Gothic Brontës

Today marks Anne Brontë's 205th birthday.

The BBC recommends 'The 25 best places to travel in 2025' including

12. Bradford, England

The northern English city of Bradford is finally poised to step out from the long shadow cast by its giant Yorkshire neighbour, Leeds, as it takes its place as the 2025 UK City of Culture. A fabulous year-long programme of events includes the re-opening of the National Science and Media Museum, plus innovative celebrations of local cultural icons: more than 400 works by Bradford-born artist David Hockney held in a Unesco World Heritage 1850s mill; new digital takes on a fantasy world dreamed up by the famed literary Brontë sisters; and a musical programme mixing an electronic bassline symphony, old factory folk music, brass bands and South Asian sounds.

While The Collector recommends the '5 Most Iconic Locations in the UK' for fans of Gothic literature.

Haworth was the home of the famous Brontë Sisters. The parsonage that was their home is now a fantastic museum open to visitors. From their home, visitors can walk in the footsteps of the Brontes, exploring the wild moors and ruined houses that inspired them to create a collection of memorable Gothic novels. Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Bronte in 1847 is the one most embedded in the landscape of Haworth today as a ruined farmhouse ‘Top Withens’, reputedly the inspiration for ‘Wuthering Heights’, can be found on the desolate moor. (Lauren Jones)

On CrimeReads, Layne Fargo mentions her new book.

When you think of the Gothic genre, you probably picture ominous weather, crumbling manor houses, and women fleeing in flowy nightgowns, candelabras clutched in their trembling hands. But Gothic isn’t simply a dark and stormy aesthetic. Like so many things in art—and life—it’s about power. Who has it, and what they’ll do to hold onto it. Who doesn’t, and what they’ll do to acquire it.

That, perhaps, is why Gothic themes work surprisingly well in so many types of stories. When I first came up with the idea to retell Gothic classic Wuthering Heights with elite figure skaters, I—in true Gothic heroine fashion—thought I was losing my mind. The idea seemed unhinged at first, but Emily Brontë’s themes of oppressive power structures, class differences, and family secrets mapped seamlessly onto the glamorous, scandalous skating world. And so my glittery and Gothic novel The Favorites was born.

LitHub has some (humorous) ideas 'to reboot 2025’s public domain books'.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s first best-seller has all the big Ernie tropes: spare style, courageous and conflicted men, and beautiful and tragic and tragically beautiful women. The novel follows an ambulance driver working on the Italian Front in WWI, as he grapples with war, God, and his love affair with a British nurse. Pretty standard stuff, I think we can do better.

Any of the women in this book would be excellent characters for an Ahab’s Wife or Wide Sargasso Sea treatment, or could serve as the emotional center of a quiet, introspective novel where the nurse, Catherine, survives the war and her American lover, to live at the foot of the Swiss Alps with her child. (James Folta)