Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen!

Even though Charlotte Brontë's take on Jane Austen has been used to criticise Austen for decades, still we would like to join in the celebrations of Jane Austen's 250th anniversary. Much that we take for granted in literature today is thanks to her and what she wrote. On Unherd, Tanya Gold has written about a trip to Bath, which she considers 'the Jane Austen theme park' and she makes an interesting point:

I think of Charlotte Brontë’s criticism of Emma: “anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt, is utterly out of place in commending these works”. But Austen was English, and she spoke to the speechlessness of the English: Brontë was half Cornish and half Irish. 

There was also the North/South divide. 

Slant lists 'The Best Music Videos of 2025' including

10. Charli XCX featuring John Cale, “House” (Director: Mitch Ryan)

The video for Charli XCX and John Cale’s “House,” from the former’s soundtrack to the forthcoming film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, is equally as ominous as the song itself. The clip, which finds the artists roaming a dimly lit house and the surrounding woods, strikingly match cuts Charli’s dark waves with the glistening hide and black mane of a horse and the wings of a vulture, which is tethered to a bed. “I think I’m gonna die in this house,” Cale and Charli repeat with increasing intensity, as he holds her head down on a table. (Sal Cinquemani)

While Den of Geek looks towards to future and lists 'The Most Anticipated Albums of Early 2026' including

Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights

February 13

After the colossal success of her last record Brat, which spawned countless remixes, “Brat Summer,” and even a thinly veiled Taylor Swift diss track, Charli XCX will be back relatively quickly with her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel of the same name. In a Substack article announcing the record, the hard-partying chanteuse described feeling overwhelmed with creativity yet unable to create new music in Brat’s wake.

That all changed when Fennell sent her a script for Wuthering Heights, allowing Charli the chance to be inspired by a pre-existing, non-personal story. She says the album will have a nostalgic, Gothic, cyclical sound reminiscent of her first album, True Romance, and cited John Cale’s description of The Velvet Underground’s sound, “elegant and brutal,” as a sonic rule of the land. She’s even teased a collaboration with the iconoclast. Time to trade that neon green for gloomy black.

Brontë Babe Blog discusses 'Identity, the Brontës, and Choosing Not to Belong' and AnneBrontë.org posts the second of his twelve days of Brontë Christmas.