Multifaceted and Complex Woman.

Claire O'Callaghan reviews Deborah Lutz's This Dark Night: Emily Brontë. A Life for History Today:

In telling the story of Brontë’s life, Lutz’s method is demarcated by two commitments. First is her interest in Brontë’s world and her place in it. To pursue this, she reconstructs what Brontë ‘wore, saw, heard, smelled, and felt along her skin’ using, among other things, weather reports, the diaries of her neighbours, and local newspapers. This attention to the everyday and the senses offers a thoughtful (and relatively new) approach in Brontë biography, and it is one well suited to Lutz’s established interests, which readers of her 2015 work, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, will recognise. The second is that This Dark Night joins an established tradition that frames Brontë in relation to the natural world and foregrounds the environment as context for understanding her. For Lutz, as for many before her, Brontë ‘brought the open sky, birdsong, and the peat bogs to life on the page’. The imagery is vivid and compelling, participating in a romantic imaginary that tries to enter the inner mind of a woman who conjured some 200 poems (or thereabouts, that we know of and survive) and, of course, Wuthering Heights. At the same time, Lutz’ environmental emphasis also opens onto Brontë’s preoccupation with darker worlds, such as the dungeons, caves, and graves that dominate her writing, as well as ‘the mortal body’. Neither strand is, in itself, entirely new, but the way Lutz binds them together through sustained sensorial attentiveness feels fresh and it sharpens our historical understanding of Brontë as a multifaceted and complex woman.

Importantly, This Dark Night delves into territories that earlier biographers have overlooked, such as, for example, the practical question of how the Brontë sisters managed menstruation, which Lutz answers by drawing on broader health histories rather than evidence specific to the Brontës. This kind of detail may not deepen our understanding of Brontë as a writer, but that is not its purpose. Rather, it is a reminder that the sisters were flesh-and-blood women negotiating a monthly cycle that shapes women’s lives – a seemingly obvious fact that can easily be forgotten amid the iconography and fandom that surround them. It is these reflections that exemplify This Dark Night at its best: Lutz’s care for the material, embodied conditions of Victorian womanhood, which lends biography historic specificity.

The  Yorkshire Post publishes a photo gallery of  the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event that took place in Haworth last Sunday:

Wuthering Heights: 500 people gather at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for celebration. Participants gathered at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for Actually the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever on Sunday - a celebration of all things Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush and Emily Brontë.

The gathering was in the stunning setting of the Haworth moors. 500 people took part in the mass 'Wuther' in a joyful, windswept, red-dress sea of Cathys dancing for charity, supporting Women’s Aid. (DanieL Sheridan) 

Hindustan Times publishes a variation on a classic logical puzzle: Irresistible, isn't it? 

Eleven classic novels stand in a row on a bookshelf in a library. I find each of them tempting, but in the end, I pick up only one of them.

(1) The horror classics Frankenstein and Dracula both stand to the right of the book I chose.

(2) Moby Dick and Animal Farm both stand to the left of the book I chose.

(3) Two of the books are by Jane Austen. Of these, Pride and Prejudice stands somewhere right of Emma.

(4) Pride and Prejudice also stands somewhere right of Frankenstein.

(5) There are two titles by two of the Brontë sisters, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, with two other books (not by the sisters) standing between them.

(6) Two books stand between Wuthering Heights and Moby Dick

(7) Great Expectations (right) and Animal Farm (left) stand on either side of Wuthering Heights.

(8) I notice two children’s favourites, with Heidi standing somewhere to the left of Oliver Twist. There are seven books between these two.

(9) Six books stand between Dracula and Wuthering Heights.

(10) The book I finally choose stands in the middle of the row of 11, i.e. sixth from either left or right. (Kabir Firaque)

Many news outlets cover the Haworth event, or the Folkestone (Kent) one or the Bunbury one or...: London Now,  WION, Bunbury Herald, The Independent, Kent Online, Kent Live, La Razón, Corriere della Sera...

Collider lists 'romance books that are perfect from the first to the last page":

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is much more than just a love story. The novel follows Jane, an orphan who endures a lonely childhood before becoming a governess at the isolated Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the estate's enigmatic owner, Edward Rochester, whose cold demeanor and mysterious past immediately set him apart from the typical romantic hero. The narrative shows Jane and Rochester growing closer, but their relationship is constantly tested by secrets, painful sacrifices, and impossible moral choices that force Jane to decide whether love is worth compromising her own principles.

The best thing about Jane Eyre is that, unlike many romances of its time, it never allows love to overshadow its heroine's individuality. Jane refuses to sacrifice her self-respect and independence, even if that means walking away from the man she loves. That gives the novel a remarkable sense of maturity that has influenced generations of romance writers, but few have matched Brontë's sensibilities. (Safwan Azeem)

The book is reviewed on Descubre Santander (Spain): 

Llevaba demasiados años escuchando que Jane Eyre era una de las mejores novelas jamás escritas. Cuando por fin la terminé entendí que no era una exageración. No solo he leído un clásico; he sentido que acababa de descubrir el origen de muchas de las historias románticas y de misterio que vinieron después. Y lo mejor de todo es que, lejos de sentirse antigua, me ha tenido completamente atrapado durante toda la lectura. (...)

Cuando cerré Jane Eyre entendí por qué sigue apareciendo en cualquier lista de las mejores novelas de la historia. No es solo una historia de amor inolvidable; es la historia de una mujer que se niega a renunciar a sí misma, incluso cuando hacerlo parece el camino más fácil. Hay clásicos que se leen por obligación o por cultura general. Jane Eyre, en cambio, se disfruta de principio a fin y demuestra que las grandes historias no entienden de siglos, porque siguen emocionando exactamente igual hoy que cuando Charlotte Brontë las escribió. (Translation)

Scenic sports around Derbyshire and the Peak District in The Derbyshire Times:

3. Hathersage

Hathersage has strong literary connections - having inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre. The nearby North Lees Hall (pictured here) also became the main inspiration for Thornfield Hall. The Grave of Little John, Robin Hood’s second-in-command, can be found at St. Michael’s Church in the heart of Hathersage. While there is little evidence proving he is buried here, ballads suggest that he originated from Hathersage and settled there again later in his life.  (Tom Hardwick)

Les Brontë Sisters, filles du vent post about a 2022 documentary:: "Les hauts de Hurlevent" : amour, haine et vengeance.