Fri 25 Sept, 6:00pmOld School RoomCelebrate the opening of the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival 2026 with us! The festival will begin with a special reading from poet Emma Conally-Barklem, before we welcome to the stage screenwriter and director Sally Wainwright.2026 marks 10 years since the release of Sally Wainwright’s Brontë biopic, To Walk Invisible. The BBC film marked Sally's first venture into historical drama, beginning in 1845 with the sisters' journey to publication, to Branwell Brontë's death in 1848. Her screenplay is infused with quotes taken directly from letters or diary entries by the Brontës, which gave authenticity to the dialogue.Since then, she has seen success with dramas such as Gentleman Jack, Riot Women, Renegade Nell and the concluding chapter of Happy Valley. This evening we will look back at her career highlights and, of course, delve into the making of ‘To Walk Invisible’
Sat 26 Sept, 10:30amOld School RoomDo you have a taste for eerie moorland mansions and dark, mysterious secrets?If so, then this delightfully gothic panel with authors Essie Fox, Heba Al-Wasity and Stephanie Bramwell Lawes will help you discover more about creating the perfect gothic novel...“Now, eighteen years later, Catherine rises from her grave to tell her story – and seek redemption.” Essie Fox is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Her latest novel, Catherine: A retelling of Wuthering Heights, reimagines Emily Brontë's fictional world and tells the famous story from Catherine Earnshaw's point of view. Essie was born and raised in Herefordshire. After studying English Literature at Sheffield University, she moved to London and began a career in magazine and book publishing – before becoming self-employed in commercial art design. Always an avid reader, she now writes historical novels. She also hosts a podcast called Talking the Gothic.“All paths lead to Weavingshaw, a cursed estate on the moors.” Heba Al-Wasity’s debut novel Weavingshaw is a Sunday Times bestseller. This gothic fantasy novel envelops its reader into an atmospheric world, with ghostly encounters and a dark mystery to unfold. Heba Al-Wasity was inspired to write by her own experiences of being born an Iraqi refugee in Libya, growing up in Canada, and attending medical school in the UK. Working as a junior doctor in emergency care and several psychiatric inpatient units, Heba gained first-hand insight into how poverty and deprivation can lead to social inequalities. She is based in Greater Manchester.“There – suddenly – was Thornby Manor. I would never forget the first time I saw it…a talisman of Darkness. An emblem of death.” Stephanie Bramwell-Lawes' debut novel Thornby Manor was inspired by her love of the Brontës and Daphne Du Maurier literary works. Stephanie lures the reader into the great house that “looms above a mist-shrouded lake, its corridors heavy with secrets.” Stephanie Bramwell-Lawes grew up in the historic city of Bath and studied History and Ancient History at Exeter University. A lifelong love of literature led to a career in publishing in 2009, and her passion for books has only continued to grow ever since. Her favourite novels include Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and anything by Tracy Chevalier. She currently lives in Warwickshire.
Sat 26 Sept, 12:30pmOld School RoomJoin us as we welcome author Dr Sharon Blackie to the festival stage for a discussion about her work and her latest book Ripening.Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning and internationally bestselling author, speaker and teacher. As a psychologist and mythologist, the transformative power of story has been at the heart of her work for decades, and she is a recognised pioneer in reclaiming women’s stories. As well as writing seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, her work has frequently appeared on the BBC and in international media outlets. Sharon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Member of the UK Association of Jungian Analysts, and has taught and lectured at many academic institutions and cultural festivals around the world. Her much-loved publication The Art of Enchantment is a global Substack Bestseller.
Sat 26 Sept, 2:30pmOld School RoomWe will be travelling back in time with authors Liz Flanagan and Anna Caig, as they shed light on how they recreated worlds from the past in their latest novels...Liz Flanagan is an award-winning author from Hebden Bridge. When We Were Divided is her first historical novel for adults. Although her previous books are for children, all her novels combine vivid landscapes and emotional depth with fast-paced, gripping stories. She teaches Creative Writing in many different settings, has worked as a book editor and as Centre Director for Arvon, at Ted Hughes’s former home, Lumb Bank.Anna Caig is obsessed with the hidden voices of women and a compelling underdog story. Luckily, history offers plenty of these. She’s inspired by the glimpses into a woman’s life we get before the historical record moves onto something considered much more important. What was happening in these gaps? Anna grew up one of three sisters in the wilds of West Yorkshire, scribbling novels into notebooks - and Wuthering Heights is her favourite book. She now lives in the ‘howling wilderness’ of the Peak District. Her debut novel, The Wise Witch of Orkney, was inspired by her love of the northern isles of Scotland, folklore, and passion for depicting women in their midlife and beyond, continuing to live rich, adventurous lives.
Sat 26 Sept, 4:00pmOld School RoomFollowing the success of the Wandering Imaginations project in 2025, we're continuing our literary partnership with Bradford Culture Company and Writers Project of Ghana. Literary Sisters: Accra to Bradford features writers Barsa Ray and Tabitha Bast from Bradford, and Emma Ofosua and Priscilla Adipa from Accra, as they share new work developed as part of this international writers exchange.The project is supported by the British Council and features a companion event at Pa Gya! Festival in Accra, Ghana, in October.
Sat 26 Sept, 5:30pmOld School RoomWe're closing a wonderful day of events with an evening of poetry by Emma Conally-Barklem. Emma’s latest collection, The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë's Hawk, was released earlier this year and had its book launch at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. This collection takes its creative inspiration from one of the few details known about Emily Brontë. It is believed she rescued then kept a Merlin hawk who she called Nero. Conally-Barklem explores what it means to be captive and to be wild, the condition of the falconer, its lore and mystery through the enigmatic Brontë sister who stands both inside and outside of time.Emma is an author, poet and yoga teacher based in Yorkshire. She is the author of four collections. Her first collection The Ridings was curated into an exhibition in her hometown, Bradford. Hymns from the Sisters was written after a residency at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. She was a core poet for the BBC’s Contains Strong Language Poetry Festival Bradford 2025 and was a guest of Radio 4’s Front Row, where she talked about the Brontës.
Sun 27 Sept, 10:30amOld School RoomWe are delighted to welcome screenwriter and playwright Miriam Battye to the Brontë Women's Writing Festival! Miriam is currently working on a new adaptation of Jane Eyre with Working Title, starring Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education, The White Lotus). She was the first writer-in-residence at Sister Pictures and is the recipient of the 2020 Harold Pinter Commission.Miriam Battye's plays include Strategic Love Play, Scenes with Girls, and The Virgins (starring Ella Bruccoleri), which was released in early 2026. Her plays have been published by Faber. Miriam's screenwriting credits include Dead Ringers, Woman in the Wall and Succession, which earned her a WGA award. Her feature film debut, Extra Geography, is out this year.
Sun 27 Sept, 12:30pmOld School RoomIn Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester marries the daughter of a West India planter and merchant in Spanish Town, Jamaica, for a large sum of £30,000...To coincide with our 2026 exhibition The Colonial Brontës, we're hosting an insightful conversation with historian Miranda Kaufmann. Her latest book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery (2025), follows the lives of nine heiresses, tracing their tainted money from its origins in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Kaufmann reveals a murky world of inheritance, fortune-hunting and human exploitation.Dr. Miranda Kaufmann is the author of the Wolfson History Prize and Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize-shortlisted book Black Tudors: The Untold Story (2017). She read History at Christ Church, Oxford and is now an Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she co-convened the What's Happening in Black British History? workshop series from 2014 to 2022. Miranda also served as Lead Historian for the Colonial Countryside project with National Trust houses from 2019 to 2021; and has taken her work into schools with her Teaching Black Tudors project and to the world with her Black Tudors: The Untold Story course with FutureLearn.
Sun 27 Sept, 2:00pmOld School RoomFind out how authors Wendy Pratt and Nic Wilson have approached memoir writing, and how nature and landscape helped them navigate challenging times through their lives.Wendy Pratt is an author, poet and editor. She writes about nature as refuge, and how belonging to landscape gives you a place to connect to your ancestors, even if those ancestors are only joined to you through the land you walk on. The Ghost Lake was published by The Borough Press in 2024. Her latest collection of poetry, Blackbird Singing at Dusk was released in 2024, previous collection, When I Think of My Body as a Horse, won the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition 2020.Nic is a writer, editor, Guardian country diarist and author of the nature memoir Land Beneath the Waves, one of BBC Wildlife Magazine's Best Nature Books of 2025. She works for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, specialising in wildlife, wild plants and environmental issues. Nic has nearly 30 years’ writing experience spanning academia, education, journalism and narrative non-fiction.
Sun 27 Sept, 3:30pmBrontë Event Space in the Old School RoomThe Brontës were renowned for their powerful portrayal of moorland, which for centuries had been dismissed as bleak, empty places. Yet, with their blanket bogs, folklore, and habitats, they are some of our most fascinating and vital landscapes.In this friendly 120-minute writing workshop led by authors Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe) and Anna Chilvers (Bluemoose), we’ll read classic and contemporary literature about moors and the unique plants and creatures who live on them - and we’ll write our own stories and poetry in response. Finally, we’ll acknowledge some of the threats facing moors - and together we’ll explore how we can protect them. From experts to first-time writers, everyone is welcome!Anna Chilvers (Bluemoose) and Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe) are popular writers and facilitators who have authored and edited 14 books between them - including novels, poetry and creative non-fiction. In 2025, they co-edited The Book of Bogs (Little Toller) featuring over 40 leading writers of ecology, nature and place. Anna and Clare facilitate Bogwise: a series of bog-themed writing workshops, residentials and reading events. They are also the co-authors of b(l)og, the popular bog-themed substack!
Mon 28 Sept, 7:00pmOnline via zoomThis September, the British Library is releasing a very special edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.The Wuthering Heights presentation box contains facsimile volumes of the first edition of the novel and Emily’s personal copy of Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, together with copies of pages from her two manuscript poetry notebooks. Each element has been created directly from the originals held in the British Library’s collections, ensuring exceptional fidelity to the source material. The covers are carefully modelled on bindings from the period, evoking the look and feel of these mid-nineteenth-century literary treasures.We will be joined by Alison Moss from the publishing team, and curators Maddy Smith and Catherine Angerson at the British Library to discuss the process and development of their upcoming publication.
Tue 29 Sept, 7:30pmOnline via zoom'Something is happening at Westerley. Things where they shouldn't be. The shadow of a maid sweeping in the dawn light. But is the house really haunted?'Tune in for a special Festival online event with author Lauren Mooney. Lauren’s debut novel Service was inspired by her six years working as a personal assistant. The novel follows Danielle. She's broke, hates her job as PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie, and now a break-up has left her with nowhere to live. It comes as a surprise when Jeannie suggests that Danielle stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where she grew up. They need someone to look after the place anyway.Lauren Mooney is a writer from the East Midlands. She works in theatre and audio drama, and has co-run Kandinsky Theatre Company since 2015, making award-winning shows across the UK and Europe. She is a graduate of UEA's Creative Writing Prose MA, where she held the David Higham Scholarship. She lives in East Sussex with her husband Stewart and their tortoise, Sacher Tort.
Southwark Playhouse has posted a trailer for its production of Jane Eyre, offering a first glimpse of the musical currently running at Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The clip previews the atmosphere of the staging, which brings Charlotte Brontë's novel to the stage through what the theatre describes as a lush and sweeping score. [...]The staging marks the UK premiere of the musical, running at Southwark Playhouse Elephant through 24 October. The trailer was shot by videographer Adam Nightingale. (Michael Major)
The show by Sarah Gordon, which premiered in 2024 at The National Theatre London, will be performed at Theatre@41 on Monkgate from the 13th to the 17th October. It tells the story of the rivalry between the Brontë sisters from Charlotte’s perspective, and reveals some truths behind why we only know Anne as the ‘third sister’, or the Other Other Brontë.Director Claire Morley, who last directed for YSCP in 2014 with Brecht’s Drums in the Night says:“Directing Underdog really appealed to me because whilst it tells the story of this incredible literary family who are so entwined in the national (and Yorkshire!) cultural fabric, it doesn’t put them on a pedestal. We see them as flawed human beings. The dialogue and stagecraft is also very contemporary, which I love. I am looking forward to reflecting that further in aspects like the soundtrack. Expect current chart hits rather than choral music!”Lara Stafford (last seen as the title character in Anne Boleyn with Black Treacle Theatre at Theatre@41), YSCP regular Jess Murray, and University of York MA Theatre-Making student Millie Rhodes lead the cast as Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. They are joined by a multi-rolling ensemble made up of local actors Nick Patrick Jones, Jon Cook, Maggie Smales, and Pamela Gourley.“We’re so thrilled to bring this very Yorkshire literary play to Theatre@41 this October,” says YSCP Chair, Natalie Roe, “We went on a cast and crew trip to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, which helped everyone get into the world of the play. There’s such a great energy in the team already, we can’t wait to share Underdog with you.”
Ce livre d'une journaliste et chroniqueuse déjà connue du prix Goncourt se dessine comme un des favoris du concours. [...]Il s'appelle Je, mais ce n'est pas une autobiographie. Même si on ne connait pas la vie personnelle de l'autrice, il ne peut pas s'agir de cela car le roman se passe en 1831. On lit : "Île de la Jamaïque, 1831. Antoinette Cosway, créole de bonne famille, s'éprend d'Edward Rochester, un Anglais aussi impénétrable que fascinant. Mais à la séduction enflammée succèdent rapidement des scènes vénéneuses, où les baisers sont des blessures, où toute une société livre la jeune femme à son bourreau.Des années plus tard, Antoinette tente de conquérir sa propre histoire. "JE" se situe à mi-chemin entre roman victorien et thriller intimiste contemporain. Lilia Hassaine s'est inspirée du personnage de la première femme de Rochester dans Jane Eyre, le roman culte de Charlotte Brontë. Elle a choisi de lui donner une voix, un corps, une destinée." [...]Avec déjà une sélection par le passé, Lilia Hassaine devient déjà une habituée de ce concours. Cela pourrait l'avantager. Avec toutes les autres distinctions que le livre a déjà, il a vraiment ses chances. Enfin, la référence à un classique de la littérature peut aussi l'avantager. Outre cela, il n'est pas pour autant premier des ventes. Pour l'instant, C'était ça ou mourir D'Orélien Thélyson est numéro un des ventes, considéré comme le phénomène littéraire de l'année, il s'apparente comme le favori qui au final perd. Alors que "Je" est dixième du classement Datalib.En tout cas, les lecteurs semblent adorer. Babelio lui donne la belle note de 4,25/5. On peut lire entre autres : Livre de la rentrée littéraire 2026 et ce fut un coup de cœur ! Un livre magnifique, une plume efficace, un récit captivant. (…) Le roman met en lumière une autre vision de cette femme, victime de son temps, du patriarcat, de son époux, et des machinations l'ayant conduite à être enfermée et considérée comme "folle". Je ne pouvais pas lâcher ce livre." (Paul Mocka) (Translation)
HaworthA town near Bradford, Haworth is surrounded by stunning autumn walking trails. Whether you want to see the Brontë Waterfall or just the town itsel, the Victorian style of the town never fails to give off a great autumnal feel. (Sebastian McCormick)
Comme l’écrit Lilia Hassaine, en ouverture de JE, son quatrième roman, où elle s’attache à remettre en lumière un personnage mystérieux évoqué par Charlotte Brontë dans Jane Eyre (1847), le procédé fait du récit d’une « histoire d’hier » une « histoire d’aujourd’hui ». En effet, rappelle-t-elle, Jean Rhys (1890-1979) s’était emparée d’Antoinette, la première femme, enfermée et tenue pour folle, de Rochester. Dans La Prisonnière des Sargasses (Denoël, 1971), l’écrivaine anglaise l’avait, comme Charlotte Brontë elle-même, « regardée depuis son époque » et s’était « racontée à travers [elle] ». (Florence Bouchy) (Translation)
On September 26, Ofosua will join the Literary Sisters from Accra to Bradford panel discussion as part of the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival. Writers Tabitha Bast, Barsa Rea and Priscilla Adepa will also take part in the discussion. The panel is scheduled at the Old School Room on Church Street in Haworth.
by Claudine GaleaL'Arche Éditeur (Des Écrits pour la Parole)ISBN: 9782381980997February 2026Des fleurs plus brillantes plus féroces que la rose poussent sur la plusnoire des landes. Je suis la plus noire des landes tu es la plus noire demes fleurs. Viens Cathy approche n’aie pas peur.Romance hantée par ses propres personnages, Hurlevent carcasse est un récit choral, qui amplifie le livre d’Emily Brontë pour faire retentir sa puissante modernité. Ouvrage majeur de la littérature du XIXe siècle, écrit sous pseudonyme masculin, Les Hauts de Hurvelent s’est imposé comme texte canonique sur la passion amoureuse, la vengeance et la folie, un roman furieux et cruel.Claudine Galea plonge dans cette matière, entrelace des voix dans un corps-à-corps effréné et aiguise à l’os le récit d’amour fusionnel et de haine fatale. Explorant toutes les formes de domination à l’oeuvre, elle révèle le fondement colonial de cette histoire de passion, de mépris de classe et de haine de soi, au sein d’une société victorienne en pleine expansion capitaliste.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum has launched an exhibition marking the 10th anniversary of the BBC drama 'To Walk Invisible', which told the story of the Brontë sisters.Located at the Parsonage in Haworth the exhibition will run until December 31, 2026. It explores the making of the 2016 BBC drama, featuring costumes, props, set designs, and production notes.Mia Ferullo, digital engagement officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: "Over the past ten years To Walk Invisible has become a film cherished by many Brontë fans."It offers an authentic, well-researched interpretation of the sisters and their lives."We wanted to celebrate this anniversary by showcasing the creative team's process including a behind the scenes look at the screenplay, set design and costume design."The drama starred Finn Atkins as Charlotte Brontë, Charlie Murphy as Anne, Chloe Pirrie as Emily.Four original costumes designed by Tom Pye are on display in the museum’s period rooms, including a dress for each sister placed around the dining room table where they famously wrote their novels.An additional costume for Emily is exhibited in the kitchen.Ms Ferullo said: "In the dining room, we have Emily's lightning print dress, worn in the film by Chloe Pirrie."There is a story that while shopping in Bradford, Emily had selected a material with a lightning print on it, sadly the original dress no longer exists."The costume designer Tom Pye liked this anecdote and decided to recreate it for the film."She believes the costumes help visitors imagine the sisters as they once were.Ms Ferullo said: "I think displaying the costumes can help visitors visualise the family within the space, you can imagine the sisters walking around the dining room table discussing their writings."The cast were all similar heights to the original Brontë family, so you also get an idea of the height difference between them."Other artefacts from the drama on display include bonnets, Branwell’s top hat, and his nightshirt.Visitors can also see a recreation of the "Gun Group Portrait" of the siblings, concept art by set designer Grant Montgomery, and a prototype model of the Parsonage set.Ms Ferullo talked about director Sally Wainwrights aim to present the Brontë family in a way they hadn't been portrayed previously."She wanted to portray them as a real family, challenging some of the myths around them."She praised the production team’s dedication to authenticity, noting that Mr Montgomery measured every flagstone in the original Parsonage to ensure the replica set was as accurate as possible.It also sits alongside the museum’s ongoing exploration of Brontë screen adaptations.Props from Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming version of Wuthering Heights are already on display, and the museum has previously hosted exhibitions on cinematic interpretations of the Brontë family’s work from around the world. (Amelia Short)
Based in her studio in Pateley Bridge, the local artisan has already spent several years developing a single, monumental piece. She intends for it to eventually earn that prized status of a family heirloom through what she describes as the slow process of thinking.Joanne Gowan:I had the idea to produce a Wuthering Heights piece about two years ago when I moved to North Yorkshire, celebrating the first connection I had with the area from reading the Brontë novels from the age of 10.This Emily Brontë piece sort of ate into my subconscious on so many levels: spiritual ideas, eternal love, passion, the wild of the landscape, and the contrast of good and evil, all wrapped into one.When Gowan joins a curated group of the UK’s top contemporary jewellers and silversmiths for the three-day Acquire selling show at Ampleforth Abbey, visitors will have a rare, exclusive opportunity to view her work-in-progress. The creative journey behind the piece spans from the rugged Yorkshire moors to the historic gemstone cutting centers of Germany.Joanne Gowan:Initially, I took some images from illustrations of Cathy in early book editions and contacted my gem dealer in York, R.M. Weare. They sourced a highly talented gemstone carver in Idar-Oberstein, Germany.The rock crystal carving then took over six months to develop, with lots of input back and forth during the cutting process.Meanwhile, I re-read the novel several more times to narrow down the exact elements I wanted to include. After that, a lot of the designing happens in my head. Over the months I get a clear mental vision, and then on the right day, I sit down and work it all out on paper.The final design is a complex vignette, or picture piece, engineered to be worn as a high-end brooch or pendant, or displayed standalone as a miniature work of art. It captures the haunting, pivotal moment when Cathy appears at the window—a scene that defines the emotional landscape of the entire novel.Framed within a window meticulously carved from soapstone, the structure mimics the box bed window of Ponden Hall near Haworth, widely believed to be Emily Brontë’s real-world inspiration for the scene.Joanne Gowan:Cathy, rendered in rock crystal, will appear to be coming through the leaded glass. The Ash tree leaves knock against the window, representing the moment when Nelly speaks to Heathcliff on the morning of Cathy’s death and he leans against the tree. In the foreground sill is a sprig of Yew with its toxic red berries, representing the bridge between mortal death, endurance, and the supernatural spirit. Alongside it sits a bunch of yellow crocuses—the earliest spring flowers brought to Cathy’s bedside by Edgar Linton, representing renewal and hope. This beautifully ties to the end of the novel, when the children of Cathy and Heathcliff reach an eventual mutual connection.The breath-taking final piece will be constructed from a rich palette of premium materials: rock crystal, soapstone, sterling silver, 18ct yellow and red gold, black rhodium plating, platinum, vivid rubies, and yellow sapphires. [...]The original design sketch and the German-carved rock crystal component will be publicly displayed for the first time at the Acquire event, where the finished masterpiece will be open for official commission.Event DetailsThe design sketch and rock crystal carving will be on display at the annual Acquire exhibition, curated by Joanne Gowan.Venue: Alban House, Ampleforth Abbey estate, North York Moors, YO62 4ENDates: Friday 18th to Sunday 20th September 2026Opening Times: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM dailyAdmission: Free entry to the exhibition. The daily specialist guest talks curated by Susan Rumfitt are ticketed.
EXCLUSIVE: Literary classics such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are getting the microdrama treatment.This is through the latest entrant into the microdrama field, LoveHit, an L.A.-based studio and app focused on originals based on classic literary adaptations.LoveHit, which launches this month, has a vertical video slate built entirely from classic novels in the public domain. At launch, this will comprise Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby and Beauty and the Beast. More are in post-production, including Dangerous Liaisons, The Scarlett Letter and Les Misérables.Each has been written, shot and edited as both a vertical series and a horizontial features, with the latter being readied for TV and streaming buyers worldwide attending MIPCOM on October 12-15 in Cannes. Series will last roughly 50 episodes running between one and three minutes, with the films at 90 minutes.Actors appearing in the titles include microdrama regulars Meg Bush, Tyler Harlow and Sophie Swiszcz, along film, television and stage stars. These include Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts, who appears in Jane Eyre, which stars Raina Silver and Tyler Harlow. Ethan Vaughan and Jean Evans will star in Wuthering Heights, which is relocated to a present day American ranch. A vertical cut of the show launched on the LoveHit app on August 27 ahead of the full launch. [...]“There isn’t a market in the world where these titles need much of an introduction,” said Lenny Levi, CEO of LoveHit. “Every generation has adapted them, and every generation finds its own reason to connect with them. That’s what makes them evergreen.” (Jesse Whittock)
by Mariana Chajon OliverosPivot: Literary Journal, 11(1), 20-25 (2026)AbstractThis is a brief personal essay that critiques Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, provides a brief overview of the field of classic novel adaptation over the past thirty years and proposes questions that go outside of the well-known, “how do we create interest?”. In this essay, I consider what the future of film adaptation looks like, and how Hollywood can move towards capitalizing on universal aspects of classic novels, as well as how it can utilize modern systems of knowledge, such as psychology, critical race theory, sexuality and gender studies, to provide an added layer of meaning, or represent what goes unsaid in many works of classic literature. Fennell’s adaptation serves as a jumping-off point to assess the current challenges of literary adaptations, and the novel Wuthering Heights is used as an example for creative ideation.
À travers le destin d’Antoinette Cosway, personnage de Jane Eyre – dont les initiales, J. E., résonnent dans le titre –, Lilia Hassaine explore les mécanismes de l’effacement, de l’enfermement et de la reconquête de soi. En Jamaïque, en 1831, Antoinette Cosway s’éprend d’Edward Rochester, mais l’élan amoureux cède peu à peu la place à la domination et à la violence. Celle que l’histoire a reléguée au silence entreprend alors de reprendre possession de son propre récit.Harper’s Bazaar : Quel a été le point de départ de JE ?Lilia Hassaine : J’ai découvert Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë à l’adolescence. À l’époque, j’y ai lu exactement ce qu’on m’avait appris à y voir : l’histoire d’amour entre une jeune orpheline devenue gouvernante et le maître du manoir anglais où elle travaille. Mais au moment du mariage, elle découvre qu’une femme est séquestrée dans ce manoir et que cet homme est déjà marié avec celle-ci. Lui affirme que son épouse est folle, dangereuse, qu’il l’a enfermée pour son propre bien ; en somme, il se présente comme la véritable victime de l’histoire. Et puis je l’ai relu il y a deux ans, et je n’ai pas lu le même livre. Mon regard de lectrice s’était complètement déplacé.H.B. : Dans quel sens ?L.H. : Je me suis demandé ce qui avait changé pour que je ne voie plus que cette femme, au point qu’elle devienne une obsession. Elle occupe très peu de place dans Jane Eyre. Elle est décrite comme une créature sauvage, menaçante, avec des traits qui relèvent parfois d’une représentation profondément marquée par les préjugés raciaux de l’époque. À la relecture, de nombreux éléments m’ont mise mal à l’aise. J’ai eu envie de comprendre cette femme, de lui redonner une histoire. Qu’avait-elle vécu avant d’être réduite à cette figure monstrueuse ? Cela a fait naître une autre réflexion. Si mon regard avait changé, c’était sans doute parce que mes propres expériences avaient transformé ma manière de lire. Mais ce déplacement tenait aussi à quelque chose de plus collectif : l’époque elle-même avait changé, et avec elle les questions que nous posons aux textes.H.B. : Vous écrivez : “Cette œuvre ne fut pas l’œuvre d’un seul homme ; il faut toute une société pour rendre possible une telle entreprise.” Cette phrase semble entrer en écho avec des réalités très actuelles. Aviez-vous cette dimension contemporaine en tête dès le début de l’écriture, ou s’est-elle imposée progressivement ?L.H. : Lorsque j’ai écrit JE, les affaires Bruel ou Lyhanna n’avaient pas encore éclaté, mais cette question me révoltait déjà. Pour moi, les affaires Epstein et toutes les autres n’ont jamais été des cas isolés : elles révèlent un problème systémique, profondément sociétal. On les a longtemps réduites à des histoires d’intimité, au nom de la vie privée, comme si s’y intéresser relevait de l’intrusion. Or c’est à l’échelle de la société qu’il faut penser ces violences. Elles ne peuvent exister sans une forme de complicité collective : il y a ceux qui savaient, ceux qui se sont tus, ceux qui ont préféré regarder ailleurs. Aujourd’hui, nous comprenons mieux certains mécanismes de ces violences, mais il reste beaucoup à faire. (Florine Delcourt) (Translation)
8 'Wuthering Heights' (1847)Some people might try telling you that Wuthering Heights is a romantic novel, but sometimes, some people are wrong. There are feelings of longing and desire here, but the passionate stuff is also destructive, and Wuthering Heights is more focused on looking at the lingering effects of trauma, alongside exploring prejudice, class, inequality, and all sorts of other things that aren’t particularly romantic.There are some adaptations of Emily Brontë’s source material that lean into romance, or have things play out as a love story of a bittersweet nature, but in the book, there is not much love, traditional or otherwise. In its place, you do get a ton of sadness in Wuthering Heights, and it’s remarkable how much of that emotional devastation still packs a punch close to two centuries on from the novel’s publication. (Jeremy Urquhart)
9. Jane Eyre from Jane EyreFor those who want their Halloween costume to look like it belongs in a moody period drama, say hello to Jane Eyre. Jane’s wardrobe is understated, which actually makes this a pretty easy costume to recreate. Look for a long black, gray, or dark-colored dress with a high neckline and simple silhouette. Add a book, a ribbon, or an old-fashioned-looking bag, and you’re ready to wander around Halloween parties looking like you’ve just escaped Thornfield Hall. (Danielle Okogho)
As I stood, packed into a sea of commuters, a man in full tweed, thick-rimmed glasses and freshly polished brogues stepped onto the tube/bus beside me and pulled out a battered, Penguin vintage paperback. It could have been a novel such as Jane Eyre, but instead he pulled out the Holy Bible. (Iona Lowe)
Bringing Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to the stage is no easy feat, squeezing in all the twists and turns of the classic novel into something an audience can sit through in one evening.But Conn Artists Theatre Company's latest production at Theatre Royal Winchester offers an engaging retelling of one of literature's most enduring love stories.This adaptation remains faithful to the source material, following Jane's journey from an unhappy childhood to her employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets the brooding and enigmatic Edward Rochester.The first half is a little slow-going as the production carefully establishes the characters and their relationships. While it takes time to build momentum, the groundwork pays off as the drama unfolds.After the interval, the pace quickens considerably, and the audience is drawn into a gothic tale packed with romance, secrets and heartbreak. Long-hidden truths emerge, relationships are tested, and emotions run high as the story races towards its dramatic conclusion.Evie Depledge delivers a convincing performance as Jane Eyre, capturing both the character's quiet determination and emotional strength. Ross Muir is equally compelling as Edward Rochester, bringing passion and intensity to the role while conveying the character's troubled past and inner conflict.The cast makes effective use of a relatively simple set, allowing the performances and storytelling to take centre stage. Atmospheric lighting and clever staging help create the moody gothic atmosphere that fans of the novel will recognise.The production reaches its peak during the fiery climax, with the drama surrounding Thornfield Hall providing some of the evening's most memorable moments. The final image of Jane and Rochester walking away together against the backdrop of a burning house is both striking and moving, bringing the story to a satisfying close.While the first half occasionally lacks urgency, the gripping second act more than makes up for it. With its mix of love, loss, twists and redemption, this production successfully brings a classic story to life for a modern audience. [...]For lovers of classic literature and period drama, this adaptation is well worth catching while it is on the road. (Kimberley Barber)
Dans son quatrième roman, Lilia Hassaine s’attaque à l’un des mythes de la littérature victorienne : Bertha Mason, l’épouse séquestrée d’Edward Rochester dans « Jane Eyre ». Un acte de réparation littéraire tout autant qu’une radioscopie de l’emprise conjugale.En 1847, Charlotte Brontë dessinait dans « Jane Eyre » les contours d’une créature terrifiante : la « folle du grenier ». Tapie dans l’ombre du manoir de Thornfield Hall, Bertha Mason incarnait l’obstacle à la romance de l’héroïne. Un siècle plus tard, en 1966, Jean Rhys accomplissait un premier geste d’affranchissement avec « La Prisonnière des Sargasses », en restituant son nom créole – Antoinette Cosway – et en retraçant son enfance jamaïcaine ainsi que son déracinement. Lilia Hassaine choisit, quant à elle, de s’immerger au cœur de la matrice du drame : la relation avec Rochester et la mécanique du dessaisissement de soi. Bien plus qu’une simple relecture d’un classique, « Je » offre une subtile analyse de l’emprise et du « gaslighting ». Le récit s’ouvre en Jamaïque, alors que l’esclavage touche à sa fin. Antoinette y croise d’abord le regard d’Edward Rochester. Lors d’un bal en 1831, une scène de séduction à la sensualité maîtrisée scelle le piège. Le futur maître de Thornfield lui offre une part de gâteau au citron : « J’ouvris les lèvres. N’opposais aucune résistance. Le glaçage fondit sur ma langue, sucré, acide, et pour la première fois je vis Edward, le visage nu, dépouillé de son masque sévère. »L’attirance des corps fait vite place à la jalousie, la possession, puis au mépris. Le premier meurtre est de nature symbolique. En rentrant en Angleterre, Rochester lui confisque son nom : « Le dépouillement patronymique constitue le premier acte d’effacement : en rebaptisant arbitrairement son épouse Bertha, le maître des lieux lui retire son ancrage créole pour la réduire au silence. » Rochester ne se contente pas d’enfermer son épouse : il détruit patiemment son assise identitaire. Le doute inoculé finit par dissoudre toute certitude intime.Lilia Hassaine montre avec une acuité toute contemporaine les ressorts de la manipulation mentale. Le véritable effroi ne provient pas tant de la séquestration physique que du silence complice de la communauté. De la haute société coloniale jusqu’à la domesticité anglaise, chacun observe, se tait et valide l’arbitraire sous couvert de préservation des convenances. La violence apparaît alors dans toute sa dimension systémique : elle repose sur l’indifférence collective. [...]Lilia Hassaine confirme son talent de romancière par sa calme maîtrise des phrases, tantôt doucement poétiques, tantôt couperets, comme mimétiques d’un étouffement progressif. Un roman qui se lit d’une traite, solidement structuré, fort et obsédant. Le lecteur, avide, est happé dans l’engrenage. L’une des grandes réussites de la rentrée qui devrait séduire autant le public que les jurés des prix littéraires. (Translation)
Saban Films released the first trailer for Wuthering Heights: House of the Damned on September 1, 2026, ahead of its October 16 VOD and digital debut — a horror adaptation that strips Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of all romantic ambiguity and replaces it with a literal agenda: ritual murder, a ghost that hungers for a living body, and a visitor who slowly loses his mind. The film arrives in a specific scientific moment. A peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience in April 2026 confirmed that infrasound — sound below human hearing — raises cortisol levels and shifts mood, offering a plausible psychoacoustic mechanism for exactly the kind of environmental deterioration the film dramatizes. Meanwhile, the State of Brain Emulation Report 2025 concluded that the question of whether consciousness can survive substrate transfer — whether a person can truly migrate from one body to another — remains unanswered, with a minimum of thirty to forty years of research still needed. Gothic horror has always been the cultural form we use to hold open questions that philosophy and science haven't closed. In 2026, the specific questions House of the Damned dramatizes are being asked in actual laboratories, and the answers are not in yet. (...)Wuthering Heights: House of the Damned is the first entry in a planned slate of literary horror adaptations called "Gowns and Gore," produced by ScaryContent at the 2025 AFM (Munich/Los Angeles) and distributed by Saban Films. Director Becca Hirani — also credited as Rebecca J. Matthews — and screenwriter Liana Failla keep the novel's skeleton but literalize everything Brontë left ambiguous. In Brontë's original, Catherine's ghost appears to Lockwood in Chapter 3, her child-hand clawing at the frosted window — a single unnerving scene that the novel never fully explains. In Hirani's version, that ambiguity becomes an engine. Catherine's ghost is not incidental to the story; she is its driving force, and Heathcliff is her instrument.Can Consciousness Migrate? Gothic Horror's Central Question Is Now a Research ProgramHeathcliff is not mourning Catherine. He is running what the film's synopsis describes as a deliberate operation: feeding her ghost enough "bloodlust" through human sacrifice to accumulate the force necessary for her to occupy Lockwood's living body. This is soul transference treated as a directed technical project — with a goal, a method, and a willing technician.The question of whether consciousness can transfer between substrates is among the most actively contested in contemporary neuroscience. The State of Brain Emulation Report 2025, authored by Zanichelli et al. and released on arXiv (2510.15745), assessed twenty years of progress in three areas — neural recording, brain structure mapping, and computational modeling — and found that the field has advanced substantially while remaining at least thirty to forty years from human-scale application. Near-complete connectomes now exist for zebrafish larvae and fruit flies. For humans, the gap is measured in orders of magnitude: human brains contain roughly one hundred billion neurons; current technology can simultaneously monitor thousands.The deeper problem is not scale but continuity. Even if a complete brain scan were possible, the "continuity problem" remains unresolved: would the entity instantiated on a new substrate be the original person, or a copy who merely believes they are? This is precisely the philosophical question Brontë staged in her novel, and precisely the question that makes Heathcliff's project horrifying rather than tender. He is attempting a transfer whose success cannot be verified from the inside.What Is the Real Science Behind Haunted Houses?Lockwood's trajectory in the film — progressive illness, delusion, altered perception — maps onto a well-documented real-world phenomenon that psychologists and neuroscientists have studied with increasing rigor. [...]Gothic Literature as Cultural Technology: Why Brontë Wrote This Story in 1847The literary scholar Jerrold E. Hogle, in the Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, identifies a defining structural feature of the genre: the depiction of horrifying events in Gothic fiction "often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts." Gothic is not escapism. It is the cultural form human societies have repeatedly reached for when they need to express something that cannot be stated in ordinary social registers.Ellen Moers coined the term "Female Gothic" in her 1976 study Literary Women, specifically identifying Brontë's Wuthering Heights as a prime example of Gothic fiction deployed to give form to female experience that Victorian propriety made unspeakable. Moers argued that Catherine's love for Heathcliff should be understood as an expression of pre-adolescent freedom and erotic attachment that the social architecture of 19th-century England had no legitimate channel for. The Gothic frame is what allowed Brontë to depict this love at all — and to show its consequences — without either endorsing or condemning it. The horror is the form the truth takes.Emily Brontë wrote her novel under the pseudonym Ellis Bell — a woman writing in an era when female authorship faced institutional skepticism — and the Yorkshire moors she depicted were her actual environment, not metaphor. Scholar Carol Senf has argued that Gothic literature "was a counterbalance produced by writers and thinkers who felt limited by [a confident rationalist worldview] and recognized that the power of the past, the irrational, and the violent continue to sway in the world."House of the Damned sits within a contemporary tradition that film scholar David Church, in Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation, describes as merging "art-cinema style with decentered genre tropes, privileging lingering dread and visual restraint over audiovisual shocks and monstrous disgust" — though ScaryContent's own "Gowns and Gore" branding suggests a franker relationship with spectacle. The production company describes its slate as the systematic literalization of the darkest energies inside canonical 19th-century novels. House of the Damned is the argument that what was always inside Brontë was horror — that the Gothic frame was not decoration but container, and that the film is showing what happens when you take the lid off.The film was produced in the Yorkshire region near the actual moorland landscape that inspired Brontë — a production choice that activates what theorists of place call geopoetic memory: a site-specific emotional charge accumulated through repeated cultural inscription. Filming on these moors does not merely provide scenic authenticity. It claims the location's cultural inheritance. [...]Is Wuthering Heights Actually a Horror Story?This question has a serious scholarly answer. Feminist critic Ellen Moers specifically noted in her foundational analysis that the novel's early readers were struck by what The Athenaeum called "shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity" and details of "cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance." Charlotte Brontë, in her posthumous 1850 preface to her sister's novel, asked apologetically: "Whether it is right or advisable to create things like Heathcliff, I do not know."The Gothic genre, as classified in the Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, is characterized precisely by "an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present" — all features of Brontë's novel. The word "wuthering" is etymologically a weather-descriptor: the house itself is defined by atmospheric violence. The ghost of Catherine appears in Chapter 3. Heathcliff's obsession leads to neglect, abuse, and multiple deaths across two generations. What House of the Damned does is answer the Gothic's central withheld question — is the supernatural real? — in a way Brontë deliberately refused to answer. It is not a corruption of the novel. It is a choice to close what Brontë left open. (Maxwell Templeton)
Here’s a reimagining you didn’t know you needed (or maybe still don’t). Saban Films has released a trailer this morning for Wuthering Heights: The House of the Damned, based on the classic novel by Emily Brontë.No, really. If you didn’t think Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights earlier this year was enough of its own horror movie, this reimagining has you covered. It turns the “romance” story on its head, transforming it into what looks like a pretty generic ghost story.Here’s the official synopsis: Mr. Lockwood arrives at the remote and storm battered Wuthering Heights, unaware that Catherine’s vengeful ghost walks its halls. Her obsessed lover, Heathcliff, feeds her blood lust with human sacrifice, hoping to give her soul a new body to inhabit. As Lockwood grows sick and delusional, he is drawn deeper into their deadly, undying love, and must escape before he becomes their next victim.Ross Townsend-Green, Sky Cheema, Elle O’Hara, and Nicola Wright star.Rebecca J. Matthews (A Woman Scorned) directed from a script by Liana Failla.Enter Wuthering Heights: The House of the Damned when the film releases on VOD and Digital October 16th via Saban Films. (Matt Konopka)
5 'Wuthering Heights' (1847)People have been alarmed and challenged by Wuthering Heights for almost 180 years now, and that’s kind of great. Admittedly, the most recent movie adaptation is what caused the most Wuthering Heights-related drama in living memory, but it’s easy to imagine this book causing a stir – and feeling like a shock to the system – when read back in the 1800s. Even throughout much of the 20th century, Wuthering Heights would've felt like a lot. And today… maybe still a bit, to be honest.It’s easy to be taken off-guard if you're after some kind of sweeping romance, because the book really isn't that. There is passion, and some people who believe they're in love, but also, so many dysfunctional characters defined by traumatic pasts, and much more by way of tragedies that happen than moments of romance or passion. It’s a dark, borderline-horror novel at times, and it’s a bit like Frankenstein in that adaptations can be interesting, or even good, but there is something unable to be captured in a different medium, no matter how skilled the filmmaker might be. You just have to find time to read Emily Brontë’s original story the way you need to find time to, one day, read the entirety of Frankenstein’s original text. (Jeremy Urquhart)
by Lilia HassaineÉditions Gallimard. Collection BlancheISBN 9782073099945August 20, 2026« — Que savez-vous de la beauté, Antoinette ?Il se tourna vers moi, suspendu à ma réponse.— Pas grand-chose. Mais je sais la reconnaître quand elle est là.— Eh bien moi, chaque fois que je la vois, elle me blesse.Quand je vois votre visage, par exemple, quelque chose en moi se trouve comme ébranlé. »Île de la Jamaïque, 1831. Antoinette Cosway, créole de bonne famille, s’éprend d’Edward Rochester, un Anglais aussi impénétrable que fascinant. Mais à la séduction enflammée succèdent rapidement des scènes vénéneuses, où les baisers sont des blessures, où toute une société livre la jeune femme à son bourreau.Des années plus tard, Antoinette tente de conquérir sa propre histoire.JE se situe à mi-chemin entre roman victorien et thriller intimiste contemporain. Lilia Hassaine s’est inspirée du personnage de la première femme de Rochester dans Jane Eyre, le roman culte de Charlotte Brontë. Elle a choisi de lui donner une voix, un corps, une destinée.
Dans La Prisonnière des Sargasses (1966), la romancière Jean Rhys remontait aux origines de cette folie en retraçant l’enfance créole de Bertha qui, avant d’être rebaptisée par Rochester « comme on change le nom d’une bête à l’achat ou l’étiquette d’une malle », se prénommait Antoinette. C’est dans la lignée de ces deux précédents romans que Lilia Hassaine inscrit le sien, Je, imaginant cette « histoire pas encore entendue » de la rencontre entre Antoinette et Rochester, de leur mariage et de leur départ de la Jamaïque pour l’Angleterre. Une histoire que l’autrice rend à son héroïne après qu’elle lui a été méthodiquement confisquée, en la faisant s’exprimer à la première personne. (...)Assumant un regard post-Me Too, l’écrivaine démontre, à l’instar de ses précédents romans, combien l’intime est politique et révèle la structure sous-jacente de sociétés qui, plutôt que de protéger les victimes, participent à leur enfermement. Beau et glaçant à la fois, Je est de ces livres précieux qui dessillent et invitent à regarder ce qu’on tentait d’ignorer. (Laetitia Favro)
Dans “Je”, l’écrivaine revisite le roman de Charlotte Brontë en donnant voix à l’épouse séquestrée d’Edward Rochester. À travers sa version de l’histoire se dessine une évocation subtile du gaslighting et des violences faites aux femmes. (...)Dans Je, Lilia Hassaine — dont c’est le quatrième opus, après L’Œil du paon, Soleil amer et Panorama — se saisit aujourd’hui à son tour du personnage de Bertha, née Mason — la première épouse, réputée « démente » et enragée, d’Edward Rochester, qui la maintenait enfermée dans le grenier du manoir de Thornfield Hall —, pour en faire la narratrice de son roman. Lui redonnant son prénom de jeune fille, Antoinette — et le patronyme que lui avait choisi Jean Rhys, à savoir Cosway. Surtout, lui rendant une voix et une subjectivité : c’est elle qui dit « je », d’un bout à l’autre de cette confession — dont on ne connaîtra qu’aux ultimes pages du livre le destinataire. (Nathalie Crom)
Marie-Laure Delorme: Quel est votre rapport à “Jane Eyre”, de Charlotte Brontë ?L.H.: Quand j’ai découvert “Jane Eyre”, à l’adolescence, j’ai lu exactement ce que je devais lire : une histoire romantique et gothique entre une gouvernante et un homme plus âgé. Jane Eyre va découvrir qu’Edward Rochester est déjà marié et que son épouse, Antoinette Cosway, est enfermée au grenier depuis dix ans. À l’époque, je trouvais ces personnages ténébreux et tumultueux. Je me disais : qui ne possède pas ses zones d’ombre ? Je n’avais pas vu la violence des situations. On est au début du XIXe siècle. Antoinette Cosway n’est pas soignée dans un asile, mais enfermée chez un homme. Il y a peu de temps, j’ai relu le roman. J’ai alors retrouvé avec Edward Rochester des événements que j’avais déjà personnellement vécus, et le destin d’Antoinette Cosway a pris toute la place. (...)ML.D.:“JE” n’est-il pas aussi un roman sur le langage ?L.H.: Au cœur de “JE”, une question : de quoi parle-t-on ? À chaque instant, l’homme utilise ce que la femme dit. Un geste ou une parole ont, selon le contexte, une portée tout à fait différente. J’ai voulu entrer dans un caractère et une maison pour montrer combien tout est subtil et ambigu. On pose un regard de biais et on voit autre chose. Le personnage d’Edward Rochester peut apparaître attirant par certains aspects. Il y a un trouble. Mais la violence est là : Edward Rochester amène Antoinette Cosway à jouer contre elle-même. J’ai terminé “JE” en me sentant physiquement mal.ML.D.: Le “JE” du titre, allusion aux initiales de “Jane Eyre”, a-t-il un double sens : Antoinette Cosway reprend la main sur son histoire et vous racontez aussi la vôtre à travers la fiction ?L.H.: Je n’écris pas pour rien. Il y a un jeu entre fiction et autofiction. Je n’aurais pas pu écrire “JE” si je n’avais pas personnellement vécu certaines des situations que je raconte. Mes romans sont toujours liés à des raisons intimes et profondes. Je me lance dans l’écriture car j’ai quelque chose à démêler en moi. “Panorama” venait de la rupture entre la société et l’institution judiciaire, et “JE” est né du silence de la société face aux violences faites aux enfants et aux femmes. Mais si j’ai choisi la forme romanesque, c’est parce que je voulais que tout se mélange : ce qui vient du réel, ce que j’ai transposé, ce que j’ai imaginé. Je ne tiens pas à ce que l’on distingue la part fictionnelle de la part autobiographique. Il y a un trouble du côté des personnages, mais aussi du côté du genre littéraire. “JE” est une fiction vraie. Je ne sépare pas le roman de la vérité. Chacun des sentiments a été éprouvé, vécu, ressenti. Il ne s’agit pas du pastiche d’un roman victorien, mais d’une histoire contemporaine. Rochester a traversé toutes les époques.
The Collision Canon - A Literary Mashup Thrillers"Julian Harborough"ISBN: 9798182146203July 2026Jane Eyre meets Frankenstein.Jane has never asked Thornfield Hall to make sense. The sounds from the locked floor at night, the housekeeper's careful non-answers, the master's grief that sits behind his charm like a second person in the room. Jane has survived worse than a house with secrets. What she has never faced before is loving a man who has done something she cannot forgive... but cannot stop trying to.Edward Rochester did not lock a madwoman in his attic. He locked away the thing he built there. A living being, assembled in grief and brilliance, and a desperate refusal to accept his young son's death, four years and one terrible secret ago. It became something he never intended to create: articulate, self-aware, lonelier than anything Jane has ever met, and entirely uncertain what it owes the man who made it, or what he owes it in return.When Jane finally climbs the stairs she has been told never to climb, she does not find a monster. She finds a question neither Brontë nor Shelley had to answer alone: what does a person made rather than born have the right to demand? And what does loving the man who made him cost the woman who loves him?The Creature in the Attic keeps Jane's unflinching, self-examining voice exactly as it should be, and asks it to confront what neither novel could explore on its own. This is gothic romance with its conscience fully switched on, where the horror is not a monster in the dark but the weight of what one brilliant, frightened man was willing to do for love.Book Two of the Collision Canon. A series in which the greatest novels ever written begin, one book at a time, to bleed into each other.
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.
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)
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)
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.
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)
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)
‘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)
“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)
LaSexta (Spain) posts about Wuthering Heights.
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