"The £240,000 grant will mean it can be refurbished and opened to the public"

Excellent news for the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton. The BBC reports that the initiative has received government funding:

The house where the Brontë sisters were born has been "saved for future generations" after receiving government funding, campaigners have said.

Literary sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë were born in the terraced house in Thornton, near Bradford in West Yorkshire, between 1816 and 1820.

The building is among dozens of historic and community buildings that will share a £25m "levelling up" fund.

The £240,000 grant will mean it can be refurbished and opened to the public.

The house had previously been in private hands but now will become a "community events space" that will "improve social cohesion and boost local tourism", the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said.

Steven Stanworth, vice chair of Brontë Birthplace Limited, said the funding was "fantastic news" and would mean it could open in time for Bradford's year as UK City of Culture in 2025.

"This has been a 20-year dream to save the birthplace, the missing piece of the jigsaw in the story of the Brontë sisters," he said.

"For the first time, the little terraced house will be in public ownership."

Brontë Birthplace Limited, a not-for-profit community benefit society, had already raised £367,000, including a grant from the City of Culture, to buy and begin work on the property.

Broadcaster Christa Ackroyd, a committee member, said they aimed to "use this little building to inspire the next generation" by welcoming children from every school in the district. (Ian Youngs)

The news is echoed in the Yorkshire Post, Västerbottens-Kuriren (Sweden), Folkebladet (Norway)...

Northern Soul lists the best reads of 2023:

Karen Powell’s Fifteen Wild Decembers, a bewitching reimagining of the life of Emily Brontë, was perhaps the biggest surprise of the year for me. I have a passing knowledge of the Brontës and this isn’t the sort of book I expected to engage with, but I was sucked into the living, breathing world that Powell had constructed for the family. It’s a bold, perilous move to mess with beloved literary figures but it paid off. Immaculate, compelling and full of seemingly effortless lyrical flourishes, it deservedly found itself on the fiction shortlist for the inaugural Nero Book Awards. (Helen Nugent)

The New York Times interviews Kathy Hourigan, the former vice president and managing editor at Knopf Doubleday:

Describe your ideal reading experience.

Sitting on the porch of a cottage I’ve rented on Martha’s Vineyard for a few weeks every summer for 45 years, looking out over the Menemsha marsh and beach. I still remember, for example, how I felt reading there the manuscripts of Katharine Graham’s “Personal History” and Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet.” I love it when a book grabs me, and, wherever I am, I can’t stop. That’s the good news and the bad news because the next thing you know it’s 5 a.m. Most wonderful experience: Just after rereading “Jane Eyre,” I was in England and visited the extraordinary Brontë parsonage, stood in the room where the Brontë sisters had written and read to each other and created worlds, and walked, as they had, up the path from their door into the moors. Being June, it was not as windswept as I had envisioned.

How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol anticipated Freud is the subject of this article in The Conversation:

By focusing on painful childhood experiences, writers like Dickens and Charlotte Brontë (in the likes of Jane Eyre) helped shape the version of trauma we understand now. (Madeleine Wood)

Garavi Gurajat exposes racist incidents in the heart of Brontë country:

One of those working on the project is Dr Viji Kuppan, a research associate at the Centre for Hate Studies. He told Eastern Eye: “This work has a personal and political dimension for me.

“Some years ago, I visited the West Yorkshire village of Haworth for the first time. It is a place steeped in literary history, famed for its association with the Bronte sisters, who once lived in the village.

“With its cobbled streets and characterful shops and cafes, it exudes an enchanting olde worlde charm. Nestled among the weathered hills and windswept moorlands of the southern Pennines, this rugged landscape conjures the atmosphere of classic texts, like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights. It may be hard to imagine then, that racism occurs in this most literary and English of places. But it happened to me.

“On the threshold of a public house that my (white female) partner and I planned on eating in, a white man, brandishing a large knife, and barring our entrance, ferociously bawled, ‘You crippled P***. I’d like to kill and burn the lot of you’. Our swift withdrawal from the scene may very well have saved me from being physically injured or worse, but the traces of that shock and fear have stayed with me.

“The next day, on the same cobbled streets, another white man shouted ‘P***’ followed by ‘Go back home’.” (Shelbin MS)

The Review Geek recommends recent retellings: 

The Manor House Governess by C.A. Castle (Austen and Brontë)

In The Manor House Governess by C.A. Castle, Brontë Ellis, an orphan raised in an all-boys boarding school, is denied the freedom to express his true gender identity. However, an opportunity arises when he becomes a live-in tutor at Greenwood Manor, an elegant country house. The Edwards family embraces Bron’s non-traditional masculine presentation, except for Darcy, the eldest son who appears uncomfortable. As Bron delves into the secrets of the manor, a tragic fire reveals hidden truths. Inspired by classic authors like Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen, The Manor House Governess weaves a captivating tale with elements of popular fiction, making it a timeless novel with a modern twist. (Kennie M)

The best films to watch on the BFI Player according to the Evening Standard include:

Wuthering Heights 2011

Director Andrea Arnold’s take on Emily Brontë’s masterpiece is a real thrill ride: raw, heady, strange, beautiful. A very different beast to previous adaptations, it divided critics upon its release, but it is now widely viewed as the gothic novel’s most electrifying reimagination. (Harry Fletcher, David Ellis and Elizabeth Gregory)

CNN talks about A Very Distinctive Style: Then & Now by Willie Christie. Particularly of his pictures of Grace Coddington:

In the image of Coddington standing in the field, Christie was looking to tell a love story, inspired from the old black-and-white movies he watched often, such as an adaptation of the literary classic “Wuthering Heights.” The aesthetic he hoped to recreate with “The Moors and the hills, all desolate and alone,” Christie explained. “And you know, women are being rejected and men are being foul.” (Taylor Niccioli)

Her Campus and classics:

 Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë 

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a masterful exploration of love, revenge, class mobility, and greed. It is a gothic novel set in the bitterly cold Yorkshire moors, featuring the supernatural, and even a character’s imprisonment in a remote manor house. I will admit that it can be a difficult novel to get into because of its complex narrative style as well as its regional dialect. However, I found that through listening to it as an audio book, the dialogue came to life, and I could really understand the cruelty and treachery at play within the story. Wuthering Heights is a captivating novel that truly reflects on the brutality of human nature and tragedy of misaligned love. There’s a reason that Kate Bush wrote a song about this novel!

My favourite character: Hareton Earnshaw. He is ill-treated by Heathcliff, and raised out of spite and revenge against the Linton’s. However, he does not succumb to the bitterness he is surrounded by, instead maintaining his compassion and a desire to better himself. My favourite quote: “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same […]” (Eliza Heidrich)

The 2023 year in Nonesuch Records includes:

Cécile McLorin Salvant

Wuthering Heights (Kassa Overall Remix)

The forty-fifth anniversary of the release of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights,” on January 20, brought Kassa Overall remix of Cécile McLorin Salvant's critically lauded interpretation of the classic song, from her 2022 Grammy-nominated album, Ghost Song. Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap.

Techbullion and novels that transcend eras: 

“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë: Emily Brontë’s gothic masterpiece, “Wuthering Heights,” is a tale of passion, revenge, and the enduring power of love. The novel’s dark and atmospheric setting, coupled with the unforgettable characters of Heathcliff and Catherine, contributes to its status as a classic of English literature. (Ahmed Raza)

Rheinische Post (Germany) reports a singing of carols in the newspaper's office:

 Auf dem Programm des zweieinhalbstündigen Abends, der sikalisch mit Adventslieder begann und dann auf weihnachtliches Liedgut hinführte, stand auch eine neue vierstimmige Komposition. Goertz hat sie selbst verfasst, sie heißt „Winter in 40549“, was sich auf die Postleitzahl der Redaktion bezieht. Das sehr ruhige Stück auf einen Text von Emily Brontë mussten die Choristen mit einer besonderen Klangvorstellung singen: „Stellen Sie sich eine geschlossene Schneedecke vor!“, sagte Goertz. Am Ende sang der vierstimmige Leserchor (mit überraschend vielen Tenören) das Werk ohne jede Mühe. (Translation)

 Hassnae Bouazza reminisces in NRC (Netherlands):

 Mijn eerste Jane Eyre, van Charlotte Brontë, las ik als jong meisje in stripvorm. (Translation)

Efeminista (Spain) recommends Las desheredadas by Ángeles Caso:

Casi 20 años después de aquel libro, Caso publica “Las desheredadas” (Lumen), una historia de mujeres creadoras de los siglos XVIII y XIX, un recorrido por una época crucial en la historia de Occidente. Un libro que recupera la vida de pintoras como Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun o Aldelaïde Labille-Guiard; de ilustradoras como lady Mary Montagu o la duquesa de Osuna; de científicas como la marquesa de Châtelet; las revolucionarias Olympe de Gouges y Mary Wollstonecraft, escritoras como Mary Shelley, las Brontë o Emilia Pardo Bazán o primeras feministas como Flora Tristán, Concepción Arenal o Rosario de Acuña. (Translation)

Verás Noticias (México) recommends films for Christmas:

Jane Eyre (2011)

Esta novela clásica de amor de 1847 está considerada precursora del feminismo y la psicología moderna. Cuenta la historia de Jane Eyre, una huérfana educada en un orfanato que aprovecha su inteligencia para encontrar un trabajo como institutriz. Ahí conoce a Edward Rochester, el padre de la niña a la que educa. Pero el amor de Jane se ve enturbiado al descubrir que la mujer de Rochester, víctima de la locura, vive encerrada en una habitación de la casa.

Esta obra maestra de Charlotte Brontë tiene una adaptación al cine interpretada por Mia Wasikowska y Michael Fassbender que es maravillosa para disfrutar de esta historia de época en una tarde de Navidad. La encontrarás en Prime Video. (Miguel) (Translation)

The same film is recommended by a student of ECAM (Spain):

Por alguna razón es una película que cada año, en invierno, siempre veo con mi madre. Es como una promesa que nos hemos hecho de que cuando llega el frío, llega la Navidad, la tenemos que ver. De hecho, sólo la vemos en Navidad, en ningún otro momento. Y para mí entonces ver ‘Jane Eyre’ significa que ha vuelto la Navidad y que he pasado otra navidad con mi madre. (Lucía Zamora) (Translation)

Advancements in the treatment of extreme morning sickness are discussed in The Huffington Post and  Charlotte Brontë's death is mentioned. Chepstow Beacon quotes some poems celebrating forests and includes verses from Emily Brotnë. A quote by Charlotte Brontë in an exhibition in Zaragoza (Spain) as read in El Heraldo de Aragón (Spain). EyreBuds publishes an interview with Melody Edwards, author of Jane & Edward.