The Brontë Sisters. All born in Thornton, Bradford, but more closely associated with Haworth where they were raised and penned their celebrated novels, the Brontë sisters created some of the most iconic and beloved works in English literature. From The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, these novels have captivated and enchanted millions of readers. (Sebastian McCormick)
Cada julio, cientos de personas rinden homenaje al fantasma de Cathy, protagonista de la novela de Emily Brontë; a la vez que celebran el cumpleaños de dos mujeres que marcaron el arte británico. (...)El videoclip, en el que Kate Bush aparece bailando descalza con un largo vestido rojo y que encarna el fantasma de Catherine Earnshaw, terminó convirtiéndose en una de las imágenes más icónicas del pop británico y es justamente esa escena la que recrean las participantes, llamadas a sí mismas Cathys, durante la particular celebración anual.Pocas novelas han dejado una huella tan inmensa como Cumbres borrascosas. La única obra de Emily Brontë ha sido —y sigue siendo— una fuente de inspiración para incontables adaptaciones cinematográficas y televisivas. La más reciente llegó a la gran pantalla este mismo año, constatando que el relato de Catherine y Heathcliff sigue fascinando a nuevas generaciones. (Elsa Saom) (Translation)
The Newcastle event is also on the Newcastle Herald, and the Haworth one is mentioned in the BBC.
This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë by Deborah LutzA new biography drawing on previously unexplored archival materials to examine her life and creative process. Also published by Bloomsbury.
[David] Morrissey plays Michael Polly, an English headmaster who falls under suspicion after the disappearance of his wife, Sarah. As taciturn as Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester, Michael is seemingly incapable of rising to the emotional moment, insisting, for example, that he is still the man to coach the school’s rugby squad even as Sarah’s body turns up in a nearby woods. (Graham Hillard)
According to Steinman, the song was inspired by Wuthering Heights and was intended as "the most passionate, romantic song" he could create. Meat Loaf, who had collaborated with Steinman on many of his hit songs, had wanted to record the track for years, but Steinman refused, saying he viewed it as a "woman's song".
But it’s great that people are engaging with these ideas. We are in a resurgence of humanities in cinema. Wuthering Heights came out and everybody was suddenly talking about how faithful it was to Heathcliff. A similar thing happened with Hamnet. That’s the kind of back-and-forth we’ve been sorely lacking for a while. (Bilge Ebiri)
Finally, the Brontë Birthplace publishes how the Elizabeth Gaskell's Society recently visited them in Thornton.
It’s inevitable that any review of an Emily Brontë biography arriving on the heels of Emerald Fennell’s bonkers adaptation of Wuthering Heights will reference the film (and most have). But I’m in the odd position of having also reviewed Fennell’s movie. This prompted an editor at W.W. Norton & Co. to send me an advance copy of Deborah Lutz’s This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life, which was published in early May 2026. It arrived with a letter suggesting I might enjoy it after my “thrashing” of Wuthering Heights: “It’s not quite roaming the moors, but it’s close.”A lifelong Brontë reader, I received the book eagerly, but did not take its editor’s words literally. Having read it, I realize she meant them that way. There are biographers desperate to know a life from the outside in and the inside out, and there are biographers aware that their subject is fundamentally unknowable. Lutz is the latter, and she works instead to produce a social and domestic history of those closest to Emily, a natural history of the West Yorkshire moors Brontë immortalized in Wuthering Heights, and a material history of Emily’s writing practice which, in the hands of Lutz’s meditative attention, approaches the mystical. “Expertise,” dry and academic, is the wrong word to characterize Lutz’s understanding of the Brontës. Victorianists tend to work exclusively with the established texts of their subjects, but Lutz spent several years immersed in Emily Brontë’s hand-written manuscripts (detailed photographs of these are included in the book) and inhabiting Brontë’s hometown of Haworth, West Yorkshire, and Brussels, where she studied alongside her older sister Charlotte at the Pensionnat Héger. Lutz pored over the local weather reports of Emily’s lifetime and learned the flora and fauna of the moors so integral to Brontë’s life and work (Emily could identify local birds by their song and kept a collection of their feathers she found on her daily walks). In This Dark Night, Lutz’s deep knowledge of Emily Brontë transcends biography and—appropriate for her subject, who wrote one of the most famous ghost stories in Western literature—approaches a haunting.Written after a large cache of papers by the Brontës “that had been missing for over a hundred years” surfaced in 2018, This Dark Night gives readers a great deal of fresh information about Emily Brontë. Even with this new material, Emily remains the most elusive of the four Brontë siblings who survived into adulthood (the two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood, events Lutz ties convincingly to Emily’s psyche and writing). Although Charlotte Brontë outlived Branwell, Emily, and Anne, she died at thirty-nine of complications from her first pregnancy, and Lutz posits that it was her widower who likely burned most of Emily’s correspondence and diaries.Absent these sources, Lutz employs the candid letters, diaries, and various historiographical accounts of Emily’s father, Patrick, and her siblings to methodically illuminate Emily’s whereabouts and behaviors; these provide a comprehensive and intimate view into Emily’s place in the family pecking order. [...]This Dark Night effectively refutes the lasting image of the Brontës as isolated sad girls, stuck in the sticks with their abusive reverend father, which originated with Elizabeth Gaskell’s now-classic hagiography of her close friend, Charlotte Brontë. Lutz sketches a bustling, industrial Haworth where the Brontë siblings, as the children of the town cleric, were frequently at the center of social life, and Patrick bears no resemblance to the stereotypically restrictive Victorian father of legend. He gave his five daughters the same radical education he gave his only son, tutoring them in foreign languages and allowing unfettered access to the literature of the day (including the scandalous Lord Byron). He aided their travel to London and Brussels, and encouraged their creative writing, refusing to pressure them to marry. Online lit discourse likes to bat at the possibility that Emily Brontë was queer. Lutz won’t go so far as to guess, but she shows us a West Yorkshire where the Brontë siblings knew Anne Lister, the celebrated English diarist and lesbian, whose rarefied education and androgynous appearance modeled a different kind of life for Emily Brontë than the available standard for middle-class Victorian women–one Emily, who never married and devoted her life to art and her sisters, seems to have lived.Emily’s living is at the heart of This Dark Night, which eschews the historically romantic notion of Brontë’s artistic genius that places Wuthering Heights as her singular accomplishment, with life a mere cipher for the novel. [...]This Dark Night is, therefore, literally a biography of the dirt beneath Emily’s feet which subverts the tired trope of Emily Brontë hitching up her skirts and running wild on the moors to instead give us a woman who was both a writer and a naturalist who also ran a household. Wuthering Heights is a book best remembered for the wilderness of its moors which nonetheless takes place almost entirely inside. We think of Cathy’s longing for that wilderness when she is trapped in confinement and the longing, the state of it, feels almost like the place itself. Lutz compels us to wonder if Emily Brontë felt that same longing—not for the moors, which were her literal backyard, but to break free of her human form, to seep into the “rocks and stones and trees” of the world she loved. It’s difficult to say for sure, especially since This Dark Night is so grounded in the physical—gardens, laundry, mending, cooking, dogs, cats, hawks. Yet Lutz captures Brontë’s ineffable desire to break free of her physical body, which is both a graver and braver thing than she might have done with this biography.It’s possible—valuable, even—to reduce a figure like Emily Brontë to the questions that trouble our own gender politics. Emily Brontë might have often wished to be a man, or to love a woman, and these things may have limited her ability to lead the kind of life some of her contemporaries led. To write a book that addresses how Emily Brontë was limited by her gender is one thing. Lutz shows us instead that Emily Brontë’s real limitation was her human form, and how she paradoxically used that form to harness a mysticism and create some of the language’s most lasting works, works which nonetheless elucidate our own gender relations in ways rarely surpassed, even today. That is what a genius does, I suppose.Near the close of the book, Lutz writes that, after Emily’s death, she became the “genius loci” for the remaining family members (only her father, Anne, and Charlotte remained, Branwell having died six months prior). She seemed to me the genius loci of This Dark Night, as well, if it’s possible for a subject to haunt its own book. Because the book is largely constructed of the words of those closest to Emily about Emily, rather than Emily’s own words, we see her in the periphery, or view her from afar. I felt pleasantly haunted throughout my reading of this biography, and was surprised to find myself weeping as it closed. I am a writer, and frequent reader, of biography. The death of the subject is pretty much the one thing you can count on in the genre, but Lutz paces her book so well that Emily’s sudden death seems to happen as quickly on the page as it did in life. The shock of it—Emily refused medical attention and insisted on keeping her eyes open to “meet” her end—took my breath away.I learned more about Emily Brontë and her famous siblings from reading This Dark Night than I knew before. These facts stay with me and yet, the more I learned, the more distant Emily grew. It was as though the attempt to contain her or reduce her to acts or incidents or objects was to break up this person, who was always so evidently more than the sum of her parts, into her parts, and then watch the parts erase the whole. This is no fault of Lutz’s and is part of her book’s great success, since this seems to convey how her contemporaries felt about her. Emily Brontë is long dead. She can never be brought back to life, but we are haunted eternally by her, by the dictum she gave herself.“There is no Emily in Time or on Earth now,” Charlotte is quoted as saying upon her sister’s death, and we feel that loss as keenly today as Charlotte did then—or fool ourselves that we do, or Lutz fools us that we do. If Emily can die like any other, we all can. We all will. This should have left me bereft, or at least a little grim, but instead I was comforted, and reminded of the feeling I have whenever I visit the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, specifically, and the Calder Valley more broadly, which I try to do every few years. It took me a long time to characterize this feeling, which is a meditative ecstasy that leaves me with a profound sense of well-being. Eventually, I just said it aloud, so here I go: When I am there, in the land that birthed and received Emily Brontë, I feel immortal. Not because of some delusion that I will never die, but because, paradoxically, I am aware that I absolutely will. And life will go on beautifully beyond me. If I am lucky, any small thing I’ve done or said will reach out to the living; maybe they will have a conversation with the dead, like this one, like Lutz’s. Maybe I will talk back. (Emily Van Duyne)
A new music video for "Sirens," from John Caird and Paul Gordon's Jane Eyre A Musical, celebrates the new Jane Eyre EP, Highlights From The UK Premiere Cast. [...]The new EP, from Westway Music, precedes the upcoming production of Jane Eyre A Musical at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Performances are scheduled to begin August 28 for a limited run through October 24.With music and lyrics by Gordon and additional lyrics by Caird, the EP also features the songs "Sweet Liberty" and "Secret Soul," both of which were performed by Burn and Gilmour earlier this summer at West End Live. The three-song EP is available to stream/download here.The recording has vocal and incidental music arrangements by Brad Haak and Steve Tyler, orchestrations by Larry Hochman and Haak, sound engineering by Ben Robbins, and mixing by Gordon. It is produced by Adam Blanshay Productions, David and Hannah Mirvish and Westway Music and published by Universal Music and ASCAP.In addition to Burn and Gilmour, the Southwark production will also feature Claire Greenway as Abbot/Grace Poole, Melad Hamidi as St. John/Lord Ingram, Connor Wood as John Reed/Vicar, Jonathan Andrew Hume as Brocklehurst/Mason, Izzi Levine as Agnes/Leah/Jane's Mother/Mary Ingram, Hannah Lindsey as Scatcherd/Bertha Mason, Isabelle Methven as Helen Burns/Bessie, Gemma Page as Reed/Fairfax, and Eve Shanu-Wilson as Blanche/Sophie with Poppy Jason as Young Jane/Adele and Emily-Rose Samuel as Young Jane/Adele.Caird and Broadway's Megan McGinnis will co-direct the musical, with choreography by Georgina Lamb, set and costume design by Morgan Large, sound design by Andrew Johnson, lighting design by James Whiteside, musical direction and supervision by Ben Kubiak, and casting by Sarah-Jane Price.The 2000 Broadway production of Jane Eyre was nominated for five 2001 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. (Andrew Gans)
This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life by Deborah LutzThe Brontës are having a bit of a moment again with adaptations and a semi-biographical film about Emily herself, and this book does its best to explain the elusive genius. Since the Brontës were not recognized as genius writers until much later, the historical record of their lives is incomplete. However, Lutz uses the poems, journals, and ephemera Emily left behind in her 30 years to piece together her internal life. Emily wrote about grief and commented regularly on nature and the rising industrialism in faraway cities. (Julia Rittenberg)
But it is William Wyler’s 1939 black and white swoonfest that is still ranked top on film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The clothes are pure old Hollywood glamour, the moody cinematography is sublime, Merle Oberon’s Cathy is ethereal, Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff is brooding. Does it matter that they ditched the second half of the story, ending with the lovers’ ghosts walking hand in hand through the snow? Not really. This is Wuthering Heights reimagined as a Thirties weepie and on its own terms, it is genius. (Ruth Leon)
Anna Yates, Khadija Raza and Joseff Harris join the production ahead of its run across England.The creative team has been set for the new production of Jane Eyre, touring across England in autumn 2026. The production will be directed by Lily Dyble as a result of her winning the 2025 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award. It is based on Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company's acclaimed adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's enduring novel. (Stephi Wild)Tour DatesMercury Theatre, Colchester - 26 September – 10 October 2026Rose Theatre, Kingston - 13 – 24 October 2026Northern Stage, Newcastle - 3 – 7 November 2026Storyhouse, Chester - 10 – 21 November 2026
Earlier this year, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights was an adaptation that gathered some controversy. Some loved it, while others argued it betrayed Emily Brontë's novel completely. Tail between my legs, I was one of the sceptics. While I admired Fennell's creativity, I'd struggled with how dramatically she had strayed from the original story. However, Fennell never pretended it was a true adaptation. She described the film as the version of Wuthering Heights she remembered reading as a 14 year old, a personal interpretation that filled the spaces between Brontë's words with her own imagination. The reviews, however, were a bit brutal. (...) While I did agree with some of these points, it started to unsettle my compliance.Why was I demanding literary fidelity from Wuthering Heights while happily embracing the artistic licence in Tony? The more I thought about it, the more I realised I'd been judging these films by different standards.It's easy to dismiss an adaptation by arguing it isn't faithful to its original text. Accuracy often become the ammunition we reach for once we've already decided we don't like something and want to fire it with criticism. In Wuthering Heights, fidelity suddenly became incredibly important to me. But was it just because I wasn't enjoying the film? (...)I think we've forgotten that truth and fact aren't always the same thing. A film can invent conversations that never happened and still capture something authentic. It can shorten timelines, combine characters to become one or imagine moments between what was recorded as events while remaining truthful to the spirit of the person. (...)If a film can evoke the essence we all knew and loved of (...) Wuthering Heights through a highly stylised memory of reading a book at age 14 – then it has done its job. (Samantha Corry)
El Most Wuthering Heights Day (El día de Cumbres borrascosas) es un evento alegre. Se baila cada julio en decenas de ciudades del mundo, con miles de participantes que emulan la coreografía del videoclip de Kate Bush: brazos que se abren de golpe, giros bruscos, manos que empujan el aire… Su exagerada teatralidad parece contar la historia con el cuerpo y evocar el espíritu de Cathy pidiendo entrar por la ventana. No es un baile bonito ni técnico. Es más bien raro, dramático y un poco fantasmal. Pero da igual bailarlo bien o mal porque nadie ha venido a lucirse, sino a formar parte de la coreografía. (...)La peregrinación a Haworth no es nueva. En noviembre de 1904, una jovencísima Virginia Woolf subió hasta aquí y escribió sobre la visita en un semanario londinense. En el libro de visitas de la casa de las Brontë han firmado, entre otras muchas mujeres, Sylvia Plath y Patti Smith. Durante más de un siglo, hasta aquí han venido sobre todo mujeres que buscaban a otras mujeres. Woolf se preguntaba si esta u otras romerías a las casas de los escritores no serían puro sentimentalismo, y se respondía que solo se justifican cuando el lugar añade algo a los libros. Con las Brontë, concluía, el viaje merecía la pena: Haworth y las hermanas, escribió, encajan “como un caracol en su concha”. Es imposible separar la obra del sitio que la produjo. (...)Siglo y medio después, una de sus colinas está llena de mujeres que no ocultan nada. Se visten todas iguales, de rojo, y en ese uniforme no se borran: se reconocen. Al contemplar la danza, es inevitable pensar en la ironía que produce una obra hecha en el aislamiento más extremo, y cómo sigue generando un mundo propio un siglo y medio después. (...)No es una postal perfecta: es una romería real, con su desorden, su frío, su espera. Y eso es exactamente lo que la salva del kitsch. La gente ha subido a un campo embarrado un día nublado a hacer algo aparentemente ridículo, y lo hace con una entrega absoluta. Ahí está la dignidad del gesto, en que nadie está posando para nadie. Emily, que escribió y describió el páramo como una fuerza anterior a toda ley, sigue convocando a los vivos. Por eso no envejece. (Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán) (Translation)
Other events: Otago Daily News (New Zealand), El Confidencial (Spain), National Post (Canada)...
Despite its spelling, locals pronounce it“GYZ-lee” (rhyming with “guys” and “lee”), and getting it right is often seen as a badge of honour among Yorkshire newcomers. (...)One of Guiseley’s best-known landmarks is St Oswald’s Church, parts of which are centuries old.The church holds special literary significance as the wedding venue of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, parents of the famous Brontë sisters.Fans of Yorkshire's literary heritage often visit the church as part of their travels.
[Dr. Leonard] Sax advocates for “gender-aware” instructional strategies in K-12 schools.
“The best way to get boys excited about Emily Dickinson is very different from the best way to get girls excited about Emily Dickinson,” he said. “And the best way to get girls excited about computer coding is very different from the best way to get boys excited about computer coding.
“But you put in place gender-aware instructional strategies.”
When educators ignore gender differences, Sax added, they ultimately reinforce gender stereotypes.
“If you understand gender differences, you can break down gender stereotypes. And that same boy who loves football and video games will love ‘Jane Eyre’ and will love Emily Dickinson.” (Jason Swensen)
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.
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)
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...
Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëCharlotte 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)
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)
3. HathersageHathersage 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)
In a rapidly changing intellectual environment, two developments have affected the work of the historical biographer over the past two decades. First, digitisation has made it possible to read vast swaths of printed matter online, including obscure sermons and newspaper articles, and even some manuscripts, without leaving the study. Second, with privacy under erasure, biographers are empowered to go where their predecessors feared to tread with regard to the body and its functions. Both developments are evident in the making of This Dark Night, a book that demonstrates what can be achieved when a scholar-critic of Lutz’s stature applies her empathic imagination to the hidden life and writing practices of her elusive subject.Lutz has a particular interest in the materials that writers used in the Victorian age, the subject of a previous study. In the preface to her new book, she writes; “Keeping slips of paper and a pencil nub nearby, Brontë mastered a peripatetic kind of creativity, interwoven with household work, daydreaming, and exploring her native landscape.” Out on the moors by day and under the stars by night, she scribbled poems on scraps of paper and later transcribed them in drafts written in ink. Lutz argues that “the page worked for her as a sort of frame or foundation on which to build the poem. Similar to those samplers she made as a girl, the letters, words, and lines accumulated like cross-stich across and down the sheet.” Signs of digging her quill pen into the paper while writing remain legible, we are told.As Emily and her sisters prepared their poetry and fiction for publication, they acquired notebooks with thin leather covers the colour of oxblood. When opened, they would easily lie flat. Lutz’s close readings of the texts convince us of the power of a poetic vision inspired by nature and the elements. Her treatment of Emily’s writing materials reminds us that creation is work. (Dr Michael Wheeler)
Forget hot girl summer — for readers, it's decidedly a classics girl summer. According to data from Google Trends, interest in books you might not have read or even thought about since high school English class is way up. This includes some of the standard books you'd find on Rory Gilmore's reading list, like "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë and "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, but some titles surging in popularity are unusual picks for the book girlies. (Amanda Manen)
Andrés Muedano: What are you working on next?Tara Menon: I am working on both a second academic book and a second novel. My academic book is an exploration of anger and the novel. I have noticed that readers often label books “angry”—they might say, for instance, “Jane Eyre is a furious book” or “Naipaul’s novels seethe with rage,” but it’s never been clear exactly how they make those determinations. In my book, I ask: what does it mean for anger to be embedded in a novel, rather than simply expressed by one of its characters? What are the formal characteristics of anger in fiction?
But Morton doesn’t believe in bogging herself down in research, not since starring in a British TV production of “Jane Eyre” when she was 19 and carried around a heavily highlighted copy of the Charlotte Brontë book, despairing whenever the adaptation deviated from the novel. From that point on, she stuck to the script and her own imagination. (...)Morton first came to New York as a teen to do press for “Emma,” returned a year later to promote “Jane Eyre” and then couldn’t bring herself to leave, “sofa-surfing” at friends’ apartments so she could immerse herself in the city.“New York stole my heart,” Morton says. It’s where she first got into literature, devouring Charles Bukowski, roaming the aisles at the St. Mark’s Bookshop, checking out movies from Kim’s Video and gobbling hash browns and eggs over easy at the Waverly Diner. (Glenn Whipp)
Sometimes the right project is simply too good to turn down. Wuthering Heights was a fantastic job – I loved every minute of it, and Margot and Jacob and everyone on that production were lovely. I’m lucky that I still get offered work that interests me. The moment it stops being enjoyable, I’ll stop doing it. (Claire Bowman)
" spawned a worldwide annual tradition of red-dress flash mobs, with two taking place in France this year: at the Bon-Repos abbey on July 25 and in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris on July 26, 2026.Sa reconnaissance viendra bien plus tard. Au cours du XXe siècle, Les Hauts de Hurlevent s'impose progressivement comme un classique de la littérature mondiale grâce à ses nombreuses adaptations au cinéma, à la télévision et au théâtre. Kate Bush participera, elle aussi, à cette redécouverte. Car, contrairement au roman dont elle est inspirée, sa chanson connaît un triomphe immédiat. Sortie en pleine période où s'affrontent le punk et le disco, à rebours des tendances dominantes, elle s'impose en tête des classements britanniques et détrône même le groupe ABBA. Du jamais vu pour un premier titre et une artiste inconnue.Lorsque Kate Bush découvre ce récit gothique, ce n'est pas en ouvrant le roman d'Emily Brontë, mais en regardant une adaptation télévisée diffusée par la BBC. Elle n'a alors que 16 ans. Fascinée par l'atmosphère sombre du récit et la puissance tragique de ses personnages, elle finit par lire le livre et se sent particulièrement proche de son héroïne, Catherine, surnommée Cathy, dont elle partage le prénom. Elle décide alors de transposer l'histoire dans le langage de la pop.À l'âge de 18 ans, elle compose Wuthering Heights en une seule soirée, au piano. Sa chanson s'inspire d'une scène emblématique du roman : celle où le fantôme de Cathy apparaît à la fenêtre de Heathcliff et tente de le convaincre de la laisser entrer. Kate Bush prête alors sa voix à l'héroïne disparue : « Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home, I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window... » ("Heathcliff, c'est moi, Cathy. Je suis revenue. J'ai si froid. Laisse-moi entrer par ta fenêtre..."). En quatre minutes de musique, la chanteuse parvient ainsi à condenser toute la passion, la mélancolie et le mystère qui font encore aujourd'hui la force du roman d'Emily Brontë. (...)Si Wuthering Heights est devenue une chanson culte, c'est autant grâce à la voix singulière de Kate Bush qu'à l'univers visuel qu'elle a construit autour du morceau. Son timbre aigu, presque irréel, se mêle à des sonorités éthérées pour donner vie à un personnage fantomatique directement inspiré de Cathy Earnshaw. Mais c'est surtout le clip qui va marquer durablement les esprits.Conçue avec le chorégraphe Lindsay Kemp, célèbre pour avoir notamment formé David Bowie à l'art du mime, la chorégraphie contribue à l'atmosphère hypnotique du morceau. Dans une première version du clip, Kate Bush apparaît sous les traits du fantôme de Cathy, vêtue d'une longue robe blanche vaporeuse. Filmée au ralenti, évoluant parmi des effets visuels qui accentuent l'étrangeté de la scène, elle semble flotter entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts.Une seconde vidéo est ensuite réalisée pour le marché américain. Le décor change, mais pas la chorégraphie. Cette fois, la chanteuse danse au milieu de la campagne anglaise dans une robe rouge flamboyante qui deviendra sa tenue emblématique. Plus épurée et plus facilement identifiable, cette version va peu à peu s'imposer dans l'imaginaire collectif et devenir l'une des images les plus célèbres de la culture pop britannique.C'est d'ailleurs ce clip qui est à l'origine de The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. Chaque année, à l'occasion de l'anniversaire de Kate Bush - et d’Emily Brontë, née un 30 juillet, elle-aussi - des milliers de fans à travers le monde enfilent la fameuse robe rouge et reproduisent les gestes envoûtants de la chanteuse. De Londres à Melbourne, en passant par Paris, cette chorégraphie née à la fin des années 1970 continue ainsi de rassembler. L'archive ci-dessous nous entraîne dans l'événement organisé en Bretagne en 2024. (Florence Dartois) (Translation)
Final Jeopardy today was in the category “AUTHORS“The clue: “She sometimes signed letters “Charles Thunder”The answer: “Who is Charlotte Brontë?” (Lizzy Buczak in Parade)
The album was recorded across Iceland, New York, and Berlin, and draws inspiration from poetry, literature and visual art. de Oliveira weaves in mythology with references to Milton's Paradise Lost and the poetry of John Keats, Emily Brontë and Anne Sexton. (Kayla Sandiford)
En esto se gastan los jóvenes lucenses su Bono Cultural: «El "GTA VI" y "Cumbres Borrascosas" son los grandes éxitos de este 2026» (...) Cuentan que esta ayuda cultural es más usada por las chicas que por los chicos, aunque esto no significa que estos últimos no acudan a comprar obras literarias al establecimiento. «Ellas vienen, principalmente, en busca de novelas románticas. Cumbres borrascosas vendió muchos ejemplares por el estreno de la adaptación en cines». (Andrés Quintán) (Translation)
An AI includes Jane Eyre in a list of great stories never getting old on Bookclub. The Brussels Brontë Blog recounts a guided day trip through lesser-known Brontë sites in Lancashire and West Yorkshire — Cowan Bridge, Leck, Tunstall Church, Kirkby Lonsdale, and Wycoller — checking off several long-sought locations tied to the sisters' lives and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.
The birthplace of the Brontë sisters will host an event looking at its own history as part of Bradford Literature Festival.The Brontë Birthplace in Thornton re-opened last year, and on Friday Bradford-born heritage champion Steve Stanworth will share his 26‑year journey restoring and celebrating the building.The event, being held at the Thornton attraction, is part of Bradford Literature Festival, and will take place at 6.30pm on Friday.At the event, Mr Stanworth will explain how he helped to return the Brontë Birthplace on Market Street to its Regency character.He has also played a central role in restoring the Brontë Bell Chapel and, with Christa Ackroyd, created the Brontë exhibition at St James’ Church.Patrick Brontë himself wrote that his happiest years were spent in Thornton, a sentiment that underpins Steve’s lifelong dedication to preserving this remarkable heritage.
7. Helen Graham escapes her disastrous marriage to Arthur Huntingdon in which Anne Brontë novel? (Olav Bjortomt)
It will be necessary to see if Kazan's adaptation maintains the epic and tragic spirit of the author, who delves into the problem of identity, betrayal, inheritance, and love without concessions, or if it creates a digestible product, as Emerald Fennell did with Wuthering Heights, which Mariana Enríquez described as a "boring and silly" film, as it turned a dark and demonic story that explores the beauty of the abyss, depression, and love for darkness into something sexy. Will the same happen with Steinbeck? We will see. (Pol Guasch)
When Merrick is revealed, the reactions from those who see him are almost uniformly panicked (though some respond with a commingling of the grotesque and erotic that wouldn’t be out of place in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights). (Jacob Oller)
The Telegraph India announces the Indian streaming premiere on JioHotstar of Wuthering Heights 2026. EuroWeekly News wonders about the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever arriving in Potsdam. Vintage Reads posts about The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson.
Monroe County Public Library, Southwest Branch, Meeting Room ASaturday, July 11, 2:00pm - 5:00pmJoin us for our quarterly Movies vs. Books Club! Popcorn and candy will be provided during the movie. Age 18 and up.Read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, then join us to watch the 2011 film adaptation directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. You can request a copy of the book be placed on hold for you when you register to attend, or read or listen to a digital copy on Libby or Hoopla. Afterwards, we'll tackle the question: which was better—the book or the movie?Please contact Becky Craft at bcraft@mcpl.info if you have any questions about this program.
A first edition of Wuthering Heights together with Agnes Grey has sold at Christie’s London for £1,206,500 in its live The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures auction setting a new world auction record by Emily Brontë.The set is one of the finest examples in private hands, and no textually complete copy has appeared at auction in publisher’s cloth since 1908. It survives in its original 1847 publisher’s cloth binding and retains the distinctive textual and printing irregularities of the first edition. It is also the highest price ever achieved for 19th century literature and for any printed book by a woman.Only 250 copies of the first edition of Wuthering Heights were printed and examples in their original full-cloth binding are scarce with only five other examples known (The Blavatnik-Honresfield copy at Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; University of Oxford; British Library; Charlotte Brontë's annotated copy with pages missing sold at Christie’s New York in 2009; and Anne Brontë's annotated copy at Princeton University Library).This copy bound in diagonally ribbed green-grey cloth with floral patterns and arabesques stamped on the cover has been kept in the same historic house library in England since just after its publication in 1847.
‘The Brontës’ by Juliet Barker (1994)A giant, door stopping account of an entire literary family, Barker’s book is a monumental achievement. But it is also riveting and tragic, telling of the passions, failures, and early deaths of the four Brontë siblings, with a specific focus on Emily and Charlotte, the authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
7 "Wuthering Heights" by Kate BushInspired by 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily BrontëEmily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" follows the turbulent romance between the orphan Heathcliff and the affluent Catherine Earnshaw. Having been adopted by the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff develops a close bond with Catherine — only to have his heart broken when she marries the wealthy Edgar Linton. Years later, Heathcliff returns to society, this time as a man of status and eager to exact revenge.Kate Bush puts the novel to music with "Wuthering Heights," written from Catherine's perspective after her death. From direct references to the Yorkshire moors — "Out on the wily, windy moors" — to self-confessional lyrics reflecting the couple's passionate yet emotionally draining romance, "Wuthering Heights" reflects the same volatile nature of Brontë's seminal work. (Dyah Ayu Larasati)
Queen Camilla has accepted an invitation to become Royal Patron of a museum and educational centre at the location where the Brontë sisters were born.The Queen officially opened The Brontë Birthplace in Thornton, Bradford, in May 2025 after it was opened to the public for the first time in its 200-year history following a fundraising campaign.Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, as well as brother Branwell, were all born in the house on Market Street, now under public ownership, between 1816 and 1820.Cathy Boyden, chair of the Brontë Birthplace, said: "Her Majesty's patronage is a wonderful endorsement of what has been achieved so far and gives us great encouragement as we look to the future."Boyden added: "Our first year has been a remarkable journey, made possible by the dedication of volunteers, supporters, members, funders and visitors who believed in the vision of bringing this historic building back to life."A spokesperson for the museum, which also offers overnight stays, said since it had opened, it had welcomed "thousands of visitors from across the UK and around the world".The siblings later went on to write poetry and novels, with the women originally writing under pen names.Some of their most famous works include Emily's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.The Brontë Parsonage Museum, based in the house where the sisters grew up after the family moved to Haworth in 1821, is also now a museum.According to a spokesperson for the Royal Family, having a Royal Patron "provides vital publicity for the work of these organisations, and allows their enormous achievements and contributions to society to be recognised and promoted".
In 2021, Sotheby’s in London announced the sale of a precious literary manuscript, feared lost for so long that it had acquired near-legendary status. A notebook into which Emily Brontë copied 31 of her poems had remained where it was last heard of in the 1930s, within the private literary collection formed by a 19th-century Lancashire industrialist, William Law of Honresfield House.As well as containing the only-known manuscript versions of some of Brontë’s most famous lyrics, the notebook bears pencilled annotations made by her elder sister (and posthumous editor) Charlotte, who, when later recalling the fiercely independent, contrarian will behind Brontë’s reserved outward manner, claimed that “an interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world”.Many biographers have welcomed the challenge of standing as “interpreter” to Emily Brontë, but all have had to confront the slight extent of her literary remains. No manuscript or draft material of her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is known to survive. Only a few of her letters and essays have been preserved, while all that is left of her long-running collaboration with her younger sister Anne on the chronicles of their imaginary empire of Gondal are her poems voiced by its impassioned, amoral protagonists.But the American literary scholar Deborah Lutz’s new biography has benefited from the successful fundraising campaign to purchase the “Honresfield Library” for the British nation – including the rediscovered poetry notebook, now preserved in the British Library. Lutz’s insights from accessing this original document, and her expert critical reappraisals of the poems, are among the highlights of this fresh and engaging account of Brontë’s career.The title of This Dark Night, taken from Brontë’s poem opening “The wind I hear it sighing”, announces Lutz’s focus on Brontë as a poet of nocturnal reveries and affinity with nature, who also achieved a sensational innovation in prose with Wuthering Heights, combining a Gothic atmosphere of romance and supernaturalism with grim, confrontational realism in the depiction of madness and violence.While fully honouring Brontë’s genius, Lutz re-examines her domestic and working life with the same human sympathy, and attention to the materiality of 19th-century writing and publication practices, previously displayed in her group biography of the Brontë sisters, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (2015).All the familiar anecdotes are here, with Brontë again seen abandoning teaching opportunities for managing her clergyman father’s household; studying German while baking bread; cauterising her own wound from a dog bite; rescuing her laudanum-addicted brother Branwell after he set fire to his bed, and stoically enduring, aged 30, her own consumptive death agony in 1848.But the standard narrative gains texture from both first-hand and closely researched engagements with the natural phenomena Brontë experienced, in keeping with Lutz’s quotation of Gertrude Stein’s assertion that “anybody is as their land and air is”.A discussion of Brontë’s poetry and artwork inspired by her captive merlin falcon is enlivened by her father’s description of handling a merlin, jotted into his copy of Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds (another Honresfield treasure).The Brontë family vault in St Michael and All Angels, Haworth, with its frequently necessitated reopenings, becomes a powerful motif in Lutz’s explorations of how Brontë’s preoccupations with mortality and decay grew out of her awareness of the Haworth gravediggers’ activities, and of the corpse-preserving properties of the peat bogs on the Yorkshire moors.Lutz’s project of reconstructing Brontë’s lived experience succeeds best when grounded in direct personal observations of place, or in close readings of extant literary manuscripts and other written records. Less convincing are some speculative commentaries on topics including Brontë’s sexuality, and her process of composing Wuthering Heights, where evidence is sometimes lacking even for conjecture (whether by Lutz, or by earlier scholars whose work she cites).At the same time, important contexts with relevance to Brontë’s geographical and social influences are left unexplored. Considerations of what her father’s Irish heritage might have meant to her, or of how the Romantic-period Methodist movement influenced both her parents’ Anglicanism, and her own unorthodox religious and aesthetic sensibilities, are in particular only fleetingly touched upon.In assessing Brontë’s personality, Lutz wisely avoids any anachronistic, pathologising labelling of her characteristics and behaviours. She also holds back, however, from sustained engagement with the personal, post-Romantic philosophy of individualism that drove Brontë’s struggle for authentic self-determination (and which anticipated aspects of 20th-century existentialism).Ultimately, in This Dark Night, Brontë the woman again resists definition, remaining in somewhat indistinct focus amid an accumulation of social-historical detail. Nevertheless, in her vivid communication of her physical encounters with Brontë’s art and craft in the archives, and her sensitive new readings of familiar texts, Lutz achieves a worthy celebration of the unique, uncompromising author who proclaimed “No coward soul is mine”, and became the creator of Heathcliff. (Jenny McAuley)
Christie’s June 30 Exceptional Sale in London offers many fine lots, among them, a bespoke cigar humidor of Cuban amboya gifted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill during the war ($25,000-$40,000); a sabre-toothed tiger skull discovered in a Pleistoscene sinkhole in Florida in 2008 ($1,000,000-$1,500,000); and by no means least, a rare first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, published, fascinatingly, as a three-volume set, the first two of which are devoted to that novel, the third of which is her sister Anne’s novel, Agnes Grey. Pictured top, a portrait of the author of Wuthering Heights at about twenty-five, painted by her brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë.The three volume set carries carry a pre-sale estimate range of £400,000-£600,000 ($529,600-$794,220), but for a host of reasons, as the hammer strikes Christie’s lectern sometime after 4:30 British Summer Time (11:30 Eastern) on June 30, the effervescent speculation in the press is that this particular first edition will run higher than that. Some of the more breathless estimates bandied about in the last weeks range up into seven figures.Whatever number the hammer price attains, the intensity of interest that this lot generates is deep and longstanding. Working from the inside of these volumes out to their remarkably well-preserved cloth bindings – more on which, below – the first, main element of value is that it’s Emily Brontë’s enduring and revolutionary literary masterpiece at issue.The significance of her achievement within English and global literature is difficult to overstate. Of the three sisters, Sister Emily’s exquisitely modern gift to literature and to us – via her characters Catherine and Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton families – was to show that we are all conflicted, riven, subject to great swings of emotion and roundly challenged by simply living out our lives in a largely stormy world, whatever quotient of that may be of our own manufacture.Emily Brontë’s telling of this narrative premise was, also, far ahead of its time, unadorned, stripped bare, always in immediate reach of the brutal facts of her characters’ relations and complications with each other. The very dialogue she gives them cuts to the point of those many conflicts – it’s all fire and motion, there’s virtually no digressive froth to the narrative. Neither Emily Brontë nor her famous characters waste a minute outside their conflicts. They lived them. (Guy Martin)
Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Robert Fuest, 1970)Wuthering Heights has gone through many cinematic adaptations, none of which have fully captured the essence of the novel, but the 1970 version directed by Robert Fuest is by far the most dull. It’s a major issue when a film based on one of the subversive, heartbreaking psychological romantic dramas of all time is given a G-rating, as Furst’s Wuthering Heights is afraid to have any edge.By sanding off the film from anything deeper, Timothy Dalton’s Heathcliff seems to be just a tragic figure and a failed romantic lead, and not the abusive, cruel character that emerges in the novel. Wuthering Heights is a complex story of race, class, status, and social hierarchies, and to remove the obsessive emotions from Heathcliff’s fixation on Catherine Earnshaw completely misses the point of what Emily Brontë was trying to say with her only novel. (Liam Gaughan)
There is a long tradition of romantic heroes who are difficult, cold, or cruel—Edward Rochester, Heathcliff, half a century of brooding figures on book covers with artfully unbuttoned shirts—and most of them do not change at all. Rochester is reshaped by circumstance; Heathcliff is consumed by it. What separates Darcy from the parade that followed him is that his arc is genuinely moral, not merely emotional. He is not softened by love. He is corrected by it, and he chooses to be.
This Dark Night by Deborah LutzIn her lyrical new biography, Lutz shines light on the most enigmatic of the literary, secluded Brontë sisters: Emily. She was described as introverted, odd, guarded to the point of taciturnity, and her “extreme reserve seemed impenetrable,” said her friend Ellen Nussey. “Except to go to church or take a walk on the hills,” wrote her sister Charlotte, “she rarely crossed the threshold of home.” Lutz writes that Emily was indeed a knotty character of “devilish ferocity,” but she was also informed, engaged, even cosmopolitan in her reading and outlook.
This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë, Deborah LutzBloomsbury, £20The first comprehensive biography of Emily Brontë in over two decades, by an expert in Victorian literature. From its Proustian opening sentence, to her subject’s death bed at the age of 30, this is a captivating, feeling account of the most enigmatic of the Brontë family. By putting Emily and Wuthering Heights into a historical and political context and drawing closely on her writing, Deborah Lutz illuminates her intriguing personality and wildfire imagination. As Lutz tells us, it took Emily two years to write her masterpiece, and a further 100 for the world to begin to fathom it. That process continues with this biography. (Rosemary Goring)
MRC has established itself as a champion of innovative filmmakers like Edgar Wright, Emerald Fennell and Chloe Domont. But the movies these auteurs deliver defy categorization and that presents its own challenges.“A lot of the movies we make don’t have a lot of obvious comps so they tend to be very difficult for the marketplace to properly evaluate,” admits Brye Adler, MRC’s co-president of film. “Something like ‘Wuthering Heights‘ is an R-rated period romantic drama, but describing it like that doesn’t reflect its potential to be distinctive, which is why it worked. Or you can’t put ‘Cruel Intentions’ and ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley in the same category, but that’s what ‘Saltburn’ is. The system does not compute what we make.” (Brent Lang)
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Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 7:00 pmWBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue. Boston, MA 02215The gothic romance “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Brontë's only novel published in 1847, is having a renaissance due to Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie. Book sales have skyrocketed and the themes of class, racism and sexuality are being dissected across book clubs and group chats. Here & Now associate producer Kalyani Saxena moderates a conversation with Brontë biographer Deborah Lutz and WBUR film critic Sean Burns exploring the many interpretations the novel has inspired over the century. We’ll show photos and film clips to trace its evolution on screen.Copies of Lutz’s biography, “This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life” will be available to purchase from our bookstore partner Lovestruck Books & Cafe and Lutz will sign following the conversation.
This Dark Night by Deborah LutzEmerald Fennell’s hallucinatory adaptation of Wuthering Heights invited us to consider Emily Brontë in one light; Lutz’s painstaking account shows her in quite another. Far from the eccentric, isolated genius, Lutz’s Brontë is grounded in her material reality, from everyday household tasks to illness and grief.
Charli XCX, Wuthering Heights ★★★★☆Emerald Fennell’s big-budget, bonk-busting adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel certainly ruffled a few feathers – including mine. But the film had one saving grace, in the form of Charli XCX’s trippy soundtrack, whose songs combine the Velvet Underground’s unparalleled knack for melancholy (John Cale features on the now-viral House) with Nine Inch Nails’s industrial riffs and Charli’s own blurry, distorted vein of electronica.Taken as a follow-up to Charli’s culture-dominating 2024 album Brat, Wuthering Heights makes perfect sense – it’s the tragedies of modern life and love told through one of English literature’s most beloved stories; music you can both cry and dance to. As the 33-year-old pop star wryly put it, Cathy and Heathcliff’s romance descended into ruin “without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight,” those two items of vice being prominent symbols in Brat, which served as a chewed-up love letter to hedonism.Wuthering Heights consists of just 12 songs, clocking in under 35 minutes. But songs like Dying for You, Chains of Love and Always Everywhere pack such a punch that their conciseness never feels like a curse. (Poppie Platt)
Brockville audiences can experience Brontë: The World Without when Youth Opportunities in the Arts stages the production June 19 to 21 at the Arts Hub.Producer Deanna Powers says the play examines the lives and legacy of the Brontë sisters.The three sisters are being played by locals Sarah Paquin, Susannah Burt and Aphra Reimer-Willis with artwork from area artists as well. (Harper Cotie)
Jane Eyre, a musical by John Caird and Paul Gordon based on the seminal novel by Charlotte Brontë, has announced the lead casting for its UK premiere – 30 years on from its first bow.The production will be co-directed by Caird and Megan McGinnis. Caird previously adapted and co-directed the original production of Les Misérables in the West End and on Broadway, and most recently directed the award-winning stage adaptation of Spirited Away at the London Coliseum. McGinnis has appeared on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast, Little Women and Beetlejuice.Set to appear will be Charlie Burn as Jane and Ashley Gilmour as Rochester, with further names to be revealed.The production is set to run at Southwark Playhouse Elephant from 28 August to 24 October 2026, with tickets on sale now. (Alex Wood)
Sunday 21 - 3:20pm Jane Eyre - The Musical
Then, if you’re in the mood for something a little more romantic, but still gothic and chilling and dangerous feeling, you could check out last year’s sensation/scandal/date movie, Wuthering Heights (HBO Max). If you’re blanking, this is the one your friends were telling you about where Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi run around in the rain and get it on. Emerald Fennell’s movies are not for everyone, though, so you might need some backup material in case you want to switch over real quick. (Dwyer Murphy)
Sure, it takes enough liberties with the original source material that it might make an Emily Brontë nerd's head explode. Still, it's impossible not to be pulled in thanks to director Emerald Fennell's sumptuous vision and Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi's hot-blooded performances. They play childhood pals whose relationship turns quite complicated as adults when they begin a torrid love affair full of betrayal and resentment. (Brian Truitt)
The classic novel comes to life on the big screen once again, this time from Promising Young Woman and Saltburn director Emerald Fennell, and with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles. Fennell, an Academy Award winner for her work on Promising Young Woman, has both big fans and big detractors at this point—but her take her, while book purists haven't been thrilled, is a big, visually stunning epic romance. Robbie and Elordi are both up to the task as well, bringing a charged energy to roles that really need it. Alison Oliver, who recently shined on HBO's Task, is another major highlight in a supporting role. An original soundtrack from Charli XCX helps to set the anachronistic mood and feels like a real cherry on top. (aEvn Romano)
Gold Derby interviews the actress Fiona Durif:
Debra Birnbaum: What's the craziest fan theory you've seen or read?F.D.: Oh, I'm going to have such a boring answer to this! I'm really careful not to read too much fan stuff, because I feel like I have to keep this bubble going that I'm in so that I don't get self-conscious. Oh, wait — Robby and Whitaker's unconscious love affair. They're like Wuthering Heights, you know what I mean? They're yearning for each other, but can't quite make it happen. I enjoy that. It's also a great joke on set. We really get a lot out of it.
A Council has issued stinging criticism of a statutory consultation carried out over controversial proposals to build a giant windfarm on peatland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge.Calderdale Energy Park’s statutory consultation is not up to standard and should be done again, says Calderdale Council.In a highly-critical response to the Calderdale Energy Park (CEP) consultation over its plans to build 34 giant wind turbines on Walshaw Moor, Calderdale has requested the developer starts again.CEP rejects the criticism and says the consultation was carried out in line with planning legislation requirements and its own statement of community consultation.The company has already extended a deadline for some people to resubmit their responses to the consultation into early July due to a glitch.The site is on Calderdale moorland, located between Hebden Bridge and Haworth, the village associated with the Bronte sisters, but the council will not decide whether the proposals can go ahead.
Diario Yaqui (México) also briefly discusses the film. The Brontë Sisters UK posts a video about the Luddites and their relation with the Brontës.
Emily Brontë did not care about being likable.She was described as introverted, odd, guarded to the point of taciturnity, and her “extreme reserve seemed impenetrable,” said her friend Ellen Nussey. “Except to go to church or take a walk on the hills,” wrote her sister Charlotte, “she rarely crossed the threshold of home.”Her one published novel, the darkly Gothic “Wuthering Heights,” was met with bafflement, but has come to be regarded as a work of genius, and Brontë is also today considered a poet of unusual power. This, combined with her early death and sparsely documented life, has led to a public image as a farouche outsider artist leaping around the Yorkshire moors like a Victorian Kate Bush.As the scholar Deborah Lutz writes in her engaging new biography, “This Dark Night,” it’s not quite that simple. Emily was indeed a knotty character of “devilish ferocity,” but she was also informed, engaged, even cosmopolitan in her reading and outlook.Emily left behind tantalizingly little ephemera. Much of this biography ends up being speculative. But by drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, the author is able to evoke the comets and heat waves her subject would surely have experienced; the local suicides she would doubtless have read about; the inn where she conceivably might have stayed. No detail goes unaccounted for, from (probable) feminine hygiene practices to (likely) interaction with a mesmerist.Lutz pulls off this sometimes tricky approach with élan, partly because she isn’t wedded to one thesis. (Sadie Stein)
Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour are set to lead the cast of “Jane Eyre,” the musical by John Caird and Paul Gordon, when the show makes its U.K. premiere at Southwark Playhouse Elephant in London.The play opens Aug. 28 and plays through Oct. 24.Burn, who recently starred as Cady Heron in “Mean Girls” at the Savoy Theatre and has played Cosette in multiple productions of “Les Misérables,” will take on the role of Jane. Gilmour – currently in the West End run of “The Phantom of the Opera” and previously the lead in the U.K. and international tour and West End production of “Miss Saigon” – will play Rochester.“I’m so honored to be joining the cast of the U.K. premiere of ‘Jane Eyre,’ a sweepingly beautiful musical that brings one of literature’s most beloved female icons to life,” Burn said. “The opportunity to work with theatrical royalty like John Caird, Paul Gordon and Megan McGinnis is incredibly special, and I can’t wait to get started.”“It’s hugely exciting to join the cast of this wonderful musical, marking the first time it has been seen on U.K. stages,” Gilmour added. “Playing alongside the great Charlie Burn is set to be a thrill and I can’t wait to bring this epic story to the intimate setting of Southwark Playhouse, Elephant.”The production will be co-directed by Caird, the Olivier and Tony Award-winning director who adapted and co-directed the original “Les Misérables” for the West End and Broadway and most recently helmed the stage adaptation of “Spirited Away” at the London Coliseum. He will share directorial duties with Megan McGinnis, the Broadway actress known for “Beauty and the Beast,” “Little Women” and “Beetlejuice.”The musical – based on Charlotte Brontë’s novel and tracing Jane’s path from orphaned childhood to independence, set against the gothic atmosphere of Thornfield Hall and her relationship with the conflicted Rochester – originally premiered in Toronto in 1996 before transferring to Broadway in 2000, where it received five Tony Award nominations. The Southwark production is being staged in the show’s 30th anniversary year and is produced by Adam Blanshay Productions in partnership with original Canadian producers David and Hannah Mirvish. (Naman Ramachandran)
Greeted by a Jane Eyre in drag offering us biscuits, we took our seats in the Bread and Roses Theatre, transformed for this night into the community hall, hosting the first ever Jane Eyre Convention. Describing itself as an "ill advised enactment of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre", we were served up a performance where four actors played out the main scenes from the more than excellent novel by Charlotte Brontë.Perhaps the instruction to familiarise ourselves with the emergency exits, like those of a cabin crew just in case the flight hits some shaky patch or worse, was not exactly a metaphor but more a warning of where to run to if the show should crash and burn. For a comedy the night was surprisingly silent and short of laughs. Was it because of the references to dealing with some of the cast member's issues and neurosis, dealt with in a heavy or clumsy way. We were also reminded that this was a story of survival and it was easy to empathise with Jane's plight if you were in the audience that night.It was easy to get the feeling that this play didn't really make the most of the massive amount of material from the novel. It had a fair attempt, and at a running time of just over an hour, you could be forgiven for thinking this was not everything the writer has to offer. The stark difference between attitudes towards many things from the period and the way the modern world would shred, criticise or destroy those opinions now-a-days was not entirely exploited. This major difference in the way people view the world could have been used, whether PC or not, to produce something more dynamic and funny; but it all depends on the amount of reverence you have for the source material. Though I have never thought parody or just crude piss-taking was ever a show of disrespect for the creator but more an expression of the writer's taste or even an intimate peep into their psyche.On the other hand, the set, costumes and props gave it what I hope was a deliberate aura of tacky "am-dram" and in a way this worked well to adhere to it a certain amount of charm. It tried to get immersive by getting the audience involved by offering them broken "bickies" at half time, and the opportunity to join in by wearing a stupid-looking, though I know, historically accurate bonnet. But it was, for some reason, difficult to get fully committed to the whole thing.Like Dickens and many other titans of the Victorian Novel, Charlotte Brontë provides us with a text that is crammed with more than enough unbelievable twists of the story line, strange characters who turn up for the strangest of reasons, bazaar coincidences that revive what was looking like a derailed plot and so much other stuff to play with that it was a little sad that this wealth of material was not used to its utmost potential. Maybe a rethink is needed, or some additions, some more dynamic acting might make this into a better play and something worth seeing but at the moment it isn't much more than a really nice idea with some dedicated hard-working actors doing their best with what was at hand. I hope this isn't too harsh a comment to make and I hope it is just me who was disappointed. (Robert McLanachan)
Not really a convention at all, but Jane Eyre done quickly. And unfortunately, even though the show lasts barely an hour, not quickly enough. Four Charlotte Brontë stans, donned in bonnets and frocks, meet to enact the famous story of Jane and her relationship with gruff Mr Rochester. The premise may sound promising, but it’s undone by some very unfunny jokes and poor character development.Welcoming the delegates with lanyards and Brontë biscuits, Prof Jane, Jeff Jane and Charlotte Jane begin proceedings only to be interrupted by a latecomer, Jane Air, who knows nothing of the book at all and is only there because her name is almost the same as the titular heroine. This new arrival is brought on stage to help with the retelling.Writer Eleanor Zeal plays Prof Jane, the slightly bossy chairman of the society. Ben Everett Riley is Jeff Jane, who still smarts from his father’s many absences when he was growing up. Charlotte Jane, whose parents are from Jamaica, is played by Georgia Jackson, while Rachel Overd is Jane Air, who confides early, much too early, that her boyfriend is abusive.With such a title, the show surely will attract audiences who are well aware of the identity of the woman in the attic and the subsequent postcolonial readings of the Gothic novel. But the cast does nothing new with these ideas, and Charlotte Jane, eager to highlight the racism within the novel, comes across as overly earnest, a bit of a killjoy. With an unnecessary joke about dyslexia and a panic attack scene involving a Gregg’s paper bag, Jane Eyre Convention struggles to find the right tone.The actors try their best, but the script is thin, the slapstick heavy-handed, and the backstories insultingly weak. Of course, they are acting as amateurs, but even amateurs who love the source material as much as these people apparently do would have better ideas. Brontë deserves better. (Richard Maguire)
8. 'Wuthering Heights'Sure, it takes enough liberties with the original source material that it might make an Emily Brontë nerd's head explode. Still, it's impossible not to be pulled in thanks to director Emerald Fennell's sumptuous vision and Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi's hot-blooded performances. They play childhood pals whose relationship turns quite complicated as adults when they begin a torrid love affair full of betrayal and resentment. (Brian Truitt)
Bless you, Margot Robbie, for fuelling the trend for weird Victorian jewellery.For the London premiere of Wuthering Heights (2026), the actor wore a bracelet made from human hair. It was a museum-quality replica of a bracelet once owned by Charlotte Brontë and probably woven from the hair of her sisters, Emily and Anne. The original is now in the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Emily Brontë, author of the novel that inspired the film, died in 1848.Anne died five months later, but Charlotte, the last surviving sibling, lived for six more years. She would have commissioned and worn the bracelet as a way of remembering the dead. The replica was woven by Wyedean Weaving in England. It’s beautiful and creepy in equal measure, as is the film.
Charlotte Brontë spent an unhappy few months in 1839 on the outskirts of Skipton in North Yorkshire, as governess to the unruly children of John Sidgwick, a wealthy cotton mill owner in the town.Charlotte wrote to her sister Emily that she found the countryside, which is close by the Yorkshire Dales, to be “divine”. But the scenery did not make up for the misbehaviour of the Sidgwick children, whom she found to be “riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs”. Charlotte did not keep her job long, but she would have seen Skipton as it entered its Victorian heyday, with the chimneys of mills sprouting everywhere, a busy canal linking the town to Liverpool and Leeds, and a big sheep and cattle market in the town centre.Nearly two hundred years after Charlotte was in Skipton, the mills are gone, demolished or converted to other uses, with only one chimney still standing. But the market in the broad high street in the town centre still takes place four days a week, though the cattle and sheep part has moved to a big facility on the edge of town, while the barges on the canal cater for tourists instead of transporting raw cotton, coal and stone from the quarries. As for everyday life, a survey by the property website Rightmove found Skipton to be “the happiest place” to live in the UK, though as Charlotte Brontë knew all too well, happiness is very much a matter of personal circumstance. (Patrick Cockburn)
-¿Crees que la literatura puede contribuir a preservar la memoria de los territorios rurales?-Lleva siglos haciéndolo. Muchas veces conocemos mejor un paisaje por los escritores que por los geógrafos. Pensamos en la Asturias de Clarín, en la Castilla de Delibes, en la Galicia de Emilia Pardo Bazán o en el Yorkshire de las Brontë. La literatura conserva voces, costumbres, formas de hablar y maneras de entender el mundo que de otro modo desaparecerían. No sustituye a la historia ni a la documentación, pero guarda algo igual de importante, y me refiero a la experiencia humana. (Ana Artero) (Translation)
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