Brontë Pen of Doom

Ponden Hall is also in Country Life:

A hugely charismatic country house in Yorkshire has come to the market, one with a great literary claim to fame: it was the inspiration for Emily Brontë's seminal novel Wuthering Heights.

There’s a fundamental flaw with the teaching of English literature: tell somebody to read something, and it can’t help but be a chore. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let English GCSE and A-level students choose whatever they liked — from a reasonably decent list, of course — and take it from there?

All this is by way of introduction to my guilty little secret: a lifelong antipathy to Wuthering Heights. It might be a classic that redefined the concept of literature and all that jazz, but frankly I loathed every page. There wasn’t a character in it I wouldn’t gladly have strapped to a rocket and fired into the Sun, and as for the excruciating rendering of local dialect… words fail me, just as standardised spelling failed Emily Brontë.

In case anyone’s wondering if I feel better for getting all that off my chest, the answer is ‘yes, yes I do’. And part of the reason why is because my spirits have been cheered by the house on this page — a house which inspired the book that so tormented me as a 17-year-old A-level student. Sure, every brick bears an imprint of guilt for the horrors it helped spawn via the Brontë Pen of Doom, but that’s not to say I can’t appreciate why it might have inspired a budding writer. (Toby Peel)

Her (Ireland) recommends the upcoming The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis:

It's Christmas 1846 and Haworth is in the grip of a freezing winter. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rather losing interest in detecting until they hear of a shocking discovery: the bones of a child have been found interred within the walls of a local house, Top Withens Hall, home to the scandalous and brutish Bradshaw family.
When the sisters set off to find out more, they are confronted with an increasingly complex and sinister case, which leads them into the dark world of orphanages, and onto the trail of other lost, and likely murdered children. After another local boy goes missing, Charlotte, Emily and Anne vow to find him before it's too late. (Keeley Ryan)

The Sunday Times remembers the Heathcliffgate:

Gordon Brown once compared himself to the scowling, brooding (not to mention chippy and annoying) Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.

The Los Angeles Review of Books reviews, among others, Anna Kornbluh’s The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space:

At times, she defends her selection of readings with an evaluative language that critics (wrongly or rightly) generally shun, for example when introducing her discussion of “Emily Brontë’s astonishing Wuthering Heights” and Heathcliff, “this most engrossing of all novelistic protagonists ever.” Given that form is an abstraction from specifics, the move from the abstract to the specific can create challenges. (Rachael Scarborough King)

The absence of the basic freedoms for teachers in China is denounced by Bitter Winter:

Another English teacher from Shandong shared with Bitter Winter how the provincial Education Bureau criticized her for uttering words like “God” and “prayer” during a class on Jane Eyer (sic), the famous novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. Anything religion-related should not enter classrooms, she was warned. (Han Sheng)

The South China Morning Post reviews Lark by Anthony McGowan:

The plot, such as it is, concerns a trip onto the moors near where the brothers live in Yorkshire: real Wuthering Heights territory. McGowan’s sparse prose ideally suits the landscapes he describes. (John Millen)

Caitlin Moran and the wonders of big boots in The Sunday Times:

You’re one of those “I don’t want to look sexy in an obvious hoisted-up way — that would scare me — but I definitely want to be sexy” types. That’s why you like boots. They are sexy like Emma Peel — and Heathcliff. (Boots are also sexy on men, let’s not forget. And how. Not suggesting you long for your bloke to come home in riding boots and jodhpurs, but men in boots, phwoar. If you have not seen the film of Jane Eyre starring Michael Fassbender as Rochester, may I recommend you do so at once. Many lovely shots of him in buckskin breeches and boots. Really worth a look.)

The Herald interviews the writer Douglas Stuart:

Guilty pleasure?
No book is a guilty pleasure! But I have read As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann about six or seven times. I’m always swept away by the historical detail of this gay romance. Set in the 17th century, at the time of the English civil war, it’s the tale of two soldiers who fall in and then out of love with each other. The protagonist, ‘Jacob,’ is an violent, unstable brute, but somehow the author makes us care for him anyway. This book does for me what Wuthering Heights might do for others – anyway, it certainly rips my bodice.

The Independent (Ireland) interviews the poet Rita Ann Higgins who remembers how when she was in
a sanatorium:

"You lay in bed, you weren't supposed to be doing too much movement. I started to read. Wuthering Heights and Animal Farm. Those two books were just amazing. That kick-started it - I thought, 'you can open a book and get locked into it and see these pictures'." (Emily Hourican)

Cheshire Live lists some 'gorgeous' dog walks:

The Cross Keys Hotel in Knutsford is the jump-off point for a memorable 3.5-mile walk around Tatton Mere. From the pub you can head north along King St to first check out Gaskell Memorial Tower, which commemorates Elizabeth Gaskell, biographer of Charlotte Brontë, who modelled one of her best-known novels, Cranford, on the town. (Carmella de Lucia)

Pop Times discusses the new TV series Nurse Ratched:

The desire to give malicious female characters like Nurse Ratched origin stories is not new. The trend has often reflected a desire for feminist reappraisals of characters not previously viewed within the full context of a sexist society—whether stemming from their creators’ genuine curiosity or movie studios smelling opportunity. In the realm of literature, Jean Rhys imagined the backstory for the mad wife from Jane Eyre in her 1966 novel Wild Sargasso Sea.

  Zing News (Vietnam) recommends To Walk Invisible:

To walk invisible (2016), được thực hiện bởi đạo diễn Sally Wainwright dựa theo tiểu sử về chị em nhà Bronte. Bộ phim đã tái hiện chân thực sự cuộc sống và văn hóa của mảnh đất Yorkshire thế kỷ 19. Đây là nơi Emily, Charlotte và Anne Brontë đã viết những cuốn tiểu thuyết sâu sắc, để lại dấu ấn trên văn đàn, trong đó nổi tiếng nhất là tiểu thuyết. (Thủy Thủy) (Translation)

Amica (Italy) talks about the actress and director, Asia Argento:

Nessun gioco di parole. È proprio così. Asia Argento il 20 settembre compie i suoi primi tempestosi (proprio nel senso di Emily Brontë) 45 anni anni. (Antonella Catena) (Translation)

Jornal Opção (Brazil) reviews the novel The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis:

O romance é recheado de citações literárias, referências a obras clássicas da literatura mundial e a escritores consagrados — como as britânicas Emily Brontë e Jane Austen, entre outros —, assim como a seus personagens, e contém trechos de romances famosos. (Mariza Santana) (Translation)

Granma (Cuba) talks about popular and populist

Entre los componentes de la visión renovadora del mundo se cuentan la toma de partido en favor de una subjetividad contradictoria y compleja léase, por ejemplo, Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë[.] (Graziela Pogolotti) (Translation)

A good night and a smile quote from Anne Brontë in Parade and Bigodino (Italy), respectively. Filmstarts (Germany) mentions Wuthering Heights in an article about the film After We Collided.