A date has been set for when a Grade II* listed former museum with Brontë connections will be auctioned off.Kirklees Council said the Red House, a Georgian mansion in Gomersal, would be listed for sale with Pugh Auctions on 3 December, with a guide price of over £650,000.The property, which was once the home of Charlotte Brontë’s friend Mary Taylor, was previously a museum which closed in 2016 and a plan to turn it into holiday accommodation and wedding venue fell through.Kirklees Council announced it would dispose of several assets to address a £47m deficit last year. The Red House Yorkshire Heritage Trust, formed to try and save the site in 2019, said they were "profoundly saddened" by the decision to sell it.A statement on their Facebook page said they had worked with Communities Together to put forward a bid to purchase the house and gardens with a view to restoring community access, but the council did not accept it."As a result, Red House will now be sold by auction," the group said.“We are profoundly saddened by this outcome and fully understand and share the community’s strong disapproval of the council’s decision.”According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Graham Turner, the council's cabinet member for finance and regeneration, said: "As this building is now surplus to the council’s requirements, it could generate crucial capital funding to help us deliver a better future for Kirklees.”Mary Taylor's family lived at the Red House and she met Charlotte Brontë at Roe Head School in Mirfield and maintained a lifelong friendship with the writer. (Abigail Marlow)
We’re on Main Street in Haworth, a few miles from Keighley. This steep, cobbled thoroughfare was the stomping ground – or in the case of Branwell, staggering ground – of the legendary Brontë family.The literary connection attracts thousands of international visitors to this Pennine high street lined with bookshops, cafes and gift shops. On a crisp but sunny Wednesday, the majority of visitors are British but you can hear the odd conversation in a foreign language.And yet Main Street is a working street with a surprisingly large number of long-established residents. It’s not all holiday rentals after all.Claire and her husband Barry have run Hawksbys, a gallery and craft shop near the top of Main Street, for 23 years. Because of Main Street’s persistent popularity the couple work seven days a week with only sporadic breaks.“When you go out of the village you get a lot of perspective. You realise how beautiful it is. You get that ‘homecoming’ feeling,” says Claire, 43.“You look down the street and you think, how many people have that view?...and it’s so atmospheric.”I ask Claire if she’s a Brontë fan because one shouldn’t assume everyone on Main Street is. “I prefer Jane Austin [sic],” she says and laughs.Down the hill with slightly less of a view is a woman we’ll call Janice. Janice (she doesn’t want to give her real name) is more openly ambivalent.“It’s lovely,” she says before adding cautiously, “I just wish the tourists would be a bit more respectful.” [...]Janice finds some of the international tourists amusing, especially those from parts of the US where a 100-year-old building is considered ‘ancient’.“They think our houses are [film] sets or fascias. They don’t realise they are real houses,” she says.And while Janice doesn’t necessarily love Haworth’s visitors, she has a soft spot for Japanese visitors. The Bronte canon is immensely popular in Japan to the extent signs to the Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens are in Japanese.“You can be shamed by the Japanese tourists; the amount they know about it,” says Janice. (David Himelfield)
Tell us about your new book, Charlotte. Where did the idea come from?The novel is about memory, family secrets and the power of objects. It tells of Charlotte Brontë’s brief marriage to Irishman Arthur Nicholls through the voice of his second wife, Mary. The idea sprang from my interest in the Brontë sisters and their work – they wrote women characters with emotional depth who were independent and resourceful, like themselves. I’ve visited Haworth several times and the museum in the parsonage where they lived is a little jewel.What do you hope this book instils in the reader?For people to realise that Ireland exerted a stronger pull on Charlotte Brontë’s imagination than has necessarily been acknowledged. And that although the Brontës are regarded as jewels in England’s literary canon, they had an important Irish connection which fed into their work. Their father, Patrick, was Irish and fired his children’s imaginations with stories, books and newspapers.What did you learn when writing this book?That in marrying Arthur, Charlotte was reaching out to life and hope. We have a view of the Brontës as doomed, tragic figures but Charlotte was happy with Arthur during their nine months of married life; also, the sisters’ letters show them to be creative, loyal, resilient, witty and sharp observers. They were proto feminists in an era where women were more or less the property of a father or husband. (Sarah Gill)
It’s a story that echoes the power of writing theme Connolly explored in his Lost Things series and, despite a second visit involving Emily Brontë’s Cathy feeling slightly rushed, a worthy addition to his impressive oeuvre. (Pat Carty)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Awakening by Kate ChopinI read them quite early on in the album process, and it’s only now I’ve thought about them again. I hadn’t really been exposed through education to feminism. I was in a relationship that wasn’t balanced, and these books showed me women that were fighting for that balance and fighting to be equal. I read them, and they stuck with me. And then I went on with my life. Looking back on those books, what they were about, why they made me feel certain things – it’s so much of the character traits that I really was too afraid to embody myself. When I came to the end of the record and I had finally learned to embody these characteristics, like dignity, independence, sticking to your moral compass despite what society wants, equality in a relationship. Especially with Jane Eyre, she wanted to be seen as an equal and didn’t want to sacrifice her own values. All of these qualities were things I had to learn in the making of this record. And now that I’m finally getting there with those qualities, these books have popped up again in my head. (Konstantinos Pappis)
Helen Mirren once said ‘All you have to do is look like crap on film and everyone thinks you’re a brilliant actress. Actually, all you’ve done is look like crap’. It’s a bold statement, the kind you can only expect from a seasoned professional who’s been around the image-conscious Hollywood block a few times. But although Mirren is nearly eighty, her proclamation is no less resonant nowadays than it was during her days as a young actress. [...]A BBC article hyperbolically entitled ’Wuthering Heights: Hollywood’s worst casting decisions’ (surely that title belongs to James Corden in Cats?) begins with a summary of the novel that reads like a thirteen-year-old’s panicked last-minute copy-and-paste from Wikipedia: ‘Catherine is a teenager who lives on a farm in England in the late-1700s. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned foundling of the same age’. The treatment of Heathcliff’s race as his defining feature in the second sentence comes across as somewhat problematic, and what the rest of this article impeccably (if inadvertently) encapsulates is the problem with movie releases in the Internet epoch, when social media vultures seize on a singular piece of casting information like a freshly killed impala and tear it apart with frightening zeal — without actually having seen the film. The professed motivation behind the freshest feast is that Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie are considered too polished and beautiful to play Emily Brontë’s tortured, gurning, windswept youths. The author expresses this by describing them as ‘impossibly good-looking’, but then fumbles around for something to back up this superficial argument, going on tangents about so-called ‘iPhone face’ (a phenomenon whereby certain actors’ faces look too modern or ‘Instagrammable’ for period dramas) and Heathcliff’s ethnicity (equating the absence of a black actor in the ambiguous role of a traveller to Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface). But the beauty argument is an empty critique, as it is patently untrue that glamorous actors cannot play dishevelled or unattractive characters. Were that the case, millions of hair and makeup artists would be out of work. (Daisy Simpson)
November 15, 2024 2:00 pm - 3:00 pmWith Christine Nelson who curated the 2016 exhibition Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum and authored the companion volume The Brontës: A Family Writes (Scala Arts Publishers). She was the Morgan’s longtime Drue Heinz Curator of Literary & Historical Manuscripts. The first “adult” novel she read was Jane Eyre.Did you first encounter Jane Eyre
in a high school class, on a family bookshelf, at the local library, or perhaps in a film adaptation? In this tour, we will see (and even feel!) the various ways Brontë’s brilliant 1847 work has taken physical form, from its first incarnation in three simple, cloth-covered volumes to an early 20th century binding depicting Jane as an Edwardian beauty. We will hold copies of Brontë’s novels that have passed through the hands of Lewis Carroll, Marianne Moore, and Maurice Sendak—into our own. And we will examine one of the Rosenbach’s great treasures: a preface to Jane Eyre in the author’s own hand, in which she famously cautions small-minded critics that “appearance should not be mistaken for truth.” Bring your own beloved copy of any of the Brontë authors’ novels to this special Behind the Bookcase tour as we consider how any book—whether a pristine first edition or a tattered paperback—constitutes a treasure as long as we cherish it.
The Grange and Coach House is a stone-built Grade II listed period residence set within established mature grounds, offering the unique proposition of purchasing the main detached home along with a one to two bedroomed detached stone build coach house.Previous occupants of The Grange have included writer Dr Phyllis Bentley and Patrick Brontë, father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë. (Abigail Kellett)
Not long after her memoir was published in 2016, Liptrot was approached by numerous filmmakers about securing a movie option for her recovery tale. “It was something I thought quite seriously about: Is this a process that I want to enter into?” Liptrot says. “I remember going for a long walk and considering it all.” She ultimately perked up when eventual producer Sarah Brocklehurst sent her a love letter about the book, offering some ideas about how to adapt it and sharing some movie references, including Andrea Anrold’s Wuthering Heights and the Scottish film Movern Callar, to describe her vision. “The other thing that she was quite clear on was that she would like me to be involved in the process,” Liptrot says. (Jake Kring-Schreifels)
This year will be a monumental one for Lawrence’s humanities department; senior Delia Lipkin, our university’s last Classics major, is expected to graduate this coming spring. A long string of happy coincidences led her to Classics, a major that she described as antiquated because of the ambiguous nature of the term “classics” — they’re a little farther back than Jane Eyre, she joked — explaining it instead as a field of study on the history, culture, art and beyond of the ancient Mediterranean. (Blair Vandehey)
For 85 years, the names of three of English literature’s best-known writers, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, were featured in Poets’ Corner, the Westminster Abbey nook dedicated to great poets, authors and playwrights, but something wasn’t quite right: They were missing the accent mark.This week, the error was fixed when the diereses — umlaut-like punctuation dots, each just about a third of an inch in diameter — were added above each E of the famous last name.It’s a small but sizable victory for three sisters who could not publish under their own names nearly 200 years ago, even as their novels “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” helped change the portrayal of women’s lives in fiction.“Those three women fought harder than most to have their voices heard, to have their work understood on its own merits, and it endures,” said Sharon Wright, who discovered the mistake while visiting Westminster Abbey in London in January. “We can at least get their names right.”Ms. Wright, who describes herself as a stroppy Yorkshire woman like the literary sisters, was researching her upcoming book “The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar,” when she visited the plaque. Ms. Wright, who also edits the Brontë Society Gazette, a periodical for Brontë fans, compared the plaque with how the women had signed their own names, and saw the discrepancy.“Three of our greatest writers, and their names are spelled incorrectly,” Ms. Wright said at the abbey on Friday. “You can’t make it up.”She promptly emailed the Abbey’s dean, and he responded by the next morning. In a matter of months, the plaque was amended.Now, the punctuation indicates that the last vowel is pronounced separately: “BRON-tay” rather than “BRONT” or “BRUNT.” But the accent mark was actually the result of some poetic license by the writers’ father, Patrick Brontë.Originally Patrick Brunty, he made the change upon arriving at Cambridge University as a student, in an effort to indicate a higher social standing and eschew prejudice against his Irish roots, said Sandie Byrne, a professor of English at the University of Oxford.The Westminster Abbey plaque itself is made from Huddlestone, a cream-colored stone quarried in Yorkshire, the area of northern England where the sisters lived and wrote the books that would become part of the English language’s literary canon. It was commissioned in 1939 by the Brontë Society, a group dedicated to preserving the sisters’ legacy.A letter from the time includes the correct spelling of Brontë, according to an excerpt released by Westminster Abbey on Thursday. Ms. Wright believes the error was introduced by the surveyor, whose correspondence about the planned plaque misspelled the name.The error may have initially gone unnoticed because no formal ceremony was held to unveil the plaque. World War II had broken out, and Paul de Labilliere, who was dean of Westminster, wrote at the time that “anything of that sort is out of the question,” according to the abbey.These days, the Brontë sisters’ plaque sits at the heel of a life-size statue of William Shakespeare.Nearby is a bust of Robert Southey, England’s poet laureate during the Brontës’ lifetime, who had discouraged Charlotte Brontë from pursuing a writing career. “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life,” he wrote in a letter to Ms. Brontë after sampling her writing, “and it ought not to be.”Only a handful of women are among the more than 100 writers honored in the abbey. To the left of Shakespeare, Jane Austen has a modest plaque, and George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) is around the corner.An inscription on the Brontës’ plaque, “With Courage To Endure,” is a testament to the sisters’ arduous journey to publication in the early 19th century. They used the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell to avoid being dismissed for their gender. It was only after Emily’s and Anne’s deaths that Charlotte revealed their identities.On Friday, a day after Westminster Abbey unveiled the amended plaque, hundreds of visitors filed into Poets Corner, as they do each day. Most aimed their cameras at the Shakespeare statue or posed by William Wordsworth, and tour guides pointed out the plaque for the actor Laurence Olivier, a more recent name.After the grammatical tweak, though, guides had a novel reason to bring attention to the Brontë sisters.“They’re in the shadow, and you’d have to take them over to point them out,” said Nick Morrison, who has led tours through the abbey for 23 years. “Now that we’ve got a good excuse to go over, it’s great.” (Lynsey Chutel)
Awards lead assessor Lucy Hockley visited the parsonage earlier this year, observing school workshops, reviewing documents, inspecting resources and interviewing staff and volunteers.In her report, she described the museum as a "rich environment for learning" and its offering as a "truly memorable experience".Sue Newby, learning officer at the museum, says: "It has always felt a great pleasure and privilege for me to work with learners here."The Bronte sisters were remarkable women with a creative genius, and I feel very lucky to help share their legacy with pupils and students of all ages."Museum director, Rebecca Yorke, said the team was "extremely pleased and proud" to receive the award.She added: "Learning is at the heart of the Brontë Parsonage Museum."We are home to a powerful story and world-class collection, and we value learning as a two-way process where our visitors and audiences bring their own unique responses to the experience."We're extremely pleased and proud to be given the Sandford Award."A presentation ceremony will take place at Kensington Palace in December. (Alistair Shand)
The advertisement is going out soon: “Calling all Lascars! A chance to star in the hearthrob blockbuster of all time – Wuthering Heights. Liverpudlian background essential. No experience in wuthering required. Spawn of Beelzebub welcome. Cruelty to animals an advantage.”This week saw a confected row over the casting of a new film of Emily Bronte’s overheated (though well ventilated) Yorkshire Gothic classic. Margot Robbie from Barbie will play Catherine Earnshaw, but it’s her fellow Australian Jacob Elordi who has been denounced as not dark enough to play Heathcliff. It could have been worse; the pale Ryan Gosling from Barbie might have been chosen.In 2011 a film came out with James Howson, who was the first black actor to play Heathcliff. I don’t quite know what has become of him since.If we did want a film true to the deep Victorian fantasy novel, we’d need someone with a Liverpool accent, since that’s where the boy Heathcliff was found and kidnapped for a life of agricultural labour, an act regarded in Yorkshire as a favour, at least in those days. As the novel specifies someone black-haired, Derek Hatton, the one-time Trotskyist deputy leader of Liverpool Council would fit the profile, though at 76 he might be a trifle old.As for “Lascar” it is one of the tantalising clues that Emily Bronte gives for the Byronic Heathcliff’s ethnic affinities. A Lascar was an ordinary term for an able seaman from the East Indies. The East Indies were a bit vague, running from India east. The word comes from an Urdu term for a military camp and there is no reason to take it as derogatory.Nor is there with gipsy, the word frequently associated in the book with Heathcliff. Joseph, the most Yorkshire character in the novel, calls him a “flaysome divil of a gipsy” (flaysome meaning “dreadful”), and the gipsy references must be to a sort of swarthiness. Even in windburnt Yorkshire, however, anyone of a Mediterranean appearance would have counted as sallow.A hellish complexion, however, is one that comes over strongly in the book. The infant Heathcliff is called “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” and an “imp of Satan”.Emily Bronte’s novel may not make much sense psychologically, but it is stuffed full of Gothic horror: hauntings, opening coffins and mundane madness on the moors. I’m afraid it’s this aspect added to romantic love that attracts such adulation for the book. At best Catherine and Heathcliff are chthonic forces, moulded from volcanic rock. “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be,” she declares. “I am Heathcliff!” At worst Wuthering Heights is like a holiday let of the Manson Mansion.So perhaps someone with horns and a tail might be found for the part. Except that it’s all nonsense limiting actors to roles that resemble their home life. Remember that Heathcliff has to hang a dog, and not many actors would want to admit to that in auditions for fear of a jail term.If Heathcliff is dark-haired and gipsy-like, could that not be achieved by hair dye and – uh, hem – make-up? Yet that would set aside the attractions of radical blind casting. If Bob Dylan could be played by Cate Blanchett, why not have a woman play Heathcliff?Or Heathcliff could be played as a woman, even if that makes it harder to explain the existence of his son Linton. Though now I come to think of it, Linton is described as a “pale, delicate, effeminate boy”, unlikely if Heathcliff is, as some literary experts now appear to believe, black or mixed-race. So perhaps his biological father was someone else.Whatever happens, most of the complicated, generation-jumping book won’t make it to the screen. Perhaps, then, a film Wuthering Heights is best taken lightly, at a level far below Kate Bush’s interpretation. But in the name of all that wuthers, keep away the diversity quota police from this and every other screen drama. (Christopher Howse)
Stephens is the youngest person to have played a Bond villain, starring as Gustav Graves in Die Another Day.He also won over fans as Jane Eyre's lover Mr Rochester and the evil Prince John in Robin Hood. (Eleanor Dye)
Jane Eyreby Charlotte BrontëI read Jane Eyre when I was quite young, and immediately felt a connection with the young Jane, sitting in a window seat alone, reading a book rather than engaging with children her age. She’s misunderstood, put upon, and brave in the face of injustice from her cruel Aunt Reed and the tyrannical Mr Brocklehurst – a proper child heroine. (I shared Jane’s early unsociability followed by a devoted friendship, and even suffered similar feelings of injustice thanks to a borderline sadistic chemistry teacher – she was basically me.)
11. Charlotte Brontë was not a fan of Jane’sWhile Jane Austen’s work has garnered plenty of praise over the centuries, one writer who wasn’t exactly a fan was Charlotte Brontë. While the Jane Eyre novelist believed that Austen’s writing was skilful, she thought Jane’s books were too superficial.Of Emma, Brontë thought that Austen “ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound[.]” And, writing to a friend about Pride and Prejudice, said it was…“[A] carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.” (Sam McLoughlin)
An 85-year injustice has been rectified at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey with the corrected spelling of one of the greatest of all literary names. Reader, it is finally Brontë, not Bronte.An amended memorial to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë was unveiled on Thursday with added diaereses (two dots) that ensure people pronounce it with two syllables. As if it rhymed with Monty, not font.The memorial was installed in 1939 and, for whatever reason, came without the diaereses that the Brontës used.The correction came about after an approach to the abbey by Sharon Wright, the editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, who visited Poets’ Corner as part of research for a new book.“The first thing I thought was: ‘They’ve spelt the names wrong!’ Surely I can’t be the first person to notice it. I don’t think I am but I might be the first to call it to anyone’s attention and say ‘can we spell the names right please?’,” Wright said. “These women are three of this country’s greatest writers. They deserve to have their names spelt correctly on the memorial created to honour them.”Wright remembered feeling genuine indignation when she saw the plaque. “I’m from Bradford like them and I want them celebrated properly in London, or that London, as we say. They are Yorkshire heroines and their name is Brontë, not Bronte.”Wright said everyone else’s name in Poets’ Corner was spelled correctly, not least the poet Robert Southey who is represented by a magnificent monument and bust.Southey is something of a villain in Brontë circles in that he told 20-year-old Charlotte that poetry and literary creation could not and should not be a woman’s work. “I thought ‘they’ve got his name right’ before I went stomping off,” Wright said.She was half expecting a battle to get the name corrected but actually found an open, friendly door and a willingness to correct.The reasons for the mistake are not clear although timing presumably played a part, in that the tablet was installed on 8 October 1939, soon after the outbreak of the second world war.It meant there was no fanfare. In a letter dated 2 November that year, Paul de Labilliere, then the dean of Westminster, wrote: “I should greatly wish that its completion should be marked by a ceremonial unveiling but in these times anything of that sort is out of the question.”The installation was sponsored by the Brontë Society, founded in 1893 and one of the oldest literary societies in the world.It was July 1947 before there was a formal ceremony at the abbey with the society, by which point bigger issues about rebuilding the nation were on collective minds. Or society members perhaps felt they should be grateful for just being there. “I don’t know,” said Wright. “You know Yorkshire people, we do like to stick our hand up and make a fuss, so I don’t know what happened there.”The missing diaereses may be as much of a mystery as the diaereses themselves. No one can say with absolute certainty why the Brontë name evolved from their father Patrick’s Irish surname of Prunty or Brunty when he arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1802.It may have had something to do with his admiration for Horatio Nelson, who was made Duke of Bronte, and the way Patrick, as someone born in County Down, would pronounce it. It may also have been a gentrification based on a Greek word for thunder.None of that matters in Wright’s eyes. “This is not about the men, it’s about the women and their name was Brontë, that is how they spelt it from being really little girls. This is a really happy and timely ending to the story.”Those sentiments were echoed by the dean of Westminster, David Hoyle, who said he was grateful to have the omission pointed out and now put right.“Memory is not a locked cupboard, but an active thing,” he said. “The Brontë Society have given us a glimpse of their commitment to a lively remembering.” (Mark Brown)
The diaereses, the name for the two dots above the “e” at the end of the Brontë name, were omitted when it originally commemorated the novelists on October 8, 1939 amid the outbreak of the Second World War.Journalist and Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with the Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle and the Abbey asked its stonemason to tap the dots in and its conservator to paint them.Ms Wright, who went to Poets’ Corner for a research trip, said that the dots being left off the sisters’ names “really troubled” her as “the names of the Brontë sisters were spelled incorrectly, they didn’t have the correct punctuation on the e” so it sounded more like “Bront” not “Bronte”.She added: “There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really.“And it’s lovely because it’s 85 years since it went in, in October. So it’s a sort of timely happy ending, isn’t it nice?”Ms Wright, who is from Bradford, not far from where the sisters lived in Haworth, says: “These three Yorkshire women, deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”In a statement, Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, said the group was “very grateful to the Dean of Westminster and his colleagues at the Abbey for their positive response to Sharon’s inquiries”.She added: “As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial.”The Dean of Westminster said: “I am grateful to have this omission pointed out and now put right.“Memory is not a locked cupboard, but an active thing and the Brontë Society have given us a glimpse of their commitment to a lively remembering.” (Rowan Newman)
The omission of the diaereses - two dots which indicate the pronunciation of the name - was spotted by historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, who raised the issue with the Dean of Westminster, Dr David Hoyle.Dr Hoyle asked the abbey's stonemason to add the dots and its conservator to paint them.Ms Wright, who went to Poets' Corner for a research trip, said the missing diaereses "really troubled" her as the names of the Brontë sisters were spelled incorrectly."They didn't have the correct punctuation on the "e" so it sounded more like "Bront" not "Bronte"," she said.The Brontë name evolved from their father Patrick’s Irish surname of Prunty or Brunty when he entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1802.A letter in the abbey archive from Donald Hopewell, president of the Brontë Society, to the Dean of Westminster, dated 1 May 1939, gave clear instructions for the wording of the memorial, which included the diaereses - but they were never incorporated.Ms Wright said: "I am immensely proud that the correct, unique and immortal name of Charlotte, Emily and Anne is finally complete in Poets’ Corner."It is a Brontë story with a happy and timely ending."Dr Hoyle added: "I am grateful to have this omission pointed out and now put right."Memory is not a locked cupboard, but an active thing and the Brontë Society have given us a glimpse of their commitment to a lively remembering."Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, said she was "absolutely thrilled"."As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial," she said."I’m sure that everyone at the Brontë Society and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, as well as Brontë enthusiasts across the world, will be very excited to learn about this new episode in the enduring story of Charlotte, Emily and Anne." (Julia Bryson)
For 85 years since their memorial was unveiled in Westminster Abbey, each of Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s surnames was missing its dots. Yet few naive visitors would have floundered over whether or not it should actually be pronounced “the Bront sisters”. Some modern publications ignore these accents. Though obsolete in most modern English words, this newspaper includes them for the essential and polite reason that the Brontë sisters themselves wrote their names this way.The dots are a diaeresis — not an umlaut, which only appears in words co-opted from German (and only on a’s, o’s and u’s in modern German, not e’s). A diaeresis indicates that a vowel is sounded separately. The name Brontë, however, is the only example in English where this occurs after a consonant. All the other words in English that use a diaeresis do so in a diphthong, as in Noël, though most have been dropped, as in dais, or a hyphen is preferred (co-ordinate, re-entry, re-elect).The girls’ father Patrick changed the spelling of his Irish surname Brunty upon attending St John’s College, Cambridge. Quite why no one knows. Apocryphal tales include association with Admiral Nelson, who was Duke of Bronte (in Sicily; no diaeresis) or after the classical Greek word for thunder. He probably would have known to use a diaeresis in a diphthong. Coming from a poor family to an elite university, this was a 19th-century equivalent of Hyacinth Bucket insisting her surname was pronounced “Bouquet”. But unlike Patricia Routledge’s Keeping Up Appearances character attempting to climb the class ladder in the 1990s, Patrick Brunty’s pre-emptive soft rebrand two centuries earlier has been vindicated. Snobbery notwithstanding, this minor augmentation of the family name turned out to be a masterstroke in branding for his literarily adroit offspring. “The Brunty sisters” does not have quite the same ring.
Brontë enthusiasts throughout the Midlands and further afield are in for a major treat on Monday October 7th when a lecture by Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright entitled 'The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar' will be given in the Crank House Banagher at 5pm sharp (please note time).The talk will be followed by an interval for dinner. Afterwards a miscellany of music, song and words will be presented in Corrigans' Corner House pub at 8pm. The event is in honour of Arthur Bell Nicholls and his two wives Charlotte Brontë and Mary Anna Bell Nicholls and will include music and songs familiar to the Brontë family and readings from Brontë literature. (John O'Callaghan)
I fell in love with Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and its lessons of resilience and emotional strength some years later.As I struggled to confront issues within my identity and self-autonomy, I read about Jane Eyre’s similar journey — one that ended with a message of the importance of self-empowerment and honesty. I gained the strength to love myself authentically and felt okay to confront the somewhat painful emotions inside of myself.I no longer questioned my desires. Instead, I embraced them and made peace with myself. (Trinity Rea)
Ever wondered why, these days, so many period dramas seem to be cast to make the England of the past look just as diverse as the England of the present? Well, here’s a possible answer. It’s so the directors can avoid being engulfed by rows like this one.A forthcoming film of Wuthering Heights, to be directed by Emerald Fennell, has come under fire because Jacob Elordi, the actor cast to play Heathcliff, is white. Critics on social media have indignantly protested that, in Emily Brontë’s novel of 1847, the character is described as “dark-skinned.” Meanwhile Michael Stewart, the founder of the Brontë Writing Centre, says: “I feel quite strongly that Emily’s intention was that he was either black or mixed race.”I bow to his superior expertise, but personally, I have my doubts. Mainly because, in the text, other characters repeatedly refer to Heathcliff as a “gypsy.” Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean he is a gypsy. He may just be a bit tanned and weather-beaten, but, because these other characters fear and despise him, they call him a “gypsy” as an insult. But if he’d been black, I tend to suspect that, given the period in which the book is set, his enemies would have used a different – and rather more offensive – word with which to abuse him.In any case, this whole row completely misses the point. Yes, the new film’s casting is odd – but not because of race. It’s because the leads are far too pretty.Heathcliff, for one, should look wild, cruel, brooding and ragingly intense – not like some cute, winsome, boy-band-style pin-up, as Mr Elordi does. I don’t mean to offend him. He may well be a very fine actor. But, to pull off Wuthering Heights, he’s really going to have to do something about his appearance.Sometimes, for the sake of a role, Hollywood actors will lose weight, or gain weight, or head down the gym to build muscle. So, if the adorably fresh-faced Mr Elordi is to make himself look like a plausible Heathcliff, I would politely suggest that he needs to spend six months doing something extremely difficult, stressful and rife with potential disaster. Working on an oil rig, say, or being a press officer for Keir Starmer.The strangeness of the film’s casting doesn’t end there, though. Believe it or not, the other lead role, that of Catherine Earnshaw, is to be taken by Margot Robbie: the flawlessly slim, blonde, Australian star of last year’s Barbie film. She’s very talented. But she doesn’t exactly scream “windswept Yorkshire moors.”As I say, the casting is very peculiar. Still, there must be some reason for it. Perhaps, in this new version, Heathcliff takes Catherine on a romantic holiday to Bondi Beach. Then she can show off her bikini body, and he can work on his tan. (Michael Deacon)
Have you ever wondered at what age authors like Dame Jacqueline Wilson and the Brontës started writing? If you think it all started when they were adults, with classics like Tracy Beaker, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, you would be wrong!The Brontës began writing way before that, creating imaginary worlds and compiling their own work when they were just children. Likewise, Dame Jacqueline knew she wanted to write from just six years old.Now, these literary legends are coming together in one place in the form of an exhibition and festival to celebrate and recognise the genre of children’s literature - fittingly taking place at the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, where the family lived.Dame Jacqueline will be a guest speaker at this year’s Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing, which focuses on children’s literature and takes place Friday 20 - Sunday 22 September 2024. Her books have been on the shelves of thousands of libraries across the world, with her stories often sticking with readers from childhood through to adulthood. [...]Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said “The exhibition tells of how Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë lost their mother and two elder sisters in early childhood and how they sought refuge in an imaginary world.”Toy soldiers bought for Branwell became the inspiration for several plays and stories written by the children. Ann added: “They produced miniature books and magazines, intended to be ‘read’ by the toy soldiers, and then hand-stitched into covers made from scraps of wallpaper or packaging." The books are tiny indeed, with some as small as 36 x 55mm (1.42 x 2.17 inches). [...]The Brontë Parsonage Museum’s programme office Angela Clare understands the influence that reading as children can have on people as they grow older: “We always hope to inspire people to read more, write more, and try something new."The Brontës enjoyed drawing as well as writing, having lessons from an early age. They often had to copy engravings in books, resembling characters from their stories.While putting together the exhibition, Ann discovered something: “The Brontës often doodled on the margins of their books. While deciding what objects to display in the exhibition we found tiny pencil sketches in one of the Brontës’ books which we’d not noticed before.”
I'd heard so much about the Brontë sisters during my school years that I had become immune to their greatness.I was ignorant to what these young women had achieved and continue to achieve through their literary masterpieces, namely Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights among others.The books are set in the stunning backdrop of the West Yorkshire moors and the more I have learned about them, the more I have become intrigued to go on my own journey exploring the romantic landscape which inspired the novels. [...]These striking green buses run hourly between Keighley and Hebden Bridge. Fortunately I was in luck as a bus was due as I entered Keighley bus station which proudly flies the Yorkshire Flag at full mast.The Brontë buses transport people from Keighley through Brontë Country to Hebden Bridge.It cost me £2 to board the bus which would take 15 minutes to Haworth. These single decker buses are clean, modern and even show off maps and share Brontë facts.I was apparently the only excited tourist on the bus as I snapped photos of the Brontë signs and gazed out of the window to take in the stunning views which cascaded around me. (Sophie Mei Lan)
Burton is, of course, far from the first creative to explore the gothic aesthetic. It flourished in the 19th century, when writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë produced masterpieces of the genre. (Lauren Cochrane)
1. Emily BrontëWuthering Heights author Emily Brontë has her own blue plaque in Calderdale which is located on Law Hill House, Southowram, where she lived when she taught at Elizabeth Patchetts school for girls. (Abigail Kellett)
The picture is from August 2018, when the plaque was erected. Source: Halifax Civic Trust.
Both the reading and the hunger were with me for life, a wild freedom and a dark trap, but I think now that it’s not quite so neat. The protagonists of the girls’ canon, from Joey Bettany of the Chalet School to Jo March of Little Women, from Jane Eyre to Esther Greenwood of The Bell Jar, were ostentatiously thin, and not because their high minds were distracted by the vanity of slimming.(...)Mine’s a chef’s salad and a grapefruit juice, please. Jane Eyre, invited to join dinner parties at Thornfield, skulks in corners black-clad and skinny, judging the opulent clothes and curvy bodies of her rivals in love; later she will look with disgust on fat, mad Bertha Mason, the original madwoman in the attic, and on Bertha’s muscled, porter-drinking carer Grace Poole. I wanted to be Jane, Esther, Jo but I knew I was really hysterical, greedy Bertha; Anne Shirley’s dim, cake-loving friend Diana; at best Jo’s plump, frivolous sister Meg. I knew that my failure to be thin was inseparable from my failure to be clever and to control my emotions.It escaped my notice as a child but does not now that Bertha is mixed race and Grace working class, that the ideal female body displaying the perfect control of the ideal female mind is racialised and classed.
She adds the Brontës sisters to her lists of provincials when she engages with the notion of pedigree, who found their inspiration in the landscapes around them, and then there was Jane Eyre from the parocosm who had “invented” the Yorkshire village of Haworth. (Swati Rai)
Jane Eyre (1847). Written by Charlotte Brontë, it combines from both Gothic and Victorian literature, revolutionizing the art of the novel.
Jane Eyre. Esta novela histórica que redefinió la conciencia narrativa se centra en la homónima Jane Eyre, una huérfana nacida en la Inglaterra de 1800. A medida que Jane crece, toma su destino en sus propias manos, lo que se vuelve particularmente conmovedor cuando se encuentra con el melancólico Sr. Rochester en Thornfield Hall. (Translation)
Daily Camera recommends Gin & Gothic, A Brontë Rocktale in Denver. The Brontë Sisters YouTube channel explores the original Brontë church in Haworth, which was replaced in the 1870s due to poor conditions, including water seeping through the graveyard into the church, with a new Gothic-style church preserving the Brontë family vault. Through the Eyes of the Brontés describes a visit to St John the Baptist Church in Tunstall, where the Brontë sisters attended services while at boarding school.
Emily (2022)Emma Mackey nous emmène dans la campagne anglaise de l’ère victorienne, dans les pas de l’une des auteures les plus renommées de la littérature britannique : Emily Brontë. Célèbre pour son classique Les Hauts de Hurlevent, l'écrivaine est l’héroïne d’un film biographique écrit et réalisé par l'Australienne Frances O’Connor. Déterminée à faire revivre l'histoire d’Emily Brontë, qui fut pour beaucoup à la fois une légende et un mystère encore des siècles après sa disparition en 1848, la cinéaste a imaginé à quoi ressemblait la vie d’une femme dont les aspirations dépassaient les codes de la société de l’époque. Son enfance dans un presbytère du Yorkshire, la compagnie de ses sœurs (notamment celle de Charlotte Brontë dont elle était si proche), ses premiers poèmes et pièces de théâtre… Le tout, dans cette Angleterre idéalisée que l’on aime tant représenter au cinéma. (Marthe Mabille) (Translation)
Thursday 15th August, 1.15 - 2.15pmCanongate Kirk, 153 Canongate, EH8 8BNwith Dame Judith Weir, Master of the King’s Music and the Sacred Arts Festival Singers, directed by Calum RobertsonThe Edinburgh Sacred Arts Foundation Sacred Music Composition Competition recital. Scottish based composers under the age of 21 were invited to set religious texts to music. At this event, the winning submissions will be given their first performance by a professional choir under the direction of Calum Robertson, Director of Edinburgh University Singers. The Master of the King's Music, Dame Judith Weir, has been principal adjudicator, and will present the prizes.
Zoe Watkin’s rendering of Anne Brontë’s Poem ‘The Doubter’s Prayer’ was splendid – so dramatic, but imbued with such intensity – expressing something of the pain and anguish that can so often come as we engage with spiritual questions and angst. (David Charles)
It was when my two kids had both left for university and I approached 50 that it hit me: Elizabeth had Darcy, Jane Eyre had Rochester — what about me?
Fall quotes to celebrate the best the season has to offer, including one by Emily in Today and thankful ones to express your gratitude for all of life's blessings, including one by Charlotte, also in Today. TVGuide informs that Wuthering Heights 1998 airs on Talking Pictures TV at 9:05 PM, Saturday 17 August.
He [Spencer] is not much of a book person: When asked to tell them the last book he has read, he says “Wuthering Heights” but then adds, “I didn’t read it as much as read the Wikipedia page.” (Jay Lustig)
Pat Heywood, the veteran Scottish actress who made her film debut as Olivia Hussey’s nurse and confidant in Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, has died. She was 92.Heywood died June 26, the Scottish Daily Mail reported.During her four-decade career, Heywood portrayed the maid in the manor at the center of Freddie Francis’ horror comedy Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1970) and the wife of British serial killer John Christie (Richard Attenborough) in the Richard Fleischer-directed 10 Rillington Place (1971). (Mike Barnes)
She also played Ellen Dean in the 1978 TV series Wuthering Heights.
Charlotte Brontë’s 'Jane Eyre' is a compelling exploration of personal strength and moral integrity. The novel tells the story of Jane Eyre, an orphaned girl who overcomes a harsh childhood to become a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the enigmatic Mr. Rochester and faces numerous challenges that test her resolve and character. Through Jane’s experiences, Brontë addresses themes of love, independence, and social criticism. The novel's rich character development and Brontë’s keen insight into human nature create a narrative that is both deeply personal and universally resonant. Jane’s journey from oppression to self-realization continues to inspire and captivate readers. (Girish Shukla)
A new video of The Brontë Sisters takes us to "where the Brontë Story started", in Guiseley, where Patrick Brontë married Maria Branwell at St Oswald's Church on December 29, 1812.
Whilst working as a bespoke cabinet maker and furniture restorer, Tony's jobs included repairing a badly-damaged piano that had originally belonged to the Brontë family at Haworth Parsonage. (Alistair Shand)
Wave of Nostalgia is an award-winning independent bookshop in the heart of Brontë Country and 64 year-old Diane has created a literary hub visited by locals and tourists alike. With the former parsonage home of the Brontë sisters now a museum, the popular visitor attraction is little more than a stone's throw away from the shop which now attracts world famous authors for book talks and is in the running for a national accolade. (Emma Chesworth)
Kirklees, which counts Huddersfield as its main town, is considering selling the former Red House Museum, a 17th-century Georgian mansion with links to Charlotte Brontë, which the authority shut in 2016 to make cuts. It is also examining land sales. (Richard Partington)
Wuthering HeightsWuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, despite not being explicitly scary, left me with chills due to its Gothic plotline. I read it when I was 12, and the vivid descriptions of a wrecked Victorian mansion surrounded by wilderness, coupled with themes of physical and emotional abuse were eerie. The novel’s portrayal of desolation and dysfunctional relationships also kept me on edge at all times. Even years and multiple rereads later, the first memory of this book lingers, and it takes me on a rollercoaster of emotions.Mariya Kapasi, 32, engineer
11 Jane Eyre (2006)Orphaned as a young girl, Jane Eyre spends her days under the care of her cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed. After years of neglect, when Jane finally comes of age, she is hired by the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall, who trains her to become the governess at Thornfield Hall. Soon, she meets her employer, the very charming Mr. Rochester. As their relationship blossoms, Jane discovers dark secrets about the Rochester family and its past.Tender Tale Of Romance And IndependenceIn Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë birthed one of English literature's most progressive heroines of all time. And while the 2011 movie adaptation of the same story is famous enough, it is this adaptation that does her the most justice.The four-episode series unfolds like a haunting dream; its every frame burning with intense drama, sublime writing, piercing social commentary, and breathtaking chemistry. Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens infuse their characters with subtle emotions combined with extreme devotion, turning Jane Eyre into a masterpiece. (Soniya Hinduja)
The Brontës Web of Childhood will explore how siblings Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell were shaped as writers during the early years of their lives.Included in the exhibition, which begins next Thursday (February 1) at Haworth's Brontë Parsonage Museum and will run until New Year's Day 2025, are items never previously displayed in public.Charlotte’s christening cap, on loan from a private collection, is being exhibited for the first time.Also debuting at the museum are letters, previously held in the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, which show Charlotte’s intimate thoughts on death and mortality.Diaries, portraits, schoolbooks and toys belonging to and created by the family as children will be on display, alongside several of the 'little books' – smaller than a matchbox – created by Branwell and Charlotte for their toy soldiers.Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the museum, says: "We can clearly see the impact of the real lives of each of the Brontës in their later work, whether that’s in their creation of characters – motherless children, strong independent women – or situations, such as harsh schooling or the death of a child from tuberculosis. The siblings lost their mother and two oldest sisters before any of the four remaining children reached their tenth birthdays."Patriarch Patrick Brontë encouraged a rich, if unconventional, education for all his children – significantly for the time including the girls – and this, along with their fantastical imaginations, allowed each of the children to develop their incredible talents."Alongside the exhibition, a new textile installation – Tactile Turmoil – by artist Ellie Brennan, is being displayed. Visitors are encouraged to touch the artworks, which comprise a collection of large rug-like pieces. The work was inspired by the Brontë sisters’ first impressions of their new home when they moved to Haworth from Thornton in 1820.Throughout the year, the museum will host a number of events reflecting what's known about the siblings' childhood.Storyteller Sophia Hatfield will share folk tales inspired by the servants who lived in the house, and the stories they may have told the children.And the annual Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing in September will centre around contemporary children's and young adult writers, bringing some of the UK’s best to Haworth. (Alistair Shand)
Fans of Emily Brontë's “Wuthering Heights” will be drawn into the gothic setting of the iconic McTavish home. Nestled on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, the Ashby House is a “fortress on a mountain made of thick gray stone and tall windows, surrounded by trees on three sides and behind the house, nothing but treetops and clouds and sky.” In disrepair and seemingly haunted, it provides a spooky environment for the McTavish heirs to duke out their legacy woes. (Leah Tyler)
The retrospective programme, Our Story So Far, will show classic titles from each anniversary in Glasgow Film’s history including Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights and Young Frankenstein to name but a few. (Thomas Alexander)
My aunt was one of my first idols. She lived and worked in Manhattan—her apartment and office both crowded by long shelves and tall piles of books: books on every table, books under every table, books beside the bed, books on top of the bed. She’d even written the foreword to a leather-bound, gilt-edged, woodcut-illustrated edition of Wuthering Heights, which takes pride of place on my bookshelf to this day. (Zachary Pace)
The Reader’s Retreat at The Grand, York offers a page-turning journey through Yorkshire’s literary landscape and a cosy two-night stay at the five-star hotel.Prepare to be transported to Yorkshire’s literary hotspots for two days by luxury transport this winter and spring from your comfortable base at The Grand, York.The hotel’s new Reader’s Retreat begins with a journey from York to the wild and windswept moors which inspired the Brontë sisters to pen their classic masterpieces, including Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.Visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth where the famous siblings lived and worked and where their father Patrick Brontë was the parish priest from 1820 until 1861. See the rooms filled with their furniture, clothes, personal treasures and priceless writings, drawings and letters. Afterwards enjoy a guided tour of the town and St Michael and All Angels Church and the Brontë Memorial Chapel.
18. Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëWuthering Heights is about a young orphan, Heathcliff, who gets adopted by a wealthy gentleman and falls in love with his daughter. It’s a passionate story about heartbreak, love, and desperation. You may want to skip this novel if you’re not up for a complex and challenging read. (Diana Kurzeja)
4 Which sisters’ book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) sold a mere two copies? (Olav Bjortomt)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)Like most people, I first encountered the Brontë sisters in a high school classroom. The spell Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847) cast on me has strengthened with every passing year. The book’s famous romance (the quasi-incestuous bond between the violent Heathcliff and the vain Catherine Earnshaw) actually constitutes less than half of the novel. The greater and more difficult story―the one that draws me to the text over and over―is a meditation on generations: a study of how human faults pass from parents to children and of how we might outlive the sins of the past. Shortly after the book was published, Emily Brontë died at 30 years old. At 25, I’m closer to that age than to the teenage lovers―or to who I was when I first learned of them. The author’s wisdom, to quote her doomed heroine, has run “through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.” (Ian Malone)
The trick to a good Jane Eyre is properly conveying the book's startling intimacy. The meticulous way Brontë centered her protagonist's emotional journey has struck chords for nearly two centuries. The Jane Eyre of 2006 captures Brontë's bleak but grand Gothic landscape then balances it with the searing intimacies demanded by its insular and actively minded protagonist. Humane, moody, sweeping, yet condensing a massive novel into its essential bones, the BBC did it right and did it the best. Leading the charge is Wilson, whose almost-debut performance kickstarts the reputation Luther and The Affair would soon cement; and Toby Stephens, who blazes his way through the Rochester role years before Black Sails and Percy Jackson and the Olympians were a whisper in anyone's minds. (Kelcie Mattison)
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary StewartRomantic suspense doesn’t get any better than Mary Stewart, who rose above the competition thanks to elegant prose and marvelous touches like breaking this novel into nine sections a la nine coaches and sprinkling poetry and other quotes throughout to telling effect. (...) The main characters are “a handsome, darkly brooding master, and a young English governess looking after the 9-year-old heir while probing at least one dark secret. Obvious comparisons are Jane Eyre and even Cinderella.”Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëWhich Brontë sister is your favorite? This question can spark a knock-down drag out fight. Some of us, like perhaps Kate Bush, choose Emily Brontë and her only novel, the romantic classic Wuthering Heights. Savannah LeGate of Half Price Books Belle Meade in Nashville heartily agrees. “The novel, to be read with extreme caution, is about the complicated relationships revolving around the Earnshaw and Linton families in Yorkshire,” says bookseller LeGate. “But at its core, it's about the tumultuous relationship between Heathcliff, an orphan, and Catherine Earnshaw, who comes from a wealthy family. Their relationship is incredibly problematic: he’s practically a demon and she’s no better. Still, with lines like ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’ it's no wonder their intoxicating dynamic was the blueprint for many iconic fictional couples.”(Michael Giltz)
These are some weird books. In 2016, comedian Scott Rogowski custom-made unusual book covers to see how New Yorkers on the subway would react. In 2018, a teeny tiny book written by Charlotte Brontë sold at auction for almost a million dollars. In October, a library book 90 years overdue was finally returned to Larchmont Public Library in New York state. Inside Edition Digital’s Andrea Swindall has more.
Her sister, Anna Taylor, chose the Manga Classics Pride of Prejudice and Emma by Jane Austen. Her reading list for 2024 also includes Life with the Walter Boys, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Should attempts at ethnic diversity really be confined to “original dramas”? If so, this would exclude non-white actors from a very large chunk of British TV. The nostalgia market is huge. We are a nation that likes to tell ourselves the same stories over and over: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Dracula, Mary Poppins, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre … a new version of one of these appears about once a year. Make one, and you know millions will watch: this is not the case with every original drama. The classics are also how we sell ourselves abroad. Britain is a relatively open and tolerant country: to insist on an all-white image “for accuracy” would be its own sort of untruth – out of line with our values. (Martha Gill)
The group also intend to publish as many of the letters and manuscripts relating to Arthur Bell Nicholls as possible. (...)The group also intend further promote a travelling exhibition of entitled The Legacy of the Brontës made up of embroidered works by the Banagher Crafting Group and Maebh O’Regan of NCAD, Dublin. (...)The memorials of Arthur and Mary Anna and other members of the Bell Family are in need of greater care. Contact has been made with Nigel West, a descendant of Arthur with regard to the possibility of cleaning and refurbishing them. The same Nigel West is deeply involved in the current project to save the Brontë Birthplace at Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire. Several members of the Banagher Brontë Group have generously subscribed.
Conservators David Everingham and Alison Aynesworth worked to restore 12 oil-painted panels on the Apostles' Cupboard on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. The pair spent 12 weeks working on restoring the paintings on the cupboard that is described by Charlotte Brontë in her novel Jane Eyre.
9. Frances O'Connor - 'Emily'Letterboxd score: 3.6/5Blending fiction and history in a unique take on the biopic film, Emily captures a nuanced portrait of the life of Emily Brontë (Emma Mackey), the author of Wuthering Heights and lesser-known sister of revered author Charlotte Brontë. Quiet and profoundly moving, the film tracks Brontë's tumultuous family life alongside her intriguing romance with William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) as she recounts the events leading her to write her only novel.Yet another actor turned director, Frances O'Connor paints a vivid and compelling image of the complicated writer in this impressive feature debut. Her astute direction allows Mackey to shine in the titular role, as her performance breathes life into the often-overlooked literary figure. Yet, the film's reliance on fiction proved controversial for some viewers, and O'Connor's direction, while beautiful, occasionally left Emily's writing as an afterthought in service of the central romance. Regardless, it is easy to get swept up in O'Connor's gorgeous worldbuilding, which isn't afraid to tell a unique story about a troubled outcast. (Faith Terrill)
Bookworms should visit nearby North Lees Hall - the inspiration behind Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Fiona Callingham)
Precisely, Through the Eyes of the Brontës revisits "Hathersage in the Hope Valley, in the Dark Peak, Derbyshire with Charlotte Bronte - July 1845".
The wider Bradford district does have some hotspots, including the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Saltaire and the Worth Valley villages of Haworth and Oxenhope, known for their Brontë links. (Grace Newton)
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go around emotionally devastating people if that’s where your true happiness lies. There’s nothing better than a tortured romantic confession, even if it disrupts a wedding. Especially if it disrupts a wedding. Let’s not be so puritanical we throw the Brontës out with the bathwater. What’s not romantic is keeping your current girlfriend on ice, in case your big declaration doesn’t land. (Hera Lindsay Bird)
5. In February, the novelist Jessie Burton admitted she had never enjoyed which novel written by a Brontë sister?a) Jane Eyre.b) Wuthering Heights.c) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Brontë's MoorsThe Yorkshire Moors, a character in their own right in Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' are as hauntingly beautiful in reality as they are in the novel. Visitors to Haworth, the Brontë family home, can roam these wild, windswept landscapes, imagining Heathcliff and Catherine's tumultuous romance.
A traveler (named Max, an obvious reference to the author) wanders into a bar where a woman named Ashling works. (Her name means "dream" or "vision," referring to the aisling, a poem where Ireland appears as a vision to the poet lamenting her people's hardships.) She is redacting "Wuthering Heights" and wrapping it in Saran Wrap. (Chloe Rabinowitz)
Cambiamo decisamente atmosfera, per parlare di uno dei debutti più attesi di inizio 2024, quello di Francesca Mautino, che vive a Torino e che ha una laurea in Storia del cinema. Mautino, che ha scritto per la televisione, il 16 gennaio pubblica per Longanesi il romanzo Qualcuno che conoscevo. La protagonista è Valentina Bronti, trentenne torinese alle prese con un parto trigemellare. Valentina, che ha messo tra parentesi la sua carriera professionale, ha scelto per le sue tre bambine i nomi di Emilia, Carlotta e Anna, come le celebri sorelle Brontë. Per Valentina, personaggio “in cui convivono senso di inadeguatezza, acume e un’ostinata vitalità“, conservare alto l’umore non è facile, in una vita incastrata tra illusori tutorial sulle pulizie domestiche e una relazione fallimentare con Marco, il padre delle bimbe, che si è ritirato a dormire nello sgabuzzino. Finché, un giorno, viene convocata all’asilo perché le tre piccole hanno tentato la fuga trascinando con sé una compagna. E qui inizia tutta un’altra storia, piena di ombre e bugie… (Antonio Prudenzano) (Translation)
Si pudieras invitar a tres personajes literarios a cenar, ¿quiénes serían y por qué?
Rodión Raskólnikov, Jane Eyre y Lady Chatterley. Para calibrar intensidades de lo íntimo. (Translation)
Home Beautiful includes a quote by Emily Brontë, you know which one, in a list of Valentine Day quotes. QueroBolsa (Brazil) recommends Jane Eyre as a 2024 imprescindible reading.
