'Discovering that these three girls came from a small house, and overcame many barriers, is hugely inspiring'

The Telegraph and Argus reports that the Brontë Birthplace is now in public ownership and there are plenty of plans to bring it to life.

Bradford schoolchildren will be encouraged to “write their own story” at the house where the Brontës were born - now in public ownership for the first time in its 200-year history.

The Thornton house - home to the Brontë family before they moved to Haworth - has been taken over by Brontë Birthplace Limited, which has raised more than £650,000.

The community ownership fund has had grants from Bradford 2025 and the Government’s Levelling Up fund, and a share offer attracted more than 700 investors.

The terraced house, on Market Street, will be used for school visits, workshops and literary events.

There will also be a cafe and holiday let bedrooms, furnished to reflect the personalities of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë.

Other plans include tours by Brontë nanny Nancy De Garrs, who came to the Thornton house aged 13, and re-enactments of the family arriving at the village in 1815 then leaving it, in 1820, on horse-drawn carts.

There will be storytelling and dressing-up sessions in the scullery, which has a 'secret' servants' staircase.

A refurbishment is due to start soon and the aim is to open the property in January 2025, for Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture. The public is invited to look around the house at an open day on Sunday, April 21.

Steven Stanworth, vice chair of Brontë Birthplace Limited, said: “When the Brontës lived here this was a vibrant, busy house, with six children, and it still feels like a happy family home.

"We want people to live and breathe it, with a combination of visual and tactile experiences.”

An education programme, ‘Be More Brontë’, will begin this year, and schoolchildren will be invited to contribute to an ‘Ambition Wall’.

Gillian Wilson, headteacher of St Oswald’s Primary Academy, who will run trial education projects leading up to 2025, said: “I brought a class to Thornton; we stood outside this house and they said, ‘It’s just like my street’.

"They were expecting a grand mansion. Discovering that these three girls came from a small house, and overcame many barriers, is hugely inspiring.

"So many children see their own barriers as insurmountable. To walk in the footsteps of the Brontës plants a seed of ambition. What they learn here will run through the curriculum.” [...]

“The Brontës were Bradford girls from a humble home,” said Christa Ackroyd from the campaign.

“We want people to sit by the parlour fireplace where they were born, be immersed in this house of ambition - and be proud of the social changes the Brontës were part of.”

Dan Bates, Executive Director of Bradford 2025, said: “It’s exciting to see plans that have been taking shape over the years becoming a reality and the purchase of the Brontë birthplace is a major milestone in the whole district’s preparations for UK City of Culture.

“The Brontës attract attention and visitors from all over the world and by investing in the district’s cultural infrastructure through our Cultural Capital Fund, we are helping to cement Bradford’s place on the international map.

"We’re getting ready to welcome the world to Bradford and Brontë birthplace is one step further in its ambitions to create a lasting cultural experience for local people and international visitors alike.” (Emma Clayton)

ITVx has a video about it.

The Arts Desk reviews Underdog: the Other, Other Brontë at the National Theatre.

The Brontë sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother will always make good copy. The brilliance of the women constrained by life in a Yorkshire parsonage contrasts dramatically with the wild moors around their home, while their early deaths lend romance and tragedy to their life stories. Mythologised they may be, but their strength and determination are indisputable; to be successfully published novelists, albeit to begin with under men's names, was a notable feat.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne cannot but be feminist heroines.

In her new play, which won the Nick Darke Award in 2020, Sarah Gordon strips away some of the accumulated myths and presents them as fallible people as seen through modern eyes. Charlotte, the eldest sister and the first to be recognised (mainly because Emily and Anne were not so lucky with their publisher), selfishly hogs the limelight, even stealing ideas from Anne and suppressing the second printing of her shocking but successful novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne is always "the third sister" despite often having the best ideas, including (in the play) inventing the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Emily, an angry genius, is less of a threat to Charlotte who apparently does her best to keep Anne down.

There may well be some truth in this. It is clear that Anne's work, regarded as coarse and vulgar because it dealt realistically with such unladylike subjects as domestic cruelty, broken marriage, alcoholism and substance abuse (observed at close hand in brother Branwell), now seems the most innovative, the most "modern" of all. Perhaps Charlotte was jealous of the success of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall or perhaps she was anxious to protect her sister's reputation after her death at the age of 29. Or both.

Gemma Whelan as Charlotte sets the tone by erupting into the Dorfman on her way to the stage, stopping off to challenge men to name their favourite Brontë novel. The answer always seems to be Jane Eyre. In this co-production with Northern Stage, Natalie Ibu's speedy direction fits the light-hearted, often caricatured storytelling, the audience always knowingly acknowledged. Weighty topics crop up - the struggles of women, alcoholism, poverty, death from tuberculosis - but there is scarcely time for nuance. Whelan (known for Game of Thrones and Upstart Crow) is a fire-cracker, rarely still, very funny, cursing and swearing in contemporary style, given at last a moment's realisation of the importance of sisterly affection when all her siblings are dead. Feeling she has failed as a woman makes success as an author doubly important. Outspoken Emily (Adele James) and pretty, sincere Anne (Rhiannon Clements) are less frenzied, more simply drawn as foils to Charlotte.

The all-male backing ensemble is made up of weak, venal or superficial men, all played for laughs. Nick Blakely (pictured above, left) enthusiastically becomes the occasional jokily bustled female, including Charlotte's biographer Mrs Gaskell.

Gordon and Ibu (aided by designer Grace Smart) seem keen to skewer all the clichés of costume drama. The London coach (two enormous wheels complete with clacking coconut shell sound effects), slowly gliding on the revolve, gets an enormous reception from the audience. It is beside the point of course that Charlotte and Anne travelled by up-to-date train to confront publishers who had wrongly attributed the novels of the other sisters to Charlotte.

The title refers to Anne, but the play is Charlotte's, albeit a Charlotte unlike any previously explored iteration of her, frantic and self-absorbed. Nevertheless, Gordon's work will contribute to Anne's growing reputation as the Brontë with the most to say to the Twenty-first Century reader. (Heather Neill)

The New York Times has an obituary of Maryse Condé.

Among her favorite books as a child was “Wuthering Heights,” and in 1995 she offered a retelling of Emily Brontë’s classic tale of obsession and revenge with “Windward Heights,” set in Cuba and Guadeloupe. (Clay Risen)

The Indiependent has an article in defense of BookTok.

To begin with, literature that “means something” has not gone anywhere—it probably never will. But firstly, how do we define literature that means something? I would define it as literature that has a deeper, maybe political, message; literature like 1984 and Brave New World. Or perhaps literature that moves you, deep in your heart and soul; literature like Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina. (Daisy Couture)