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  • S4 E8: With... Rebecca Marks - For the final episode of series 4, Sam and Mia are joined by historian, author and content creator Dr Rebecca Marks! Rebecca holds a Master's in Art Hist...
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Showing posts with label Emily Brontë. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emily Brontë. Show all posts

Sunday, September 27, 2026

Sunday, September 27, 2026 12:46 pm by M. in , , , , , ,    No comments
The book list of Rory Gilmore still appears in the news from time to time. Woman's World makes a list including:
‘Jane Eyre’ 
“How about some Charlotte Brontë?” It’s no secret that Rory is a big fan of Charlotte Brontë, as showcased in several episodes of the series, and one of her preferred books is Jane Eyre. Rory frequently mentions the author and the 1847 novel is the perfect comforting read for fall. The author is discussed in a Season 1 episode when Dean asks how he can repay her for bringing him cookies and she responds by asking him to read Brontë. While she doesn’t specifically mention Jane Eyre, it is later seen in the spinoff series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life and it should be on your fall TBR (to be read list). (Julianne MacNeill)
The novel also appears in the Mental Floss list of Autumn reads:
Jane Eyre // Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë’s classic tale of romance, long-buried secrets, and one headstrong woman’s coming-of-age odyssey is steeped in both Gothic atmosphere and biting social commentary. It tells the story of a headstrong young woman’s journey from an orphanage to a governess post at Thornfield Hall, the domain of the mysterious Mr. Rochester. While the book has a reputation as a romance, in truth it is more of a dark look at the social expectations and struggles that characterized Victorian England. With its sprawling country houses, rainy weather, hidden rooms, and themes of growth, decay, and transformation, it’s a classic autumn read for a reason. (Eden Gordon)
Another Brontë novel is on the Autumn list of Clara (Spain):
Cumbres Borrascosas by Emily Brontë
Los protagonistas están unidos por un amor intenso y complicado que queda marcado por los celos, el orgullo, las diferencias sociales y el resentimiento, y cuando Catherine decide casarse con otro hombre, Heathcliff se marcha y, años después, regresa dispuesto a vengarse. 'Cumbres borrascosas' es un perfecto libro para leer este otoño. (Melissa González) (Translation)
The Indian Express mentions some dishes in English novels:
Seed Cake, Jane Eyre
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a small seed cake and tea become a memorable moment of comfort for Jane during her difficult years at Lowood. The modest treat stands in contrast to the hunger and poor food associated with the school, making the simple act of sharing food especially meaningful. (Aanya Mehta)
For this writer in DailyWire, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights is hard to forget:
Most of us have already (thankfully) forgotten about the BDSM atrocity that besieged us in February in the form of “Wuthering Heights,” and while Nolan’s “Odyssey” was a decent standalone film, it did little justice (at least in my view) to Homer’s original creation. (Liza Libes)
But for Vogue Spain is one of the films of the year:
 “Una historia de amor y venganza”, se anunció a finales de septiembre de 2024. Cumbres borrascosas es un clásico de la literatura, una de las obras maestras de Emily Brontë. Y eso puede ser bueno o no tanto, pues todos los ojos estarán puestos sobre una historia de sobra conocida por todos. ¿Y sobre qué trata esto? A saber: la tempestuosa Catherine Earnshaw y el vengativo Heathcliff viven un romance apasionado mientras conviven en un lugar conocido como el título de todo esto, Cumbres borrascosas. Y, bueno, en el libro ese amor nunca pasaba de una mera obsesión. Y hay a quien no le ha gustado nada esta película, pero otros la consideran una obra maestra. (Alberto Sisí Sánchez) (Translation)
The film is now on the Canal+ (France) catalogue. Télé-Loisirs reviews the film:
Avec Emerald Fennell, rien n’est sage ni subtil. Costumes majestueux, décors fantasmagoriques, brume, crachin et tempêtes sur la lande anglaise : le film impose une esthétique grandiloquente, parfois à la limite du grotesque. La réalisatrice insuffle à l’ensemble un ton très pop, étonnamment drôle par moments. Sensuel, excessif, filmé avec un point de vue féminin assumé, Hurlevent divisera forcément. Cette relecture courageuse et moderne conserve pourtant toute la violence du roman. Emily Brontë aurait adoré ! (Hélène Lisle) (Translation)

Elle (France) lists several alternative Wuthering Heights adaptations. 

Verbotene Liebe, Ausgrenzung, Rassismus – Emily Brontës Weltklassiker „Sturmhöhe“ steckt voller Themen von hoher Aktualität. Eindrucksvoll zeigt das Franz-Joseph Diekens Inszenierung am Altonaer Theater.
Im Zentrum steht die obsessive Liebe zwischen Catherine (Linda Stockfleth) und Heathcliff (Celio-Silvestre Tamele) – eine toxische Beziehung, zerstörerisch wie eine Naturgewalt. Obwohl Linda Stockfleth ihre unberechenbare Catherine allzu schrill und einförmig hysterisch anlegt, überzeugt das Zusammenspiel des Ensembles. (Brigitte Scholz) (Translation)
Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper features Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Brontë. The David Austin's Emily Brontë Rose makes an appearance in this Times article. The last episode of the Behind the Glass fourth season podcast is already available:
For the final episode of series 4, Sam and Mia are joined by historian, author and content creator Dr Rebecca Marks! Rebecca holds a Master's in Art History and a PhD in English Romantic Literature. She’s currently writing a book on Gothic art and literature with Penguin, which will be released at the end of 2027.
What came before Thornfield Hall and Wuthering Heights? We hope you're in the mood for ghosts and goblins as we dive into what makes a Gothic novel, writers who may have inspired the Brontës and why Patrick had the equivilent of movie posters on his wall...
One of the events (if not the event) of the Brontë season is already available. Courtesy of the British Library Publishing:
by Emily Brontë
British Library Publishing
ISBN: 9780712369015
September 17, 2026

Wuthering Heights First Edition Facsimile (1847) in a two-volume edition, with Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846)
Step into the wild, windswept world of the Yorkshire moors with this exquisite first edition facsimile of Wuthering Heights, faithfully reproduced from the British Library’s original 1847 copy of Emily Brontë’s enduring masterpiece.
Published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights is one of the most powerful and unconventional novels in English literature — a haunting tale of passion, obsession and revenge that has captivated readers for nearly two centuries. This sumptuous facsimile captures the novel as it was first presented to Victorian readers, preserving the typography, layout and character of the historic two-volume edition.
Housed in a luxurious foiled cloth-bound clamshell presentation box, this collector’s set brings together:
  • A two-volume first edition facsimile of Wuthering Heights (1847), with covers typical of the era
  • A first edition facsimile of Emily Brontë’s own copy of Poems (1846), the ground-breaking poetry collection she published alongside her sisters Charlotte and Anne, prior to the success of Wuthering Heights, reproduced with handwritten notes and signed and dated by her on the title page. Emily’s copy was rebound by a later owner and bears the date of 1864 on the spine. As this edition is intended to be a faithful facsimile, we have reproduced the book exactly as it survives today, including this historical peculiarity.
  • Facsimile looseleaf pages from Emily’s two manuscript poetry notebooks (also held in the Library collections) that show earlier versions of a couple of poems that appear in Poems.
  • The set is completed with an introductory booklet by two lead curators at the British Library.
Brontë fans will now be able to own facsimile first editions of the two creative works Emily published during her short life – in effect her complete works – presented together in a gorgeous box with gold foil details. Each element has been created directly from the originals held in the British Library’s collections, ensuring exceptional fidelity to the source material.
An essential acquisition for Brontë enthusiasts, collectors of classic literature, scholars, and lovers of fine bookmaking, this facsimile set is as striking on the shelf as it is moving to read.

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

Wednesday, September 02, 2026 12:30 am by M. in , , ,    No comments
A new compilation book with Brontë excerpts and quotes:
by Kate Greenwood
HarperNorth
ISBN:
August 27, 2026

A beautiful collection of daily quotes from the Brontës.
From the wild, windswept moors of Yorkshire emerged three sisters whose writing would change the literary world: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Fearless in their vision, they gave us some of the most passionately feminist and deliciously gothic literature ever written – works that continue to captivate, challenge and inspire.
This charming collection gathers their most enduring words across novels, poems and letters, offering 365 daily reflections on love, life and literature.
Complete with an illustration for each month, this is the perfect gift to add a touch of Brontë brilliance to each day.

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Wednesday, August 26, 2026 10:53 am by Cristina in , , , , , , ,    No comments
The Fan Carpet shares 'Five Things [They] Learned at the Jane Eyre Rehearsal Day'.
1. This production has been decades in the making
For producer Adam, bringing Jane Eyre to the UK is much more than another production.
Having first fallen in love with the musical as a young theatre fan in Toronto before seeing it on Broadway, he spent years hoping to one day help bring it to British audiences.
That passion was evident from the moment he welcomed the media into rehearsals, making it clear this is very much a labour of love.
2. Jane's voice belongs to the whole company
Perhaps the most fascinating creative decision is the production's ensemble-led approach.
Rather than limiting the narration to Jane herself, the entire company shares responsibility for telling her story.
As John Caird explained, Charlotte Brontë's novel is written almost entirely from Jane's perspective, and this theatrical device allows that first-person narration to remain central while creating something uniquely suited to the stage.
3. Casting wasn't just about finding great singers
One theme emerged repeatedly throughout our conversations.
This company wasn't assembled simply because its members have exceptional voices.
Co-director Megan McGinnis explained that every performer needed to be an outstanding storyteller capable of carrying both dialogue and music with equal conviction.
Watching rehearsals, it quickly became clear why that mattered. Every member of the ensemble contributes to telling Jane's journey.
4. The children are central to the story
Many productions might have asked adults to portray Jane as a child.
Instead, this production places genuine young performers at the heart of its opening chapters.
Emily-Rose Samuel and Poppy Jason share the roles of Young Jane and Adèle, bringing an authenticity that immediately grounds Jane's early experiences.
As the creative team explained, seeing Jane's childhood through the eyes of a real child was considered essential to the emotional impact of the story.
5. Respecting Charlotte Brontë doesn't mean avoiding change
One thing became clear throughout the afternoon.
Nobody involved is trying to recreate Charlotte Brontë's novel word for word.
Instead, every creative decision has been made with the same goal: preserving the heart of Jane Eyre while allowing musical theatre to tell the story in its own language.
Whether through the ensemble narration, the intimate staging or the symbolic design, this production appears determined to honour the novel while embracing everything theatre can uniquely offer.
Explosion Network reviews the film adaptation of Victorian Psycho.
Victorian Psycho is an odd film that I never really felt knew how funny, tonally offbeat, or scary it wanted to be. There’s a commitment from the cast to make this ‘Norman Bates’ crossed with Jane Eyre work, but instead of a successful transfusion of genre, it’s just a bit odd. (Dylan Blight)
Wrexham interviews The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever organiser Moira Gleed.
Hundreds flocked to Plas Newydd, Llangollen, on June 20, to take part in The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.
Organised by Moira Gleed and her daughter Rowen, attendees donned red dresses and outfits after Kate Bush’s iconic look in the Wuthering Heights 1978 music video to learn and record the song’s dance routine.
The event was open to those of all experience and the practice in the morning was led by two local choreographers: Karen Lyon and Sarah Bright.
We’ve recently caught up with Moira Gleed to chat about her experience of this event.
250 tickets were sold, and they sold out within days of being advertised. Moira said she’d never have dreamt such a fantastic opening.
“It exceeded expectations, exceeded hope.”
Yorkshire Live recommends a ''Cosy' Yorkshire walk with waterfall and quaint village', ie. Haworth, that is perfect for autumn. Chronicle Live recommends a trip to Haworth too. Digital Spy suggests streaming Frances O'Connor's Emily on the BBC.

Monday, August 24, 2026

Monday, August 24, 2026 5:48 am by M. in , , ,    No comments
The novel by Anja Daatje, Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris, has been translated into English:
by Anjet Daanje
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
MacMillan Publishers
ISBN:  9780374620615
August 2026

A thrilling literary puzzle that explores the haunted life and mysterious afterlifes of a writer and her work.
Who was Eliza May Drayden? Is she just the quiet, intensely private person she seems to all the world in her little village of Bridge Fowling in the shadow of the West Yorkshire hills—or is there more to her than meets the eye? It is only after her death that Haeger Mass, her one book—a dark and cryptic novel—assumes a life of its own. In each new chapter of this literary treasure hunt that spans almost three hundred years, we see the conundrum through the eyes of a new generation of characters, each providing competing and interlocking versions of the life—and cursed vision—of this Emily Brontë–like figure. Scholars immerse themselves in the mystery of her life and are led to ruin; the curse that hangs over her comes to visit a young couple; a mysterious diary emerges with her strange and indecipherable poetry and sketches. Elements and symbols repeat in relentless and varying combinations from one story to the next as the years pass: as if the truth at the center of her work is fighting to break free.
The Song of Stork and Dromedary is a philosophical puzzle that unfolds with the exuberance of a historical romp, ingeniously pivoting from Gothic horror to quantum mechanics to memento mori. In this thrilling, recursive tale, Anjet Daanje gets to the frantically beating heart of why we tell stories, and how we try to create meaning with them in a world filled with brutality and death. Daanje has crafted a conundrum that is as diabolical as it is heartbreaking. When we finally open the box that contains the secret behind the life of Eliza May Drayden, what will we see there—a vision of heaven or a vision of hell?

Monday, August 10, 2026

Monday, August 10, 2026 2:49 am by M. in ,    No comments
A new chance to listen to the Human Intelligence episode devoted to Emily Brontë: 

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration?
Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights sent shockwaves through Victorian society when it was published, and it is a novel that continues to stir debate and discussion today. What can we learn of the mind that conjured up such a piece of work? And how did her reclusive nature bring greater depth and focus to her writing?
Special thanks to Dr Claire O’Callaghan, Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at Loughborough University.
Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.
The Sunday Times also recommends the programme and the podcast Behind the Glass:
Naomi Alderman returns with a new series of the programme that examines the minds of great thinkers and discovers where their creativity came from and how they applied it to work that influences us today. She begins with Emily Brontë, whose Wuthering Heights has spawned many remakes, and asks if her reclusive nature contributed to the intensity of her writing. The Behind the Glass: A Parsonage podcast from the Brontë Museum in Haworth takes an in-depth look at items in its collection, plus social issues that would have affected the family.  (Clair Woodward)


Sunday, August 02, 2026

Sunday, August 02, 2026 5:41 am by M. in , ,    No comments
Beginning tomorrow, August 3:
Mon Aug 3rd - Fri 7th
Tutors: Clare O'Callaghan and Michael Stewart

Emily Brontë’s only published novel, Wuthering Heights, is one of the greatest and most famous novels ever written, but she is also the author of over two hundred wonderful poems, and a very accomplished artist. Unlike her sisters, she chose to spend her time mainly at home in Haworth, walking, reading and writing. Her status within the world of literature is that of a cult figure but also an icon. She has become the very image of the reclusive writer, but who is the real Emily behind the myths that have been constructed around her since her death in December 1848?
This week-long course will set out to challenge and explore the mythology around this most enigmatic character. It takes place in Haworth, in the heart of Brontë Country. It will also explore in-depth her life and work, looking at her prose and poetry as well as her artwork. It will feature seminars, lectures, guided walks and special events ran by Br

Saturday, August 01, 2026

Saturday, August 01, 2026 10:17 am by Cristina in , , , , ,    No comments
The Rumpus reviews Deborah Lutz's biography of Emily Brontë.
It’s inevitable that any review of an Emily Brontë biography arriving on the heels of Emerald Fennell’s bonkers adaptation of Wuthering Heights will reference the film (and most have). But I’m in the odd position of having also reviewed Fennell’s movie. This prompted an editor at W.W. Norton & Co. to send me an advance copy of Deborah Lutz’s This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life, which was published in early May 2026. It arrived with a letter suggesting I might enjoy it after my “thrashing” of Wuthering Heights: “It’s not quite roaming the moors, but it’s close.”
A lifelong Brontë reader, I received the book eagerly, but did not take its editor’s words literally. Having read it, I realize she meant them that way. There are biographers desperate to know a life from the outside in and the inside out, and there are biographers aware that their subject is fundamentally unknowable. Lutz is the latter, and she works instead to produce a social and domestic history of those closest to Emily, a natural history of the West Yorkshire moors Brontë immortalized in Wuthering Heights, and a material history of Emily’s writing practice which, in the hands of Lutz’s meditative attention, approaches the mystical. “Expertise,” dry and academic, is the wrong word to characterize Lutz’s understanding of the Brontës. Victorianists tend to work exclusively with the established texts of their subjects, but Lutz spent several years immersed in Emily Brontë’s hand-written manuscripts (detailed photographs of these are included in the book) and inhabiting Brontë’s hometown of Haworth, West Yorkshire, and Brussels, where she studied alongside her older sister Charlotte at the Pensionnat Héger. Lutz pored over the local weather reports of Emily’s lifetime and learned the flora and fauna of the moors so integral to Brontë’s life and work (Emily could identify local birds by their song and kept a collection of their feathers she found on her daily walks). In This Dark Night, Lutz’s deep knowledge of Emily Brontë transcends biography and—appropriate for her subject, who wrote one of the most famous ghost stories in Western literature—approaches a haunting.
Written after a large cache of papers by the Brontës “that had been missing for over a hundred years” surfaced in 2018, This Dark Night gives readers a great deal of fresh information about Emily Brontë. Even with this new material, Emily remains the most elusive of the four Brontë siblings who survived into adulthood (the two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood, events Lutz ties convincingly to Emily’s psyche and writing). Although Charlotte Brontë outlived Branwell, Emily, and Anne, she died at thirty-nine of complications from her first pregnancy, and Lutz posits that it was her widower who likely burned most of Emily’s correspondence and diaries. 
Absent these sources, Lutz employs the candid letters, diaries, and various historiographical accounts of Emily’s father, Patrick, and her siblings to methodically illuminate Emily’s whereabouts and behaviors; these provide a comprehensive and intimate view into Emily’s place in the family pecking order. [...]
This Dark Night effectively refutes the lasting image of the Brontës as isolated sad girls, stuck in the sticks with their abusive reverend father, which originated with Elizabeth Gaskell’s now-classic hagiography of her close friend, Charlotte Brontë. Lutz sketches a bustling, industrial Haworth where the Brontë siblings, as the children of the town cleric, were frequently at the center of social life, and Patrick bears no resemblance to the stereotypically restrictive Victorian father of legend. He gave his five daughters the same radical education he gave his only son, tutoring them in foreign languages and allowing unfettered access to the literature of the day (including the scandalous Lord Byron). He aided their travel to London and Brussels, and encouraged their creative writing, refusing to pressure them to marry. Online lit discourse likes to bat at the possibility that Emily Brontë was queer. Lutz won’t go so far as to guess, but she shows us a West Yorkshire where the Brontë siblings knew Anne Lister, the celebrated English diarist and lesbian, whose rarefied education and androgynous appearance modeled a different kind of life for Emily Brontë than the available standard for middle-class Victorian women–one Emily, who never married and devoted her life to art and her sisters, seems to have lived. 
Emily’s living is at the heart of This Dark Night, which eschews the historically romantic notion of Brontë’s artistic genius that places Wuthering Heights as her singular accomplishment, with life a mere cipher for the novel. [...]
This Dark Night is, therefore, literally a biography of the dirt beneath Emily’s feet which  subverts the tired trope of Emily Brontë hitching up her skirts and running wild on the moors to instead give us a woman who was both a writer and a naturalist who also ran a household. Wuthering Heights is a book best remembered for the wilderness of its moors which nonetheless takes place almost entirely inside. We think of Cathy’s longing for that wilderness when she is trapped in confinement and the longing, the state of it, feels almost like the place itself. Lutz compels us to wonder if Emily Brontë felt that same longing—not for the moors, which were her literal backyard, but to break free of her human form, to seep into the “rocks and stones and trees” of the world she loved. It’s difficult to say for sure, especially since This Dark Night is so grounded in the physical—gardens, laundry, mending, cooking, dogs, cats, hawks. Yet Lutz captures Brontë’s ineffable desire to break free of her physical body, which is both a graver and braver thing than she might have done with this biography. 
It’s possible—valuable, even—to reduce a figure like Emily Brontë to the questions that trouble our own gender politics. Emily Brontë might have often wished to be a man, or to love a woman, and these things may have limited her ability to lead the kind of life some of her contemporaries led. To write a book that addresses how Emily Brontë was limited by her gender is one thing. Lutz shows us instead that Emily Brontë’s real limitation was her human form, and how she paradoxically used that form to harness a mysticism and create some of the language’s most lasting works, works which nonetheless elucidate our own gender relations in ways rarely surpassed, even today. That is what a genius does, I suppose.
Near the close of the book, Lutz writes that, after Emily’s death, she became the “genius loci” for the remaining family members (only her father, Anne, and Charlotte remained, Branwell having died six months prior). She seemed to me the genius loci of This Dark Night, as well, if it’s possible for a subject to haunt its own book. Because the book is largely constructed of the words of those closest to Emily about Emily, rather than Emily’s own words, we see her in the periphery, or view her from afar. I felt pleasantly haunted throughout my reading of this biography, and was surprised to find myself weeping as it closed. I am a writer, and frequent reader, of biography. The death of the subject is pretty much the one thing you can count on in the genre, but Lutz paces her book so well that Emily’s sudden death seems to happen as quickly on the page as it did in life. The shock of it—Emily refused medical attention and insisted on keeping her eyes open to “meet” her end—took my breath away.
I learned more about Emily Brontë and her famous siblings from reading This Dark Night than I knew before. These facts stay with me and yet, the more I learned, the more distant Emily grew. It was as though the attempt to contain her or reduce her to acts or incidents or objects was to break up this person, who was always so evidently more than the sum of her parts, into her parts, and then watch the parts erase the whole. This is no fault of Lutz’s and is part of her book’s great success, since this seems to convey how her contemporaries felt about her. Emily Brontë is long dead. She can never be brought back to life, but we are haunted eternally by her, by the dictum she gave herself.
“There is no Emily in Time or on Earth now,” Charlotte is quoted as saying upon her sister’s death, and we feel that loss as keenly today as Charlotte did then—or fool ourselves that we do, or Lutz fools us that we do. If Emily can die like any other, we all can. We all will. This should have left me bereft, or at least a little grim, but instead I was comforted, and reminded of the feeling I have whenever I visit the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, specifically, and the Calder Valley more broadly, which I try to do every few years. It took me a long time to characterize this feeling, which is a meditative ecstasy that leaves me with a profound sense of well-being. Eventually, I just said it aloud, so here I go: When I am there, in the land that birthed and received Emily Brontë, I feel immortal. Not because of some delusion that I will never die, but because, paradoxically, I am aware that I absolutely will. And life will go on beautifully beyond me. If I am lucky, any small thing I’ve done or said will reach out to the living; maybe they will have a conversation with the dead, like this one, like Lutz’s. Maybe I will talk back. (Emily Van Duyne)

Playbill shares the music video for the song Sirens of Jane Eyre. A Musical.
A new music video for "Sirens," from John Caird and Paul Gordon's Jane Eyre A Musical, celebrates the new Jane Eyre EP, Highlights From The UK Premiere Cast.  [...]
The new EP, from Westway Music, precedes the upcoming production of Jane Eyre A Musical at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Performances are scheduled to begin August 28 for a limited run through October 24.
With music and lyrics by Gordon and additional lyrics by Caird, the EP also features the songs "Sweet Liberty" and "Secret Soul," both of which were performed by Burn and Gilmour earlier this summer at West End Live. The three-song EP is available to stream/download here.
The recording has vocal and incidental music arrangements by Brad Haak and Steve Tyler, orchestrations by Larry Hochman and Haak, sound engineering by Ben Robbins, and mixing by Gordon. It is produced by Adam Blanshay Productions, David and Hannah Mirvish and Westway Music and published by Universal Music and ASCAP.
In addition to Burn and Gilmour, the Southwark production will also feature Claire Greenway as Abbot/Grace Poole, Melad Hamidi as St. John/Lord Ingram, Connor Wood as John Reed/Vicar, Jonathan Andrew Hume as Brocklehurst/Mason, Izzi Levine as Agnes/Leah/Jane's Mother/Mary Ingram, Hannah Lindsey as Scatcherd/Bertha Mason, Isabelle Methven as Helen Burns/Bessie, Gemma Page as Reed/Fairfax, and Eve Shanu-Wilson as Blanche/Sophie with Poppy Jason as Young Jane/Adele and Emily-Rose Samuel as Young Jane/Adele.
Caird and Broadway's Megan McGinnis will co-direct the musical, with choreography by Georgina Lamb, set and costume design by Morgan Large, sound design by Andrew Johnson, lighting design by James Whiteside, musical direction and supervision by Ben Kubiak, and casting by Sarah-Jane Price.
The 2000 Broadway production of Jane Eyre was nominated for five 2001 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. (Andrew Gans)


Los Alamos Reporter invites readers to the local The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event.

Friday, July 31, 2026

The Guardian interviews the writer Jacqueline Crooks:
The book that changed me as a teenager
I read Wuthering Heights when I was 12 or 13. Heathcliff fascinates me: enigmatic, brooding, never fully explained. Emily Brontë taught me landscape is character. The moors are a living force, mirroring Cathy and Heathcliff’s emotional lives. That shaped my writing: I’m drawn to unknowable characters and psychologically alive places.
Twin City Theatre Company brings Emily Brontë, Teenage Necromancer to Parkland College’s Second Stage Theatre. When a phantom haunts the Roe Head School for Girls in 1835, star pupil Emily Brontë and her sisters Anne and Charlotte must use their necromantic talents to uncover the truth in this gothic comedy of ghosts, fog, an undead goose, a lovesick spirit, and a talking meat pudding. The production runs through August 9. (Associated Press)
Money Control suggests romantic books for National Girlfriend Day:
Jane Eyre
I've always thought Jane Eyre is remembered for the wrong reason. Yes, the romance matters. But Jane's refusal to compromise herself matters even more. That's exactly why the love story works. She chooses love without giving up who she is.
Ranker ranks (sorry) movies critics hated, but audiences loved:
9. Wuthering Heights
Audience Score: 74%
Critic Score: 57%

Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of the literary classic was met with a 57% critic score, with many purists and reviewers balking at the modern sensibilities and controversial changes made to the source material. Audiences were much more enamored with the chemistry between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, granting the film a 74% rating. Despite being shaded by critics, the general public enjoyed the bold, stylized take on the toxic romance, prioritizing entertainment value over fidelity to the book. (Leah Collins)
Bryan County News loves Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:
It’s an incredible song, and one where I cannot sing Bush’s high notes without stubbing my toe or something. The music video of her dancing makes me wish that MTV was still a thing and I could just spend my time watching fun music videos on cable television instead of battling stupid ads on YouTube. I wish Silicon Valley could invent a time machine. (Andrea Gutierrez)
A song that American Songwriter also praises:
Against EMI’s wishes, she insisted on releasing the haunting ballad “Wuthering Heights”—inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of the same name—as the album’s first single.
It was an early example of Bush seizing full control of her own career, and it certainly paid off.
“Wuthering Heights” topped the UK and Australian charts, making her the first British woman to reach number one with an entirely self-written track. (Erinn Callahan)
Parade Magazine also celebrates Kate Bush's anniversary:
Bush has continued to earn recognition for her extraordinary career, including induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. Yet nearly five decades after that remarkable debut, it’s still astonishing to remember that one of rock music’s most important milestones was achieved by a 19-year-old who simply believed the world needed to hear “Wuthering Heights” first. (Andrea Reiher)
Mamamia recommends The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 1 by Beth Brower:
If Austen and Brontë had a baby with Bridget Jones, she'd be Emma M. Lion. Super charming, super moreish, super short — 150~ pages each - this series has garnered a mega following for a reason. (Charley Vokoun)
The New York Times interviews... Emma M. Lion: 
Much like the Brontë sisters had each other, and Virginia Woolf had her sister, I have a lot of talented siblings, she said. (Courtney Runn)
El Debate (Spain) recommends some films for the weekend:
Emily (Filmin)
La más enigmática de las hermanas Brontë sigue siendo un misterio a día de hoy. ¿Cómo pudo aquella mujer soltera tan tímida y solitaria, recluida en una pequeña casa parroquial en los páramos de Yorkshire, crear una de las novelas más intensas y apasionadas de la literatura inglesa? Con la intención de responder a esa pregunta nace Emily. Es en esa lucha contra los límites de su vida familiar cuando comienza a anhelar esa libertad artística tan personal. Así comienza un viaje para canalizar su potencial creativo en una de las mejores novelas de todos los tiempos: Cumbres borrascosas. (Cristina Blanco Vázquez) (Translation)´
SoloLibri (Italy) mentions the Brontës in an intro to a review of Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means:
Dunque la Austen disse il vero, mentre per le sorelle Brontë bisognò aspettare al trono la regina Vittoria, moralista e bacchettona; ci voleva forse una regina così per l’ordito narrativo di Cime Tempestose, capolavoro intraducibile al cinema - ne saranno usciti, di film, venticinque e più. (Vincenzo Mazzaccaro) (Translation)
The latest installment of the Behind the Glass podcast:
On this episode, Mia and Sam sit down with art historian and writer Eliza Goodpasture! Eliza has written the introduction to a new edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, illustrated by British modern artist Edna Clarke Hall. 
We take a look at the women studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1890s and how Edna Clarke Hall's marriage influenced her obsession with Cathy and Heathcliff... 
Still more Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever chronicles: Loughborough University... The New Indian Express's Verses for a Friend include Emily Brontë's Love and Friendship. Country Life has a Kate Bush quiz containing some Wuthering-ish questions.

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Bookriot recommends some recent narrative nonfiction:
This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life by Deborah Lutz
The Brontës are having a bit of a moment again with adaptations and a semi-biographical film about Emily herself, and this book does its best to explain the elusive genius. Since the Brontës were not recognized as genius writers until much later, the historical record of their lives is incomplete. However, Lutz uses the poems, journals, and ephemera Emily left behind in her 30 years to piece together her internal life. Emily wrote about grief and commented regularly on nature and the rising industrialism in faraway cities. (Julia Rittenberg)
Slipped Disc recommends Wuthering Heights 1939: 
But it is William Wyler’s 1939 black and white swoonfest that is still ranked top on film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The clothes are pure old Hollywood glamour, the moody cinematography is sublime, Merle Oberon’s Cathy is ethereal, Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff is brooding.  Does it matter that they ditched the second half of the story, ending with the lovers’ ghosts walking hand in hand through the snow?  Not really.  This is Wuthering Heights reimagined as a Thirties weepie and on its own terms, it is genius. (Ruth Leon)
Broadway World announces the Autumn UK Tour of a new production of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre adaptation: 
Anna Yates, Khadija Raza and Joseff Harris join the production ahead of its run across England.
The creative team has been set for the new production of Jane Eyre, touring across England in autumn 2026. The production will be directed by Lily Dyble as a result of her winning the 2025 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award.  It is based on Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company's acclaimed adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's enduring novel. (Stephi Wild)
Tour Dates
Mercury Theatre, Colchester - 26 September – 10 October 2026
Rose Theatre, Kingston - 13 – 24 October 2026
Northern Stage, Newcastle - 3 – 7 November 2026
Storyhouse, Chester - 10 – 21 November 2026
 The Book Tribune (Pakistan) lists book-to-screen adaptations to revisit after The Odyssey 2026. Wuthering Heights 2026 is one of them. Russh makes an interesting point after watching the film:
Earlier this year, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights was an adaptation that gathered some controversy. Some loved it, while others argued it betrayed Emily Brontë's novel completely. Tail between my legs, I was one of the sceptics. While I admired Fennell's creativity, I'd struggled with how dramatically she had strayed from the original story. However, Fennell never pretended it was a true adaptation. She described the film as the version of Wuthering Heights she remembered reading as a 14 year old, a personal interpretation that filled the spaces between Brontë's words with her own imagination. The reviews, however, were a bit brutal. (...) While I did agree with some of these points, it started to unsettle my compliance.
Why was I demanding literary fidelity from Wuthering Heights while happily embracing the artistic licence in Tony? The more I thought about it, the more I realised I'd been judging these films by different standards.
It's easy to dismiss an adaptation by arguing it isn't faithful to its original text. Accuracy often become the ammunition we reach for once we've already decided we don't like something and want to fire it with criticism. In Wuthering Heights, fidelity suddenly became incredibly important to me. But was it just because I wasn't enjoying the film? (...)
I think we've forgotten that truth and fact aren't always the same thing. A film can invent conversations that never happened and still capture something authentic. It can shorten timelines, combine characters to become one or imagine moments between what was recorded as events while remaining truthful to the spirit of the person. (...)
If a film can evoke the essence we all knew and loved of (...) Wuthering Heights through a highly stylised memory of reading a book at age 14 – then it has done its job. (Samantha Corry)
The Haworth Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event is still in the news: Great British Life, Salt & Light, El País (Spain) publishes a quite nice article:
El Most Wuthering Heights Day (El día de Cumbres borrascosas) es un evento alegre. Se baila cada julio en decenas de ciudades del mundo, con miles de participantes que emulan la coreografía del videoclip de Kate Bush: brazos que se abren de golpe, giros bruscos, manos que empujan el aire… Su exagerada teatralidad parece contar la historia con el cuerpo y evocar el espíritu de Cathy pidiendo entrar por la ventana. No es un baile bonito ni técnico. Es más bien raro, dramático y un poco fantasmal. Pero da igual bailarlo bien o mal porque nadie ha venido a lucirse, sino a formar parte de la coreografía. (...)
La peregrinación a Haworth no es nueva. En noviembre de 1904, una jovencísima Virginia Woolf subió hasta aquí y escribió sobre la visita en un semanario londinense. En el libro de visitas de la casa de las Brontë han firmado, entre otras muchas mujeres, Sylvia Plath y Patti Smith. Durante más de un siglo, hasta aquí han venido sobre todo mujeres que buscaban a otras mujeres. Woolf se preguntaba si esta u otras romerías a las casas de los escritores no serían puro sentimentalismo, y se respondía que solo se justifican cuando el lugar añade algo a los libros. Con las Brontë, concluía, el viaje merecía la pena: Haworth y las hermanas, escribió, encajan “como un caracol en su concha”. Es imposible separar la obra del sitio que la produjo. (...)
Siglo y medio después, una de sus colinas está llena de mujeres que no ocultan nada. Se visten todas iguales, de rojo, y en ese uniforme no se borran: se reconocen. Al contemplar la danza, es inevitable pensar en la ironía que produce una obra hecha en el aislamiento más extremo, y cómo sigue generando un mundo propio un siglo y medio después. (...) 
No es una postal perfecta: es una romería real, con su desorden, su frío, su espera. Y eso es exactamente lo que la salva del kitsch. La gente ha subido a un campo embarrado un día nublado a hacer algo aparentemente ridículo, y lo hace con una entrega absoluta. Ahí está la dignidad del gesto, en que nadie está posando para nadie. Emily, que escribió y describió el páramo como una fuerza anterior a toda ley, sigue convocando a los vivos. Por eso no envejece. (Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán) (Translation)

Other events: Otago Daily News (New Zealand), El Confidencial (Spain), National Post (Canada)...

The Telegraph & Argus explains how to pronounce Guiseley in true Yorkshire vernacular:
Despite its spelling, locals pronounce it“GYZ-lee” (rhyming with “guys” and “lee”), and getting it right is often seen as a badge of honour among Yorkshire newcomers. (...)
One of Guiseley’s best-known landmarks is St Oswald’s Church, parts of which are centuries old.
The church holds special literary significance as the wedding venue of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, parents of the famous Brontë sisters.
Fans of Yorkshire's literary heritage often visit the church as part of their travels.
Deseret News discusses gender treatment in schools: 
[Dr. Leonard] Sax advocates for “gender-aware” instructional strategies in K-12 schools.
“The best way to get boys excited about Emily Dickinson is very different from the best way to get girls excited about Emily Dickinson,” he said. “And the best way to get girls excited about computer coding is very different from the best way to get boys excited about computer coding.
“But you put in place gender-aware instructional strategies.”
When educators ignore gender differences, Sax added, they ultimately reinforce gender stereotypes.
“If you understand gender differences, you can break down gender stereotypes. And that same boy who loves football and video games will love ‘Jane Eyre’ and will love Emily Dickinson.” (Jason Swensen)
New adventures of Billy and Brontë Bantam at Bradford City AFC. Agenda Online (Italy) recommends Wuthering Heights as a summer read.
2:03 am by M. in ,    No comments

Two hundred and eight years since Emily was born in Thornton, and she's had the kind of year we don't usually get: a box-office hit and an auction record, back to back, both loud enough that you didn't need to be a Brontëite to notice.

On screen. Emerald Fennell's adaptation opened in February to the kind of divided reception this novel seems to specialise in provoking — a middling critical consensus, a lukewarm CinemaScore, and audiences who showed up anyway. It topped the box office on debut and kept climbing, eventually closing out around $242 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest releases of the year regardless of what anyone thought of Margot Robbie's Cathy or the liberties taken with the source. Whatever your verdict on the film itself, it did the one thing adaptations rarely manage: it got people who hadn't opened the book since school arguing about it again.

Under the hammer. Then, on 30 June, Christie's put the record to rest on a question that's lingered for a while: what is a first edition of Wuthering Heights actually worth now? The three-volume 1847 set — bound with Anne's Agnes Grey, still in its original publisher's cloth, one of only a handful of surviving copies in that condition since a copy last came to auction in 1908 — sold for £1,206,500. That's not just a record for Emily; Christie's confirmed it as the highest price ever paid at auction for a printed book by a woman, and the most expensive piece of 19th-century literature to change hands, full stop. The Ellis Bell pseudonym on the title page suddenly reads very differently against that number.

Oh, the irony. A book published under a man's name because nobody in 1847 believed a woman could write something this unruly just set the price record for any book by a woman, ever. Emily never saw a second printing, never mind a seven-figure hammer price. She'd probably have found both the film and the auction faintly ridiculous — but she'd have taken the money.


Wednesday, July 29, 2026

WCIA (Champagne, IL) announces that:
The Stars of Tomorrow program of the Twin City Theatre Company’s is debuting its next production this weekend.
Director Emily Ritter and Producer Chm. on Saturdays and Sunandra Galloway came on The Morning Show to talk about their organization and to preview their upcoming production: Emily Brontë: Teenage Necromancer. The show will run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the next two weekends at Parkland College’s Second Stage Theatre.
Performances will be at 7 p.m. on Fridays and at 2 p.days.
The Telegraph & Argus publishes the story about the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in Haworth: 
A sea of red gathered on the moors for a day of music, movement and literary celebration.
A total of 500 people took part in 'Mass Wuthering' in Haworth on July 26, 2026, an annual event inspired by Kate Bush’s iconic Wuthering Heights music video.
The gathering saw fans don red dresses and recreate the famous dance against the backdrop of the Yorkshire landscape that inspired Emily Brontë’s novel and Bush’s 1978 hit. (...)
Ms [Clare] O’Callaghan said: "We had fans of Kate Bush, fans of the Brontës, and people from all over the world who wanted to share the joy of how literature and the arts can inspire and cultivate community.
"It really was a day of community and cohesion, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the brilliant messages we’ve received from people - and those we’ve seen posting on social media - saying it was one of the most memorable experiences of their lives.
"We all got drenched on Sunday thanks to the ‘Wuthering’ weather, but it didn’t matter at all - it made it even better and the atmosphere was brilliant." (Amelia Short)
Other celebrations around: Los Alamos Daily Post,  Southend Echo, Minuto Uno...

Still locally, The Yorkshire Post tells the story of 'How Wuthering Heights took Yorkshire to Times Square and beyond in Britain's international tourism push'.
While the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights may have divided critics and audiences, the film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi helped put Yorkshire in the global spotlight.
This was symbolised by a huge billboard in New York’s famous Times Square showing Robbie sitting on the Moors alongside a caption reading ‘It’s Not Wuthering Heights Without England’.
The billboard was a small part of Visit Britain’s ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign to boost international tourism to the UK which sought to highlight popular TV shows and films as a way of drawing visitors here.
Visit Britain worked with international film and TV studios to target ‘high value’ international audiences in countries like the US, France, Germany and Australia and the Gulf.
Patricia Yates, chief executive of VisitBritain, explained in the organisation’s most recent results that Wuthering Heights had played a central role in this year’s campaign.
“Last year VisitBritain launched its ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign,” she says. “This was the culmination of a monumental effort by VisitBritain teams across the globe who negotiated partnerships with nine studios to produce an incredible campaign platform on which to build.
“In its first six months alone, the campaign generated an additional £217m in visitor spend.
“Each extra pound represents a boost for the UK economy, a small business supported and a job sustained. The team has not lost momentum.
“The release of Bridgerton Series 4 and Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights told a compelling story of regional Britain. VisitBritain secured new Wuthering Heights intellectual property for the campaign showing Yorkshire’s iconic moors and hosted media, buyers and influencers from around the world in Yorkshire. [...]
While productions like All Creatures Great and Small and Wuthering Heights may be helping to give Yorkshire a wider international profile, there is still much to be done to keep the region’s hard-working tourism businesses deservedly centre-stage. (Chris Burn)
Folger Shakespeare Library publishes an excerpt of Greg Doran's Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare. In the excerpt, Greg Doran describes his visit to Skipton to see the First Folio that is kept at the Craven Museum:
I ask Jenny [Hill, lead curator] to tell me how the cotton mill owner got hold of a folio in the first place. Jenny grins at her colleague Charlotte [Craig]. One theory is that it came from nearby Ponden Hall. Ponden had one of the largest private libraries not just in the West Riding, but in the whole of Europe. Charlotte has a theory about some of Ponden Hall’s close neighbours who might have used their library.
“Well, Ponden Hall is just two or three miles across the moors from Haworth.”
“Oh, no!” I gasp “From Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë sisters lived?”
“That’s right,’ says Charlotte. “I used to work there.”
“Are you saying that the Brontë sisters might have read this copy of the First Folio?”
“We know they used to borrow books from Ponden Hall. But I can’t prove they read this folio.”
“Just say it!” I explode. “Let somebody else disprove it. Oh, that is fantastic. What about that!”
James smiles wryly. He thinks I’m mad. Jenny and Charlotte very kindly took the folio out of its case and carried it upstairs for me to examine more closely. While they were doing so, I did a bit of research. I remembered a reference to a letter Charlotte Brontë had written to a school friend about Shakespeare. By the time Jenny and Charlotte had laid out the folio upstairs, I had found the letter online.
Jenny points out that the folio is missing quite a few pages, and doesn’t have any of the Comedies. So I tell them about Charlotte’s letter dated 4 July 1834, to Ellen Nussey. “Ellen was her best friend at school,” Charlotte interjects.
“If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will though I don’t admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don’t be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great men and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare.”
Omit the comedies of Shakespeare. And the Skipton copy has no comedies.
“Perhaps Charlotte ripped them out,” Jenny laughs.
“This just gets better and better,” I say. “Charlotte, you’ve got to get this story out there.”
Once we have all calmed down a little, I tell Jenny that despite its now even more fascinating history, I think it might be the grubbiest copy of the First Folio I have ever seen. “Could you not say ‘grubbiest,’” Jenny grins. “Could you perhaps say ‘well-loved’?”
The well-thumbed Skipton copy has become one of my very favourite copies of the First Folio, whether or not anyone can prove that the Brontë sisters ever read it.
Ocula explores the resurgence of film movies in theatres, an unexpected (by the popes of the AI-driven technofeudalism) trend led by the Gen Z audiences:
Earlier this year, Emerald Fennell’s much-maligned, Mills & Boon-coded bonkbuster Wuthering Heights (2026) proved a great litmus test for how both film critics and film-industry tech bros have been failing to read the room. Fennell turned down Netflix’s $150 million distribution offer and its associated Faustian pact which demanded that the film go straight to streaming. Instead, she went for Warner Bros for $70-$80 million, with whom she got her theatrical release. On the day I watched Wuthering Heights in the cinema this February, Variety reported that it had already grossed $151.7 million worldwide against an $80 million production budget. This certainly wasn’t because it had been lauded in the press: the film was widely ripped to shreds by critics. Yet I can assure you that the much younger audience alongside which I saw it didn’t seem to care. It turns out that audiences are not brute forces capable only of liking or disliking, but sensitive instruments that might derive their enjoyment from camp, irony, strangeness, or the purely preposterous. (Sophia Satchell-Baeza)
Vogue reviews Cat Cohen's last show, Broad Strokes: 
When Cohen first walks out onstage, she is wide-eyed and holding a candlestick. Before long, she launches into her first song, “By the Sea,” a catchy tune that also helps to explain the Victorian aesthetic of both her costume and the set. (While working with scenic designer Derek McLane, Cohen was variously inspired by Wuthering Heights and images of Gothic palaces and sanatoriums on Pinterest.) “I always wanted to be the main character and the author and the lighthouse,” she tells the audience. (Alex Jhamb Burns)
Los Angeles Times recommends '17 page-turning beach reads for the ultimate summer escape' including
‘The Chateau on Sunset’ by Natasha Lester
“If you must get into trouble, do it at the Marmont,” reads the opening of this gothic novel set at the Chateau Marmont in 1950s Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine getting into good trouble these days at the Chateau — a relic of a bygone era. Thankfully our protagonist, Aria Jones, does it for us. A midcentury reimagining of “Jane Eyre,” the novel captures the feverish glamour and underlying chaos of the studio era, with each character proving more cunning and bewildering than the last. The result is a gothic tale with a distinctly Old Hollywood twist, paying homage to the enduring mystique of the Chateau Marmont. The dialogue is so taut and snappy, you’ll find yourself holding your breath. Madness, cruelty and difficult women are welcome bedfellows at “The Chateau on Sunset.” (Maddie Connors)
The Times of India opens an article about flirting with this quote:
 “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)
Which is, of course, not by Charlotte Brontë. It's a quote from the screenplay of Becoming Jane... which was a film about Jane Austen. Double Blunder!

LaSexta (Spain) posts about Wuthering Heights. 

This is a German publication with a sort of compilation of poetry, quotes, excerpts, and... well, anything Brontë:
Eine Sammlung der schönsten Gedichte, Geschichten, Zitate und Briefauszüge zum Herbst – Die perfekte Lektüre für gemütliche Stunden
Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen
ISBN: 9783150149225
13 Jul 2026

»Und dieser Wind, der in den Kiefern vor den Fenstern heult. Lass mich ihn bitte spüren, er kommt direkt vom Moor herunter. Lass mich nur einen Atemzug tun!«
Sturmumwehte Anwesen und nebelbedeckte Moore bilden die ikonischen Schauplätze der Romane der Schwestern Charlotte, Emily und Anne Brontë. Ob in Jane Eyre, Sturmhöhe oder Agnes Grey – mit ihrem aufmerksamen wie auch verträumten Blick gelingt es jeder Schwester, die herbstliche Melancholie auf ganz eigene Weise literarisch einzufangen.

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Claire O'Callaghan reviews Deborah Lutz's This Dark Night: Emily Brontë. A Life for History Today (Volume 76 Issue 8 August 2026):
In telling the story of Brontë’s life, Lutz’s method is demarcated by two commitments. First is her interest in Brontë’s world and her place in it. To pursue this, she reconstructs what Brontë ‘wore, saw, heard, smelled, and felt along her skin’ using, among other things, weather reports, the diaries of her neighbours, and local newspapers. This attention to the everyday and the senses offers a thoughtful (and relatively new) approach in Brontë biography, and it is one well suited to Lutz’s established interests, which readers of her 2015 work, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, will recognise. The second is that This Dark Night joins an established tradition that frames Brontë in relation to the natural world and foregrounds the environment as context for understanding her. For Lutz, as for many before her, Brontë ‘brought the open sky, birdsong, and the peat bogs to life on the page’. The imagery is vivid and compelling, participating in a romantic imaginary that tries to enter the inner mind of a woman who conjured some 200 poems (or thereabouts, that we know of and survive) and, of course, Wuthering Heights. At the same time, Lutz’ environmental emphasis also opens onto Brontë’s preoccupation with darker worlds, such as the dungeons, caves, and graves that dominate her writing, as well as ‘the mortal body’. Neither strand is, in itself, entirely new, but the way Lutz binds them together through sustained sensorial attentiveness feels fresh and it sharpens our historical understanding of Brontë as a multifaceted and complex woman.
Importantly, This Dark Night delves into territories that earlier biographers have overlooked, such as, for example, the practical question of how the Brontë sisters managed menstruation, which Lutz answers by drawing on broader health histories rather than evidence specific to the Brontës. This kind of detail may not deepen our understanding of Brontë as a writer, but that is not its purpose. Rather, it is a reminder that the sisters were flesh-and-blood women negotiating a monthly cycle that shapes women’s lives – a seemingly obvious fact that can easily be forgotten amid the iconography and fandom that surround them. It is these reflections that exemplify This Dark Night at its best: Lutz’s care for the material, embodied conditions of Victorian womanhood, which lends biography historic specificity.
The  Yorkshire Post publishes a photo gallery of  the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event that took place in Haworth last Sunday:
Wuthering Heights: 500 people gather at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for celebration. Participants gathered at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for Actually the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever on Sunday - a celebration of all things Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush and Emily Brontë.
The gathering was in the stunning setting of the Haworth moors. 500 people took part in the mass 'Wuther' in a joyful, windswept, red-dress sea of Cathys dancing for charity, supporting Women’s Aid. (DanieL Sheridan) 
Hindustan Times publishes a variation on a classic logical puzzle: Irresistible, isn't it? 
Eleven classic novels stand in a row on a bookshelf in a library. I find each of them tempting, but in the end, I pick up only one of them.
(1) The horror classics Frankenstein and Dracula both stand to the right of the book I chose.
(2) Moby Dick and Animal Farm both stand to the left of the book I chose.
(3) Two of the books are by Jane Austen. Of these, Pride and Prejudice stands somewhere right of Emma.
(4) Pride and Prejudice also stands somewhere right of Frankenstein.
(5) There are two titles by two of the Brontë sisters, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, with two other books (not by the sisters) standing between them.
(6) Two books stand between Wuthering Heights and Moby Dick
(7) Great Expectations (right) and Animal Farm (left) stand on either side of Wuthering Heights.
(8) I notice two children’s favourites, with Heidi standing somewhere to the left of Oliver Twist. There are seven books between these two.
(9) Six books stand between Dracula and Wuthering Heights.
(10) The book I finally choose stands in the middle of the row of 11, i.e. sixth from either left or right. (Kabir Firaque)

Many news outlets cover the Haworth event, or the Folkestone (Kent) one or the Bunbury one or...: London Now,  WION, Bunbury Herald, The Independent, Kent Online, Kent Live, La Razón, Corriere della Sera...

Collider lists 'romance books that are perfect from the first to the last page":
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is much more than just a love story. The novel follows Jane, an orphan who endures a lonely childhood before becoming a governess at the isolated Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the estate's enigmatic owner, Edward Rochester, whose cold demeanor and mysterious past immediately set him apart from the typical romantic hero. The narrative shows Jane and Rochester growing closer, but their relationship is constantly tested by secrets, painful sacrifices, and impossible moral choices that force Jane to decide whether love is worth compromising her own principles.
The best thing about Jane Eyre is that, unlike many romances of its time, it never allows love to overshadow its heroine's individuality. Jane refuses to sacrifice her self-respect and independence, even if that means walking away from the man she loves. That gives the novel a remarkable sense of maturity that has influenced generations of romance writers, but few have matched Brontë's sensibilities. (Safwan Azeem)
The book is reviewed on Descubre Santander (Spain): 
Llevaba demasiados años escuchando que Jane Eyre era una de las mejores novelas jamás escritas. Cuando por fin la terminé entendí que no era una exageración. No solo he leído un clásico; he sentido que acababa de descubrir el origen de muchas de las historias románticas y de misterio que vinieron después. Y lo mejor de todo es que, lejos de sentirse antigua, me ha tenido completamente atrapado durante toda la lectura. (...)
Cuando cerré Jane Eyre entendí por qué sigue apareciendo en cualquier lista de las mejores novelas de la historia. No es solo una historia de amor inolvidable; es la historia de una mujer que se niega a renunciar a sí misma, incluso cuando hacerlo parece el camino más fácil. Hay clásicos que se leen por obligación o por cultura general. Jane Eyre, en cambio, se disfruta de principio a fin y demuestra que las grandes historias no entienden de siglos, porque siguen emocionando exactamente igual hoy que cuando Charlotte Brontë las escribió. (Translation)
Scenic sports around Derbyshire and the Peak District in The Derbyshire Times:
3. Hathersage
Hathersage has strong literary connections - having inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre. The nearby North Lees Hall (pictured here) also became the main inspiration for Thornfield Hall. The Grave of Little John, Robin Hood’s second-in-command, can be found at St. Michael’s Church in the heart of Hathersage. While there is little evidence proving he is buried here, ballads suggest that he originated from Hathersage and settled there again later in his life.  (Tom Hardwick)

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Sunday, July 26, 2026 11:25 am by Cristina in , , , ,    No comments
Just Watch officially declares that 'Wuthering Heights Is No Longer This Year's Most Provocative Film'. 
Move over, Cathy and Heathcliff, we've got a new band of controversial characters to dissect and discuss as we move into the second half of 2026.
Should audiences be careful what they wish for? From the moment of its release on Valentine's Day this year, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights sold a lot of tickets on the promise of A-lister debauchery, but many fans left the cinema a little disappointed with the level of spice. Perhaps it was fate, perhaps it was creative programming, but a far more provocative movie was premiering at the Berlin Film Festival that very same night: Rosebush Pruning. (Rory O'Connor)
Apart from Haworth's Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, today will also see the same event at Clevedon's Marine Lake and Bristol's College Green, as reported by BBC:
Dozens of Kate Bush fans are celebrating her most famous song, Wuthering Heights, with a recreation of the dance from the music video.
Dubbed "the most Wuthering Heights day ever", the event at Clevedon's Marine Lake and Bristol's College Green raises money for the charity SARSAS (Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support).
The event will take place today, ahead of the singer's birthday on 30 July.
"It's enormous fun learning the dance, it's a real challenge as it's not straightforward, and it's not just for the ladies, we welcome everybody," said organiser Bridget Pairaudeau from Bristol.
The Clevedon event is believed to be the only one where dancers celebrate on land and in the water at the same time.
Last year, the event raised just over £1,000 for SARSAS.
"They were delighted that we danced for them," said Pairaudeau. (Jonathan Holmes)
Conciencia (Mexico) has an article on Emily Brontë with a picture of Charlotte Brontë.

Friday, July 24, 2026

Church Times reviews This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë by Deborah Lutz:
In a rapidly changing intellectual environment, two developments have affected the work of the historical biographer over the past two decades. First, digitisation has made it possible to read vast swaths of printed matter online, including obscure sermons and newspaper articles, and even some manuscripts, without leaving the study. Second, with privacy under erasure, biographers are empowered to go where their predecessors feared to tread with regard to the body and its functions. Both developments are evident in the making of This Dark Night, a book that demonstrates what can be achieved when a scholar-critic of Lutz’s stature applies her empathic imagination to the hidden life and writing practices of her elusive subject.
Lutz has a particular interest in the materials that writers used in the Victorian age, the subject of a previous study. In the preface to her new book, she writes; “Keeping slips of paper and a pencil nub nearby, Brontë mastered a peripatetic kind of creativity, interwoven with household work, daydreaming, and exploring her native landscape.” Out on the moors by day and under the stars by night, she scribbled poems on scraps of paper and later transcribed them in drafts written in ink. Lutz argues that “the page worked for her as a sort of frame or foundation on which to build the poem. Similar to those samplers she made as a girl, the letters, words, and lines accumulated like cross-stich across and down the sheet.” Signs of digging her quill pen into the paper while writing remain legible, we are told.
As Emily and her sisters prepared their poetry and fiction for publication, they acquired notebooks with thin leather covers the colour of oxblood. When opened, they would easily lie flat. Lutz’s close readings of the texts convince us of the power of a poetic vision inspired by nature and the elements. Her treatment of Emily’s writing materials reminds us that creation is work. (Dr Michael Wheeler)
Women lists "the classic books everybody is reading" this summer:
Forget hot girl summer — for readers, it's decidedly a classics girl summer. According to data from Google Trends, interest in books you might not have read or even thought about since high school English class is way up. This includes some of the standard books you'd find on Rory Gilmore's reading list, like "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë and "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, but some titles surging in popularity are unusual picks for the book girlies. (Amanda Manen)
Harvard Magazine interviews the writer Tara Menon:
Andrés Muedano: What are you working on next?
Tara Menon: I am working on both a second academic book and a second novel. My academic book is an exploration of anger and the novel. I have noticed that readers often label books “angry”—they might say, for instance, “Jane Eyre is a furious book” or “Naipaul’s novels seethe with rage,” but it’s never been clear exactly how they make those determinations. In my book, I ask: what does it mean for anger to be embedded in a novel, rather than simply expressed by one of its characters? What are the formal characteristics of anger in fiction?
Los Angeles Times interviews Samantha Morton on her role as Circe in The Odyssey 2026: 
But Morton doesn’t believe in bogging herself down in research, not since starring in a British TV production of “Jane Eyre” when she was 19 and carried around a heavily highlighted copy of the Charlotte Brontë book, despairing whenever the adaptation deviated from the novel. From that point on, she stuck to the script and her own imagination. (...)
Morton first came to New York as a teen to do press for “Emma,” returned a year later to promote “Jane Eyre” and then couldn’t bring herself to leave, “sofa-surfing” at friends’ apartments so she could immerse herself in the city.
“New York stole my heart,” Morton says. It’s where she first got into literature, devouring Charles Bukowski, roaming the aisles at the St. Mark’s Bookshop, checking out movies from Kim’s Video and gobbling hash browns and eggs over easy at the Waverly Diner. (Glenn Whipp)
Dorset Magazine interviews the actor Martin Clunes, Mr Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights 2026:
Sometimes the right project is simply too good to turn down. Wuthering Heights was a fantastic job – I loved every minute of it, and Margot and Jacob and everyone on that production were lovely. I’m lucky that I still get offered work that interests me. The moment it stops being enjoyable, I’ll stop doing it. (Claire Bowman)
INA (France) traces how Kate Bush's 1978 hit "Wuthering Heights
" spawned a worldwide annual tradition of red-dress flash mobs, with two taking place in France this year: at the Bon-Repos abbey on July 25 and in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris on July 26, 2026.
Sa reconnaissance viendra bien plus tard. Au cours du XXe siècle, Les Hauts de Hurlevent s'impose progressivement comme un classique de la littérature mondiale grâce à ses nombreuses adaptations au cinéma, à la télévision et au théâtre. Kate Bush participera, elle aussi, à cette redécouverte. Car, contrairement au roman dont elle est inspirée, sa chanson connaît un triomphe immédiat. Sortie en pleine période où s'affrontent le punk et le disco, à rebours des tendances dominantes, elle s'impose en tête des classements britanniques et détrône même le groupe ABBA. Du jamais vu pour un premier titre et une artiste inconnue.
Lorsque Kate Bush découvre ce récit gothique, ce n'est pas en ouvrant le roman d'Emily Brontë, mais en regardant une adaptation télévisée diffusée par la BBC. Elle n'a alors que 16 ans. Fascinée par l'atmosphère sombre du récit et la puissance tragique de ses personnages, elle finit par lire le livre et se sent particulièrement proche de son héroïne, Catherine, surnommée Cathy, dont elle partage le prénom. Elle décide alors de transposer l'histoire dans le langage de la pop.
À l'âge de 18 ans, elle compose Wuthering Heights en une seule soirée, au piano. Sa chanson s'inspire d'une scène emblématique du roman : celle où le fantôme de Cathy apparaît à la fenêtre de Heathcliff et tente de le convaincre de la laisser entrer. Kate Bush prête alors sa voix à l'héroïne disparue : « Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home, I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window... » ("Heathcliff, c'est moi, Cathy. Je suis revenue. J'ai si froid. Laisse-moi entrer par ta fenêtre..."). En quatre minutes de musique, la chanteuse parvient ainsi à condenser toute la passion, la mélancolie et le mystère qui font encore aujourd'hui la force du roman d'Emily Brontë. (...)
Si Wuthering Heights est devenue une chanson culte, c'est autant grâce à la voix singulière de Kate Bush qu'à l'univers visuel qu'elle a construit autour du morceau. Son timbre aigu, presque irréel, se mêle à des sonorités éthérées pour donner vie à un personnage fantomatique directement inspiré de Cathy Earnshaw. Mais c'est surtout le clip qui va marquer durablement les esprits.
Conçue avec le chorégraphe Lindsay Kemp, célèbre pour avoir notamment formé David Bowie à l'art du mime, la chorégraphie contribue à l'atmosphère hypnotique du morceau. Dans une première version du clip, Kate Bush apparaît sous les traits du fantôme de Cathy, vêtue d'une longue robe blanche vaporeuse. Filmée au ralenti, évoluant parmi des effets visuels qui accentuent l'étrangeté de la scène, elle semble flotter entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts.
Une seconde vidéo est ensuite réalisée pour le marché américain. Le décor change, mais pas la chorégraphie. Cette fois, la chanteuse danse au milieu de la campagne anglaise dans une robe rouge flamboyante qui deviendra sa tenue emblématique. Plus épurée et plus facilement identifiable, cette version va peu à peu s'imposer dans l'imaginaire collectif et devenir l'une des images les plus célèbres de la culture pop britannique.
C'est d'ailleurs ce clip qui est à l'origine de The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. Chaque année, à l'occasion de l'anniversaire de Kate Bush - et d’Emily Brontë, née un 30 juillet, elle-aussi - des milliers de fans à travers le monde enfilent la fameuse robe rouge et reproduisent les gestes envoûtants de la chanteuse. De Londres à Melbourne, en passant par Paris, cette chorégraphie née à la fin des années 1970 continue ainsi de rassembler. L'archive ci-dessous nous entraîne dans l'événement organisé en Bretagne en 2024. (Florence Dartois) (Translation)
Several news outlets talk about the last edition of Jeopardy! (July 23, 2026):
Final Jeopardy today was in the category “AUTHORS“
The clue: “She sometimes signed letters “Charles Thunder”
The answer: “Who is Charlotte Brontë?” (Lizzy Buczak in Parade)
The Line of Best Fit describes the latest album of Gloria de Oliveira, The Lying Swans:
The album was recorded across Iceland, New York, and Berlin, and draws inspiration from poetry, literature and visual art. de Oliveira weaves in mythology with references to Milton's Paradise Lost and the poetry of John Keats, Emily Brontë and Anne Sexton. (Kayla Sandiford)
In an article behind a paywall, La Voz de Galicia (Spain) says:
En esto se gastan los jóvenes lucenses su Bono Cultural: «El "GTA VI" y "Cumbres Borrascosas" son los grandes éxitos de este 2026» (...) Cuentan que esta ayuda cultural es más usada por las chicas que por los chicos, aunque esto no significa que estos últimos no acudan a comprar obras literarias al establecimiento. «Ellas vienen, principalmente, en busca de novelas románticas. Cumbres borrascosas vendió muchos ejemplares por el estreno de la adaptación en cines». (Andrés Quintán) (Translation)

An AI includes Jane Eyre in a list of great stories never getting old on Bookclub. The Brussels Brontë Blog recounts a guided day trip through lesser-known Brontë sites in Lancashire and West Yorkshire — Cowan Bridge, Leck, Tunstall Church, Kirkby Lonsdale, and Wycoller — checking off several long-sought locations tied to the sisters' lives and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.