in particular only fleetingly touched upon.In assessing Brontë’s personality, Lutz wisely avoids any anachronistic, pathologising labelling of her characteristics and behaviours. She also holds back, however, from sustained engagement with the personal, post-Romantic philosophy of individualism that drove Brontë’s struggle for authentic self-determination (and which anticipated aspects of 20th-century existentialism).Ultimately, in This Dark Night, Brontë the woman again resists definition, remaining in somewhat indistinct focus amid an accumulation of social-historical detail. Nevertheless, in her vivid communication of her physical encounters with Brontë’s art and craft in the archives, and her sensitive new readings of familiar texts, Lutz achieves a worthy celebration of the unique, uncompromising author who proclaimed “No coward soul is mine”, and became the creator of Heathcliff. (Jenny McAuley)
Christie’s June 30 Exceptional Sale in London offers many fine lots, among them, a bespoke cigar humidor of Cuban amboya gifted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill during the war ($25,000-$40,000); a sabre-toothed tiger skull discovered in a Pleistoscene sinkhole in Florida in 2008 ($1,000,000-$1,500,000); and by no means least, a rare first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, published, fascinatingly, as a three-volume set, the first two of which are devoted to that novel, the third of which is her sister Anne’s novel, Agnes Grey. Pictured top, a portrait of the author of Wuthering Heights at about twenty-five, painted by her brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë.The three volume set carries carry a pre-sale estimate range of £400,000-£600,000 ($529,600-$794,220), but for a host of reasons, as the hammer strikes Christie’s lectern sometime after 4:30 British Summer Time (11:30 Eastern) on June 30, the effervescent speculation in the press is that this particular first edition will run higher than that. Some of the more breathless estimates bandied about in the last weeks range up into seven figures.Whatever number the hammer price attains, the intensity of interest that this lot generates is deep and longstanding. Working from the inside of these volumes out to their remarkably well-preserved cloth bindings – more on which, below – the first, main element of value is that it’s Emily Brontë’s enduring and revolutionary literary masterpiece at issue.The significance of her achievement within English and global literature is difficult to overstate. Of the three sisters, Sister Emily’s exquisitely modern gift to literature and to us – via her characters Catherine and Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton families – was to show that we are all conflicted, riven, subject to great swings of emotion and roundly challenged by simply living out our lives in a largely stormy world, whatever quotient of that may be of our own manufacture.Emily Brontë’s telling of this narrative premise was, also, far ahead of its time, unadorned, stripped bare, always in immediate reach of the brutal facts of her characters’ relations and complications with each other. The very dialogue she gives them cuts to the point of those many conflicts – it’s all fire and motion, there’s virtually no digressive froth to the narrative. Neither Emily Brontë nor her famous characters waste a minute outside their conflicts. They lived them. (Guy Martin)
Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Robert Fuest, 1970)Wuthering Heights has gone through many cinematic adaptations, none of which have fully captured the essence of the novel, but the 1970 version directed by Robert Fuest is by far the most dull. It’s a major issue when a film based on one of the subversive, heartbreaking psychological romantic dramas of all time is given a G-rating, as Furst’s Wuthering Heights is afraid to have any edge.By sanding off the film from anything deeper, Timothy Dalton’s Heathcliff seems to be just a tragic figure and a failed romantic lead, and not the abusive, cruel character that emerges in the novel. Wuthering Heights is a complex story of race, class, status, and social hierarchies, and to remove the obsessive emotions from Heathcliff’s fixation on Catherine Earnshaw completely misses the point of what Emily Brontë was trying to say with her only novel. (Liam Gaughan)
There is a long tradition of romantic heroes who are difficult, cold, or cruel—Edward Rochester, Heathcliff, half a century of brooding figures on book covers with artfully unbuttoned shirts—and most of them do not change at all. Rochester is reshaped by circumstance; Heathcliff is consumed by it. What separates Darcy from the parade that followed him is that his arc is genuinely moral, not merely emotional. He is not softened by love. He is corrected by it, and he chooses to be.
When Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1847, several critics used the word “strange.” As the New York Times’ B.D. McClay points out, one review simply began, “This is a strange book,” while others described the novel as “strangely original” and “a strange, inartistic story.”“Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it,” another observed. “We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them that they never have read anything like it before.”The novel’s first edition was divided into two volumes, released alongside a third volume containing Agnes Grey, a novel by Emily’s younger sister, Anne. Each one was covered with green-grey cloth, with arabesques and floral patterns decorating the cover. The siblings published under the pseudonyms Ellis and Acton Bell.Of the estimated 250 copies printed, only a few complete copies survive with their full-cloth binding intact. On June 30, Christie’s will sell the first edition’s three volumes in one lot at an auction in London, where the collection is expected to go for between $540,000 and $800,000.“The last time one appeared at auction was in 1908, so no collector alive has had a chance to acquire one,” Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, tells the Art Newspaper’s Maev Kennedy. “Private and public collectors all over the world will want this book.”When Emily and Anne saw the printed editions, they realized that the books contained a numbllings of “Agnes Grey” (“Anges Grey”) and three misspellings of “Heights” (“Heer of errors. Some pages were marked with the wrong numbers, while others contained incorrect or missing punctuation. Perhaps the most egregious mistakes were six misspeghts”).In letters written in the weeks after publication, their sister Charlotte complained that the volumes were full of “errors of the press” that she described as “mortifying.” Writing under the pseudonym Currer Bell, Charlotte had published her own debut novel, Jane Eyre, earlier the same year, and it had been an immediate success. She was deeply protective of her younger sisters, and she was disappointed that their publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, had allowed so many mistakes to make it to press. “If Mr. Newby always does business in this way,” she wrote, “few authors would like to have him for their publisher a second time.”Newby hoped to capitalize on the popularity of Jane Eyre, but Wuthering Heights, which explored darker themes, didn’t enjoy the same level of success. Readers were “shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity and the most diabolical hate and vengeance,” according to Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper. North American Review criticized the novel, writing that “Nightmares and dreams, through which devils dance and wolves howl, make bad novels.”Wuthering Heights follows Catherine Earnshaw, a young girl who lives with her family in northern England, and Heathcliff, an orphan who grows up alongside them. The pair forms an inextricable bond that breeds misery across two generations. The story is set against the dramatic, untamed moors of Yorkshire—which is also where the Brontë siblings grew up. [...]Emily didn’t live to see her novel become so beloved, admired by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf. “The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries,” Woolf wrote in 1925. “She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.” The novel has inspired art, music and film, in addition to literature.“It remains a work that artists return to again and again because of its emotional force, its atmosphere and its psychological intensity,” Wiltshire tells the Associated Press’ Jill Lawless.Few surviving first-edition copies still have their original binding. Wiltshire has only been able to track down five others: Three are in the university libraries of Leeds, Oxford and Princeton universities, according to a statement, while the fourth is housed at the British Library in London. The fifth, which contains Charlotte’s annotations, is missing several pages, and it sold for $86,500 in 2009. (Ellen Wexler)
largely inspired by the wild beauty and dramatic landscapes of Top Withens and the Yorkshire moors that the Brontës capture in their work. (Laura Reid)
A rare first-edition copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, complete with its original spelling errors, is poised to go under the hammer for the first time in over a century. The auction comes as the tragic, tempestuous romance continues to captivate new audiences, fueled by a recent big-screen adaptation.Christie’s auction house announced Monday that this particular volume is the first copy of the novel in its publisher’s original cloth binding to be offered at auction since 1908.Only about 250 first editions were initially printed, and this specific book has remained in a private library since shortly after its publication in 1847.Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, underscored the extreme rarity of such an item. "The vast majority of surviving copies were rebound for collectors or libraries, meaning original cloth examples are now extremely scarce," he stated.Being sold along with a copy of sister Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, it’s expected to sell for between 400,000 pounds and 600,000 pounds ($540,000 and $800,000) at a June 30 auction in London. Both books carry the male pen names the sisters adopted to get published: Ellis Bell for Emily and Acton Bell for Anne.Wuthering Heights was rushed to publication after the success of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and the first edition is notorious for its typographical errors including, Wiltshire noted, the occasional misspelling of the word “heights.”Emerald Fennell ’s recent movie with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as mismatched pair Cathy and Heathcliff is the latest work to be inspired by — and take liberties with — Brontë’s brooding, Gothic tale.The novel shocked some critics when it was published, with one in 1848 decrying its “vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”Since then, Wiltshire said, it has “moved beyond literature to become a cultural touchstone,” inspiring art, music — notably Kate Bush’s pop-operatic 1978 song — and multiple film adaptations.“It remains a work that artists return to again and again because of its emotional force, its atmosphere, and its psychological intensity, ensuring its place not only in literary history but in wider cultural imagination,” Wiltshire said. (Jill Lawless)
%20(1).v1.jpg)
Christie's30 JUN 4:30PM BST | Live auction 24521Lot 35Property from a Private Charitable TrustEstimateGBP 400,000 – GBP 600,000A truly exceptional first edition of Wuthering Heights in the original cloth binding. Preserved within the same historic house library since shortly after its publication in 1847, it is perhaps the finest example remaining in private hands of a masterpiece of English literature. No textually complete copy has appeared at auction in the publisher’s cloth binding since 1908.Due in part to its distinctive landscape and the wild intensity of its characters, Wuthering Heights ‘has emerged as one of those rare texts, like Frankenstein and Dracula, which has transcended its literary origin to become part of the lexicon of popular culture – the subject of film, song and even comedy. At the same time it has become one of the most written about novels in the language, to the point where the novel’s critical history reads like the history of criticism itself’ (Nestor). Its strangeness troubled early reviewers, especially in light of Charlotte Brontë’s more acceptable Jane Eyre, but its status as one of the great novels in English continues to grow. To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it was ‘a fiend of a book – an incredible monster’, and to Virginia Woolf it was the result of a ‘gigantic ambition’: to look out ‘upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and […] unite it in a book’.Although both Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were written and accepted for publication before Charlotte had completed Jane Eyre, it was the latter work which was published first. The immediate and enormous success of Jane Eyre prompted Thomas Cautley Newby to bring forward the release of the present works in order to capitalise on the phenomenon. Perhaps as a result of this hastiness, Charlotte judged that ‘the books are not well got up – they abound in errors of the press.’ She subsequently added that ‘the orthography and punctuation of the books are mortifying to a degree: almost all the errors that were corrected in the proof-sheets appear intact in what should have been the fair copies’. The present set contains the following errors and issue points as noted by Smith: vol. I has p.342 numbered ‘242’; vol. II has the low comma after PUBLISHER on the title, the full stop missing after VOL. in B1, p.382 numbered ‘282’, the headline HEGHTS on pp.71, 163, and 265; vol. III has the full stop missing after VOL. in C1, the headline AGNES GREY on pp.49, 96, 183, 204, 309 and 326, and p.313 numbered ‘213’.The exact number of copies printed is unknown, but it was suggested by Charlotte that the run was limited to just 250. Of these, examples preserved in any form of publisher’s binding are exceedingly scarce, with those in full cloth being the rarest of all. Smith records five variant publisher’s bindings for the first edition, including examples in boards backed with cloth which ‘were intended for the circulating libraries. Such copies, though quite rare, are more commonly found than copies bound in cloth’. Variants of full-cloth bindings are distinguished by differences in colour, in the central stamps on their covers, in the number of blind-stamped lines in their borders, in the direction of the diagonal ribbing in the cloth, and in the lettering stamped in gilt upon the spine. The example which was given from the Blavatnik-Honresfield Library to the Brotherton Library in 2022 added a further variant in maroon cloth, and the present copy is slightly different again. It shares many of the common characteristics of other variants, including pale yellow endpapers, a four-line border, diamond-shaped and plain-ruled bands on the spine, and the arrangement of the gilt titles, and is perhaps closest to Smith’s variant D, having the publisher’s details at the foot of each spine. It differs in the shape of the central blind-stamped arabesque, the presence of decorative blind-stamped corners, the colour of the cloth, and in the absence of a full stop after the volume number on the spines.We are aware of only five other examples of the first edition preserved in any variant of the publisher’s full-cloth binding: (1) The Blavatnik-Honresfield copy, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; (2) Weston Library, University of Oxford; (3) Ashley 2465, British Library; (4) Charlotte Brontë's annotated copy, sold Christie’s New York, 4 December 2009, lot 27 [lacking titles and 6 pages of text]; (5) Anne Brontë's annotated copy, Princeton University Library [see Parish pp.85-87].References: Parrish, Victorian Lady Novelists pp.85-87; Sadleir 350; Smith 3; Wise pp.97-103.3 volumes, 12mo (199 x 122mm). (Short marginal tear in L4 of vol. I, occasional very minor spots or marks, lacking the advert leaves R3-4 in vol. III as usual.) Original diagonally-ribbed green-grey cloth, covers with blind-ruled four-line border surrounding blind-stamped floral corners and central arabesque, spines stamped in blind with a band at the head and two at the foot and three diamond-shaped bands in between, lettered in gilt with titles and volume numbers between the first and second diamond bands, and with LONDON / T. C. NEWBY. at the foot, pale yellow endpapers (spines of Wuthering Heights volumes slightly cocked and faded, that of vol. II with vertical crease from textblock bulge and tiny split at upper joint, upper hinge of vol. II and hinges of vol. II cracked but holding, the lower hinge in vol. II revealing binder’s waste from North Ludlow Beamish’s History of the King’s German Legion (London: Thomas and William Boone, 1837; vol. II, p.393), faintly rubbed and marked). Provenance: Lord Harris of Belmont House (George Francis Robert Harris, 3rd Baron Harris GCSI, 1810-1872, who succeeded his father to the barony in 1845; bookplate, contemporary ink shelf numbering on endpapers recording presence of Wuthering Heights volumes on H3 and Agnes Grey on J4) – thence by descent.
Viewing26 Jun 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM27 Jun 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM28 Jun 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM29 Jun 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM30 Jun 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
The Coquette’s Prison: Rosalie Murray And The Failure Of High-society Marriage As A Path To Autonomyby Donny Syofyan, Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Universitas AndalasJurnal Ceteris Paribus, 5(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.25077/jcp.v5i1.60Research on women's agency in Victorian literature typically focuses on the marginalized figure of the governess. At the same time, the upper-class coquette—who appears to wield power—remains overlooked in critical readings as a victim of systemic oppression. This research examines the coquette’s prison in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, specifically analyzing how Rosalie Murray’s pursuit of high-society marriage serves as a mechanism of self-erasure rather than a path to autonomy. The study employs a qualitative approach rooted in feminist literary criticism and historical realism. The data consist of textual evidence from the novel, analyzed through close reading and character-comparative analysis. The research evaluates the transition from pre-marital performative power to post-marital domestic entrapment. The results indicate that Rosalie’s flirtatious artillery provides only a temporary and illusory agency. Upon marrying Sir Thomas Ashby for rank and wealth, she experiences a catastrophic loss of freedom, becoming a prisoner and a slave within the physical and psychological enclosures of Ashby Park. The research concludes that Victorian high-society marriage, when divorced from moral compatibility, leads to psychological petrifaction. Further studies are recommended to employ a digital humanities approach to map motifs of spatial and psychological confinement across the broader canon of the Brontës and to identify systemic patterns of gender inequality.
Ouana Alassane Sekongo, University Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d’IvoireRevue des Arts, Linguistique, Littérature & Civilisations, Vol 2, Mars 2026In nineteenth-century England, Victorianism was an ideology based on the principle that men are more rational than women. As such, it divided the society into two distinct spheres, which were the private sphere for women and the public sphere for men. This paper aims to highlight that Brontë coins the character Jane, an educated and defiant girl who subverts these social norms and works hard to enter the public space just as men. In addition to textual evidence, the article relies on Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of deconstructing gender norms in order to demonstrate how Brontë’s novel questions the Victorian gender system and opens doors for women to express themselves and reveal their talents. The study concludes that after defying the ideology of Victorianism, Jane has not only got access to formal education, but also worked in the public sphere as a teacher. She, therefore, stands as a resilient and an emergent girl, serving as a role model for 21st century women.
Adaptations have never been obligated to reproduce their sources with documentary precision and to some, it is entirely possible to enjoy a film that misreads its literary predecessor. As I’ve stated before in a review on Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein (2025), the question is not simply whether the film works, but what it works as. When a reinterpretation has stripped away major elements that give the classic novel its disturbing force, what remains may still function as an engaging piece of cinema, but only that. In my opinion, Fennell’s film succeeds in theatres, but not on the terms that matter most, and certainly not as Wuthering Heights. (Lily Braumberger)
Wuthering Heights (2026). After two movies with no real plot, Emerald Fennell’s next victim was Emily Brontë’s classic. She turned the gothic novel about class and racism into smutty fanfic. Letterboxd user Allian complained: “Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.” RIP Margot Robbie’s Catherine, you would have loved Fifty Shades of Grey. (Tanya Syed)
Emerald Fennell directs this loose adaptation of the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Catherine in the Yorkshire moors, who are bonded by the shared trauma of abuse by her father (an excellent Martin Clunes). But when she is swept up into the world of a wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Catherine is torn between the desire for Heathcliff and the chance of stability and wealth. It’s a bold film that divided critics — now it’s your chance to decide from the comfort of your sofa. (Jake Helm and Tim Glanfield)
Today Cox will even go “full Dundee” on a film he hasn’t even seen. I know Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon’s 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights is a favourite of his and wondered what he made of the new one starring Margot Robbie.“ ‘Keith Cliff! It’s me, Cathy!’ ” he declaims suddenly in a cod Australian accent (Robbie was once in the Australian soap Neighbours). “‘How ya doing, Keith? Awright?’ ‘Yeah, I’m awright!’ ”Cox enjoys a hearty chuckle before composing himself.“Margot Robbie is far too beautiful for that role. I mean, I think there should be something more of the Gypsy about her but it’s wrong of me to judge. It may be a brilliant film.” (Michael Odell)
The radical new version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights uses the real moors of North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, while surprisingly also including a little glimpse of Kent, too. Now find out exactly where.
However, the final piece of the puzzle comes from far off from New York. Part of it came from Michigan as Smith, on the track in one night, yearned for a call from her then-boyfriend but soon-to-be husband, Fred Smith, who was on tour at the time. But really, her masterclass in yearning came from years before and miles away, rooting all the way back to Haworth in Yorkshire, and to Brontë country.The Brontë sisters, and in particular, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, were by no means a new reference to her in the late 1970s. Instead, this was a book she’d loved since being a kid, but had come to understand better and better with each re-read as she grew up. By 1977, when she was now in her 30s and intensely in love with the man she’d marry, the adoration and emotion written by Brontë in that book took on new life. She was yearning for a man who was far away, just as Cathy and Heathcliff spent a lifetime yearning for one another.With the chorus of a love song on her hands, Wuthering Heights came to mind as the ultimate Patti Smith way to finish it off, allowing her to bring in poetry and literary reference. The result was a huge hit, giving Smith her first commercial smash and Springsteen another victory under his belt.In 2014, Smith wrote a foreword for a new version of the book, musing, “In the writing of Wuthering Heights, she did not give what she wanted; she gave what she had”. It seemed to be the case for her song, too, as her more impassioned tune came together in one night. But her passion is matched by her love for the Brontë’s, as in 2013, she played a concert in the tiny Yorkshire town simply to raise money to keep their home open to the public. (Lucy Harbron)
With a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” now in theaters, interest in Emily Brontë’s iconic novel is once again on the rise. But more than 175 years before the story returned to movie screens, one of its earliest printed forms had already quietly found a home in Buffalo.UB’s Rare Books Collection offers an illuminating window into one of fiction’s most enduring stories — and the lengths one woman went to tell it.The collection holds a first British edition of “Wuthering Heights,” the only novel written by Emily Brontë. Published in December 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, the book was issued in three volumes — a common format for British fiction of the period, known as a “triple-decker” novel. While the exact print run of this edition is unknown, it is thought to have been only 250 copies.It is worth noting that “Wuthering Heights” comprises only the first two volumes of the set. The third contains “Agnes Grey,” a novel by Anne Brontë — a reminder that the triple-decker format sometimes bundled works together to meet the required length. (Denise Wolfe)
Mr Rochester and Governess Jane Eyre take the on the polygraph lie detector test in this social media parody.´
Jane Eyre was chosen as the best novel to read on a rainy day, as it is recalled in Parade.
Just in time for wedding season to kick off in earnest, The Drama is released in cinemas today. It joins a formidable canon of disastrous wedding stories stretching back to Victorian marriage novels (remember how Jane Eyre’s nuptials are rudely interrupted by the revelation that Mr Rochester is already married?), via 1930s Hollywood screwballs (there’s a beautiful shot of Claudette Colbert fleeing the altar in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, yards of tulle streaming out behind her). (Susie Goldsbrough)
The book I could never read againJane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Glad to have met Jane, but I seem to remember the book was quite whingey (forgive me, Brontë congregationalists). It led me to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which I gladly return to.
Which Brontë sister wrote the novel Agnes Grey?
The brooding atmosphere at Somersby rectory recalls that of the Brontës’ Haworth parsonage, eighty miles due north, and headed by another weapon-wielding, Cambridge-educated clergyman. Like the Brontës, the Tennysons shunned outside company and clung together in what sounds like intense trauma bonding. (Kathryn Hughes)
If you're interested in looking at how a bunch of TikTokers film in Haworth and Bronté country, and you enjoy second-hand cringe, check this post.
7 The Professor (written 1846; published 1857) by Charlotte BrontëThis was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed. It was rejected by publishers nine times. Written in the voice of a male narrator, William Crimsworth, it offers a downbeat story of everyday middle-class striving as the protagonist travels to Brussels to establish his career as a teacher. But the last publisher to see it thought it showed promise, despite being too short and insufficiently “striking and exciting”. Had the author anything else to offer? Luckily, Jane Eyre – which amply supplied the earlier book’s deficiencies – was already in train and was soon accepted with alacrity. Although The Professor remained unpublished in Charlotte’s lifetime, she continued to believe that it was “as good as I can write”; its subtly ironised male voice reveals her underlying literary sophistication.6 Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne BrontëIn 1846, the three Brontë sisters had – at their own expense – published a joint poetry collection under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It sold just two copies. Realising that fiction was more saleable, they decided that each should write a novel under the same pen names. While Charlotte toiled over The Professor, the youngest sister, Anne, was working on Agnes Grey. It also sought to portray everyday life, but the result has a more authentic ring since she drew so directly on her personal experience working as a governess in well-to-do families. The first-person heroine is initially excited at the thought of earning her own living. But she finds herself underpaid and unappreciated by the snooty parents, while her tantrum-prone charges include a vile little boy who likes pulling the legs off baby sparrows. Had it not been overshadowed by Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights when it came out in 1847, it might perhaps have caused more of a stir as a Nanny Diaries-style exposé.5 Shirley (1849) by Charlotte BrontëThis flawed follow-up to Jane Eyre was written under trying circumstances. Charlotte’s brother Branwell and both her sisters sickened and died in quick succession during the writing of it, so it was abandoned for a while before being resumed by the bereaved author. That’s not, however, the only reason why this “condition of England” novel – which announces itself on page one as “something unromantic as Monday morning” – has failed to entrance readers as much as its predecessor Jane Eyre. Its third-person narrative does not focus on a single hero or heroine and as a result the book feels comparatively diffuse, though Charlotte herself might have defended it on the grounds that real life is diffuse. Set during the Luddite riots of 1811-12, it explores social unrest, capitalism and the “woman question”. Because of her proto-feminism, Charlotte’s ideological position has often been called progressive, yet she was in fact a political conservative.4 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)In feminist terms, Anne’s second novel is the most radical and socially engaged of all the sisters’ books. The eponymous tenant, Helen Huntingdon, is hiding out at Wildfell Hall with her young son after leaving her abusive husband. At the time, unequal marriage laws meant that it was very hard for a woman to get a divorce at all and nigh impossible for her to get custody of her children. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte had made Mr Rochester a sexy Byronic rake; Anne, in reply, exposed the toxic masculinity behind that character type. Despite the novel’s strong Christian message, its unvarnished portrayal of addiction and adultery shocked Victorian readers more than any of the other Brontë books. More interested in the real than the ideal, Anne was drawing on her experience as a witness to Branwell’s chaotic behaviour.3 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)The first of the Brontë novels to be published, Charlotte’s melodramatic tale of the poor plain governess and the madwoman in the attic became a bestseller on first publication. Its genius, in fact, lies less in the plot than in what George Eliot’s future partner GH Lewes, who was one of its first reviewers, called its “strange power of subjective representation”. Ditching the distancing device of a male narrator for a female voice proved Charlotte’s creative breakthrough: it enabled her to inject a then unprecedented first-person intensity into the novel form. However, Jane Eyre proved controversial at the time among sexist critics. Correctly surmising that the author behind “Currer Bell” was a woman, they decried the book as “coarse” and the heroine as too assertive for a female.2 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)It is mind-boggling to think that Wuthering Heights was written alongside The Professor and Agnes Grey, quite literally on the same dining room table in Haworth Parsonage at which all three sisters sat together working on their first novels. Emily’s masterpiece was called “a strange book baffling all regular criticism” on publication; it remains enigmatic, completely sui-generis and totally outside the norms of Victorian fiction. Justly regarded as one of the greatest works in the western canon, it’s far from the cliched love story it later became in popular culture. Though grisly with violence, it’s oddly devoid of sex. The writing is astonishing: scarcely any adjectives and not a purple passage in sight. The Victorian poet Swinburne was right to compare it to Greek tragedy.1 Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853)Less famous than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, Villette is Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece and deserves to be better known. Here, she goes back to the Brussels material that she had already used at a tangent in The Professor – and which was rooted in her real-life experience of studying and teaching there in 1842-4. Reworking those memories from a first-person female perspective, she now incorporated her own secret into the story: the unrequited love she had felt for her Belgian writing tutor Constantin Heger. Yet the result is anything but naïve autobiography. Instead, it shows Charlotte push the classic realist Victorian novel in new, artistically experimental directions. The unreliable narrator, Lucy Snowe, has intimacy issues and sets a challenge for the reader. Long before Freud, Charlotte was exploring questions about repression and the unconscious in a complex, self-knowing psychological novel whose generic status hovers ambiguously between naturalism, gothic and autofiction. The extent to which Villette mined and refracted her own inner life was only discovered posthumously by her biographers.
Modern artists like Manet, who portrayed purely modern scenes without conforming to the “grain,” provoked viewership fury. French critic of the time, Émile Zola, argued in an essay titled “Édouard Manet”, originally published in 1867, that public outrage simply reveals how tightly audiences cling to expectations of what art ought to resemble. The public, up until this point, had maintained neoclassical values in art: to flatter, narrate, and moralize. Manet refused all three of those familiar imperatives by producing art that felt uncomfortable and bluntly new — a choice that is now heavily applauded. True art, a point Zola returns to time and time again, does not come from a desire to conform to norms or follow the “grain” but from individual temperament and personal vision.Nearly two centuries later and across the Atlantic, my girlfriends and I visited the Cineplex on Rue Sainte Catherine to watch Emerald Fennell’s 2026 “Galentines” adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”. The reaction to the film was generally varied. Some praised it, while lovers of the novel jumped to Twitter and Reddit to vent their anger over yet another inaccurate adaptation. To give credit to these bibliophiles, Fennell abandons many of the themes that make this story so impactful by portraying a narrative based on her initial impression of the book as a 14-year-old girl. In depicting this youthful interpretation, Fennell centres the film around a glorified toxic romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. Frustrated viewers were appalled at Fennell’s tone-deafness in foregrounding obsessive love while sidestepping and softening the harsher themes of the novel, particularly those pertaining to Heathcliff’s racial marginalization and the systemic class violence in the setting.In reading tweets alleging the film’s negligence, just as I did in December when choosing my winter semester electives, I turned to modern art history. Two hundred years apart, both Manet and Fennell have something in common: they’ve both committed to their personal visions and rejected traditional expectations. Manet counters aesthetic norms and produces art that depicts the tensions of modern life in a way that is truthful to himself. Similarly, Fennell abandons the expectation that adaptations be reflective of their source material to create a film rooted in her own experience, a decision Zola might have applauded. Whether or not you enjoy or even “agree with” either of these artist’s work, they both made the choice to commit to their personal truths and abandon external expectations. In practicing artistic autonomy, they choose their own temperament as an anchor in their work.If these two artists are correct and individual temperament is the “True North” of art, it leads us to question: are there traditions or expectations that artists must uphold, or is personal vision all that truly matters? Between these contexts, “tradition” is understood very differently. For Manet, “traditions” are expectations set by the Art Academy surrounding what defines academically valid (and objectively good) art. For Fennell, “tradition” underlines the source material from which she draws her film: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Both these artists abandon tradition in their works, making audiences question: where is the line drawn between artistic autonomy and deviations from tradition?In deviating from tradition, one can question the difference between innovation and avoidance.If artists do have a responsibility to uphold a certain tradition, both Manet and Fennell have failed to do so. Yet we celebrate Manet as a transformative turning point in modern art history. Why? In my opinion, it is because Manet’s work denies the comfort of ignorance and bluntly presents his audiences with uncomfortable social realities, forcing them to analyze their own lives through his work. In contrast, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights does exactly the opposite. While she also deviates from “tradition”, she does so by refusing to inherit the uncomfortable and darker themes of the novel. She allows her audiences to find comfort in the avoidance of difficult themes surrounding the intersection of violence, race, and class. If Manet makes audiences question how closely art should adhere to academic standards, Fennell forces them to question how much personal vision we are willing to accept in interpretations of classic narratives.In some cases, we respond well to moving away from tradition when artists depict their personal visions because it feels honest and revealing, confronting you with art rooted in social reality. This is what Manet did in pulling at the seams of academic art to reveal true modern life. On the other side of the coin, moving away from tradition can feel dishonest if viewers don’t feel it is rooted in these social truths — the very social truths that made Emily Brontë’s novel so impactful in the first place.Now, as I wrap up this article in my student apartment a few streets from campus, I have to conclude that this argument is somewhat of an open-ended question. I think that is because there is no universal line that separates avoidance from innovation in art. That line is unstable by design, and artists have always toed it by pushing their own personal vision forward while balancing a respect for tradition. Perhaps this tension is what produces great art. That being said, in my art history class, we are still marveling at Manet’s impact on the evolution of modern art two centuries later. But as I left the Cineplex on Sainte Catherine after seeing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, I got the impression that this particular adaptation might not make it onto the syllabus of a film class in another two hundred years. (Lyla Burt)
Contemporary psychology doesn’t view their relationships as “tragic lovers divided by social class and circumstance.” Instead, people agree that this story is about two deeply wounded people who cannot escape each other’s influence.Behind the perfect visuals and stunning costumes, it’s still possible to get the idea that this movie is a “psychological horror,” as often described on Reddit. Catherine, Heathcliff, and nearly every supporting character become trapped in a cycle of resentment and revenge.
Wuthering HeightsWe went to see Wuthering Heights within the last two weeks, and we totally loved it. I know that a lot of people felt really mixed about it, but we loved it, and so I took the opportunity to see if she might be into listening to Jane Eyre on Audible. I thought she might want to hear what another Brontë sister was writing, but I got sort of a mixed reply on it. We listened to her for a little bit, but I’m still trying. (Padma Lakshmi as told to Marah Eakin)
I struggled to write a film review of “Wuthering Heights” because, to be honest, there’s not that much to say about the film itself. We were told ahead of time in no uncertain terms that the film would be an unfaithful adaptation of the beloved novel by Emily Brontë, and it was. We were promised a jaw-dropping collection of costumes and sets, and we got it. We were given a glimpse of Charlie XCX’s pretty-good soundtrack, and the extended music in the film was exactly what it sounded like in the promotional materials. We could see in advance trailers that this was going to be a highly sexualized and romanticized retelling of the novel, and boy was it ever. They told us exactly what kind of film they were making, and then they released exactly that film. (...)Anyone who has darkened the door of a major bookstore in the last 15 years knows that “romantasy” novels have exploded in popularity. In the theater, watching “Wuthering Heights” (2026), Watching it, I half expected a ticker to crawl across the screen reading: THIS ONE’S FOR THE BOOKTOK GIRLIES. “Wuthering Heights” (2026) is not a retelling of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It’s an adaptation of the original source material into a mass-market romantasy smut fable that would do numbers at airport bookstalls. (Margaret Handel)
We are in a strange, hybrid place, where the tropes of Victorian England and the Bronte oeuvre – sweeping dark moorlands, tight corseted dresses, the ubiquity of death, the class system and fancy manor houses – are chopped up, set to electronic music, soaked in sickly colours and Tiktok-ified so that while you can’t look away, you wish you could.I winced in the hanging scene – how could you not? But mostly I winced at the non-subtlety of the thematic set-up. We get it, we get it! Sex and death are fatefully intertwined!Cathy and Heathcliff, with their mutual obsession, will drive themselves to oblivion.But just in case we don’t get it, we are subjected to the post-hanging scene, where the filthy (literally) peasant villagers who have been watching the execution proceed to get all horny with each other.Even a spectating nun is left heavy-breathing, awakened by erotic forces she doesn’t understand. (...)In that way, Wuthering Heights is the perfect movie for the moment – flashy and attention-grabbing, fast-paced, celebrity-driven and fun.As for its confused sexual politics, well, that only makes it more relevant.We live in the age of heterofatalism, where men and women are famously estranged.And Heathcliff and Cathy hate each other as much as they love each other.We live in the age of TLDR – and Wuthering Heights is the filmic embodiment of that acronym.Ultimately, though, who cares?The box office numbers say it all, and that such an acclaimed director would take on this classic tells us everything about its enduring relevance. (Jacqueline Maley)
So, should we be hating it?That depends on what we expect from “Wuthering Heights”. If one views the novel purely as a gothic tragedy grounded in social critique, this adaptation may feel too romanticised. But if one sees Brontë’s work as an exploration of obsessive love as destiny — destructive, consuming, inevitable — then this film arguably captures that spirit in its own way.Perhaps the discomfort surrounding the 2026 version says more about us than it does about the film. We are uneasy with stories that refuse moral clarity. We are suspicious of adaptations that reinterpret rather than replicate. But “Wuthering Heights” has never been comforting. It unsettles, it provokes, and it resists easy categorisation.And maybe that is exactly what this version understands. (Naveen Islam Toree)
The new Wuthering Heights film by Emerald Fennell is putting its windswept moorland setting firmly in the spotlight.From the famous Brontë village of Haworth to the stone-built hills and villages of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, estate agency Charnock Bates says it has seen an uptick in the number of house-hunters enquiring about homes in the area.Charnock Bates has rounded up eight standout homes on the market, from character cottages and period townhouses, to sizeable family houses and showstopping barn conversions, all with that unmistakable Brontë-country backdrop. (Abigail Kellett)
The screen-to-station effect is also being seen following the recent cinematic release of Wuthering Heights, as audiences drawn to its dramatic landscapes look to experience Yorkshire’s moorland scenery first-hand. Bookings to Settle, the gateway to the Yorkshire moors, rose 52% around release weekend compared to the previous month, as audiences seek out the landscapes associated with Emily Brontë’s classic.Sajjad Motamed, UK country manager at Trainline, said: “Viewers aren’t satisfied just by watching these stories unfold - they’re heading out to experience the settings for themselves. Our data reflects an increasing desire/need to experience locations first-hand.“The figures reflect a wider revival in period and gothic storytelling, with these dramas creating a powerful connection to place. When audiences fall in love with a location on screen, they increasingly want to explore it in real life.“From Bath’s Georgian streets to the Yorkshire moors, many of these destinations are well connected by rail and often just a short walk from the station, making it easier than ever to turn that inspiration into a day trip or weekend escape.” (Grace Piercy)
Miriam Lafuente: ¿Hay mucho de Emily Brontë en las emociones y el paisaje de Cumbres Borrascosas?Patricia García Medina: La Emily seria, antisocial, algo mandona, que no conoce los juegos de cartas que se juegan en las fiestas y que corre en los páramos ingleses donde creció con sus hermanos, crea un mundo que se mimetiza en perfecto equilibrio con estos personajes tan complejos y oscuros, uno de los elementos más atractivos de la novela.Catherine, por ejemplo, nunca consigue deshacerse de su naturaleza pasional, elementalmente idéntica a la de Heathcliff, y tras aceptar su matrimonio con Linton y mudarse a la casa “civilizada”, le es físicamente imposible habitarla y está (sin hacer spoilers) literalmente atada a cumbres borrascosas. (Translation)
El Diario (Spain) rediscovers Haworth as the real place that inspired the novel. El Día (Argentina) returns to the original novel. The Huffington Post remarks that The Professor and Agnes Grey are the only novels by the Brontës without an audiovisual adaptation. Although they could also mention that the only adaptations of Shirley (1922 silent film) and Villette (1970 BBC series) are lost.
‘Cumbres Borrascosas’ de Emerald Fennell no es perfecta, pero es valiente, visualmente deslumbrante y emocionalmente honesta. Es el tipo de adaptación que no busca complacer a todos, sino crear su propia identidad cinematográfica. Y en eso, como en casi todo lo que toca, Fennell vuelve a acertar. (Calopez) (Translation)
See, as adaptations go, this is quite — what is that word — artistic? expressive? inspired? sexually depraved? Perhaps they all fit, and then some. One can see it working as a carnally driven, hard-romance Valentine’s Day release, though only for adults. A Ramazan release doesn’t work at all, even for those who might want to see it. (...)While I am not a fan of deviances from original works, the kind of trimmings and excesses Fennell weaves into this version’s DNA, makes for a beguiling, edgy, restive update. (Mohammad Kamran Jawaid)
Deric Berberabe, Jordan Silverberg for Wuthering Heights - Official Teaser
La nueva Cumbres Borrascosas no podría polarizar más. La crítica la ha tachado de superficial, fría y extravagante. El público, en cambio, ha acudido en masa para pasar el fin de semana de San Valentín sufriendo con los amores de Catherine y Heathcliff, interpretados por Margot Robbie y Jacob Elordi. En redes triunfan los vídeos de los fans recreando el cartel de la película para entregarse a los brazos de Elordi o grabando sus reacciones y sus lágrimas en los cines. Lengüetazos, suspiros y “apología blanca”: así son las reacciones más extremas que ha generado la película. (...)La escritora argentina Mariana Enriquez, autora de obras como Nuestra parte de noche (Anagrama, 2019), se asomó a su perfil de Instagram para dedicar tres elaborados posts en los que iba desmenuzado uno a uno los pecados de la película. “Que tonta esta chica si le quedó este melodrama mal hecho y nada más de su fantasía de origen”, escribía en relación al acercamiento juvenil de Fennell. (Lucas Barquero) (Translation)
Welcome back to our bonus edition of Plot Twist, focusing on history. This month we are pondering the literary kind. The release of a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” has reignited an argument that has been raging since the 1840s: is Emily Brontë’s novel better or worse than “Jane Eyre”, written by her sister Charlotte?The two books have plenty in common: for starters, they both feature headstrong female characters entangled in complicated romances with brooding antiheroes. Yet “Wuthering Heights” is generally considered to be grittier and more complex. When literary critics rank the best books of all time, Emily’s story is often higher up the list than Charlotte’s. (Rachel Lloyd)
Since the film’s racy first trailer dropped in September, literary fans have flocked to message boards and TikTok groups with their thoughts. While some were “open” to Fennell’s hyper-sexualised interpretation, others – including BookTok influencer Kylee Smith – urged her to change the film’s title.“I think this conversation wouldn’t be happening if she just called the movie something else,” Smith, 30, tells The Independent. “I would probably see a movie that had Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in beautiful outfits on the moors.”The Ohio-based creative, who’s been a Wuthering Heights enthusiast since her teens, is one of the book fans who won’t be watching the film.“I have no intention to see it in [cinemas],” she says. “With the casting decisions she’s made, I’m not going to waste my time and spend the money. I’d rather re-read the book – which is what I’m doing.” (Lauren Morris)
Another of these pure (sad) souls argues that not every adaptation of a book is "licit". We guess the judge of what is licit and what is illicit should be the chorus of pure (sad) souls. They know better. Read about this epitome of modesty in Infobae.
In the 179 years since Brontë’s Gothic classic was published, Heathcliff and Cathy (as he calls her), have been resurrected in different forms. While many of the earlier adaptations focused on the social constraints that doomed the couple, contemporary adaptations have moved more toward fetishizing the destructive romance. These six versions (completists can watch many, many more) — spanning the past 85 years — show the wild swings in passion, temperament and power dynamics.
1939: Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Troubled Sophisticates1958: Richard Burton and Rosemary Harris as Histrionic Lovers1967: Ian McShane and Angela Scoular as Social Antipodes1992: Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Ruined Romantics2009: Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley as Toxic Exes2026: Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Shallow Sensualists
Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected anything more from socialite-turned-filmmaker Fennell. She has a directorial track record of superficial films that prefer to shock rather than transport the viewer. In many ways, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is symptomatic of our times – a cold, mean take on true love. This cuts against the grain of Brontë’s original. Even in their nastiest, cruellest moments (of which there are many), the reader is left in no doubt that Cathy and Healthcliff love one another. As Heathcliff tells Cathy after her death:‘Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul.’Fennell has massacred one of literature’s most passionate and tragic love stories. It is a cynical adaptation for our silly times. Watch at your peril. (Ella Whelan in Spiked)
Fennell’s final tableaus in “Wuthering Heights” were artful, leaving the audience with Heathcliff lying nearly on top of Catherine’s limp body. Moments before, she laid in pure white sheets stained with crimson — which resemble a vagina if you're watching astutely— as a continuation of Fennell’s heavy-handed sexual metaphors. Fennell’s commentary on erotic expression and obsession is well done, but her comparisons are almost suffocating. The film itself is an intricate and beautiful work, certainly Fennell’s best. I just wish it had not been “Wuthering Heights.” (Ellie Fivas in The Emory Wheel)
Cabe la posibilidad de que, para aquel espectador que se acerque a este universo por primera vez y sin el bagaje del referente literario, la propuesta de Fennell resulte una experiencia sumamente atractiva, funcionando como puerta de entrada a un clásico que aquí se torna accesible. Sin embargo, para quien acuda buscando la arquitectura completa de la venganza y el eco de ese viento cruel que azota las cumbres, la sensación de vacío parece inevitable. Fennell ha preferido romantizar una trama definida originalmente por su aridez y su violencia moral, simplificando la cronología en favor de una narrativa más convencional y estilizada. Al tomar este camino, se corre el riesgo de olvidar que el verdadero poder de la prosa de Brontë no residía en lo que se podía capturar con la cámara, sino en aquello que era demasiado terrible y salvaje para ser mostrado. (Julia Espinel in 35 milímetros) (Translation)
En definitiva, esta versión de Cumbres Borrascosas se posiciona como uno de los estrenos más destacados de la temporada. Es una invitación a redescubrir un clásico desde una perspectiva audaz, que no teme mostrar la imposibilidad de redención de sus protagonistas y que reafirma por qué la historia de Catherine y Heathcliff sigue siendo un espejo inquietante de la condición humana. (Susana Gutiérrez in El Diario) (Translation)
As a general rule, I don’t like getting this personal in film reviews, but it’s impossible to separate Fennell the person from “Wuthering Heights” the movie. Auteur theory is a double-edged sword, I suppose. It’s great when you have a real vision. It cuts deep when you don’t. Every choice in this movie is the wrong one. And the worst thing of all? It’s not even an interesting failure. It’s boring. And it will be my absolute delight to forget that it exists. (Aly Caviness in Midwest Film Journal)
Beyond the leads, the supporting cast adds unexpected layers of intrigue and amusement. Alison Oliver (another Saltburn alum) is hilarious as Isabella Linton, bringing both wit and agency to a character often sidelined in adaptations. Not enough people are talking about Hong Chau’s resonant performance as Nelly Dean, who is quietly magnetic and grounds the chaos of both households with precision. Shazad Latif’s Edgar Linton is subtle and restrained, a necessary counterpoint to the volatility of Cathy and Heathcliff. Each performance is committed and idiosyncratic, echoing Fennell’s approach to storytelling more broadly.And none of the performances would land without Fennell’s clear vision and her particular brand of fearlessness. “The thing that I’ve learned is really important to me is making everyone feel safe enough to do something bad,” she noted in the same BFI Southbank talk. “So I’m really only interested in something if it’s just on the edge—and sometimes over the edge—of tasteless or silly or overblown.” Fennell is a high-art offshoot of a John Waters ethos. She’s a sick freak, and I like it.Judging from the reviews and think pieces thus far, she’s succeeded on edge-teetering at the very least. Fennell’s daringly indulgent style permeates every frame, and it’s a world worth the time. (Melanie Robinson in Flood Magazine)
When the movie ended, I felt incredibly out of place as I looked around and saw everyone sobbing at the death of Catherine. Because of her insane cruelty throughout the film, I felt so disconnected from her character. If anything, I felt her death was inevitable and, in some ways, deserved. The film had been foreshadowing her death from the beginning, from the blood-red hallway walls of Edgar’s mansion to Catherine’s own red and black dresses. I was surprised her death hadn’t come sooner, and that she didn’t die in some horrific way because of the frequent mention of hanging at the beginning of the film. (Grace Chaves in The Point)
Fennell’s shift to sex reflects other shifts in the novel's moral focus, as many of its underlying moral themes are absent. (John M. Grondelski in The Catholic World Report)
Elordi’s Heathcliff, complete with a roguish ‘80s pirate earring, is more than just a handsome brooder. He carries the weight of a boy who was told he was only a servant, unworthy of the girl who is his entire world. Robbie’s Cathy is a force of nature, luminous and dangerous, torn between the wild freedom Heathcliff represents and the comfort offered by the wealthy Mr. Linton (Shazad Latif). Her inf amous declaration that marrying Heathcliff would “degrade her” lands with the force of a physical blow, setting their destinies in motion. (Preston Barta in Westworld)
GeoTV mentions how Jennifer Aniston has shared on her IG a hilarious 'Friends' scene to review 'Wuthering Heights.' LAD Bible thinks that Jacob Elordi's accent ruins the film. The Guardian shares some of the readers' opinions of the film. The Yorkshireman visits Top Withens. Publishers Weekly comments that book clubs are swooning over Wuthering Heights 2026.
Unless explicitly said
.png)
