A ghost hunter says he has realised a lifelong ambition in launching a four-part series exploring paranormal activity in a historic Bradford district village.Jacob Haw-Wells, just 20 years old from Bradford, has created Haunted Haworth.It's a documentary-style series on YouTube that delves into eerie legends and supernatural reports in the iconic village of Haworth. (...)The series explores some of Haworth’s most intriguing locations, including Church Street, Haworth Old Hall Inn, the Old White Lion Hotel and Spooks.His investigations combine historical research with first-hand interviews.He said: "First I like to go to the location and speak to the owners, talk to people that have knowledge on the area, local businesses, people living in the surrounding area, I like to get them people on the show for interviews."The series follows real investigations into these locations while also highlighting Haworth's fascinating heritage and ghost stories." (Freya Thomson)
No me llamen exagerada, que yo con estos ojos que se ha de comer la tierra presencié en el Teatro Español de Madrid un brutal atropello teatral de Jane Eyre, la obra de Charlotte Brontë donde una mujer –bastante 'odiseica', por cierto– construye su destino y sus sentimientos de espaldas a los corsés de la época y asumiendo cierta humana imperfección, tentativa de poligamia incluida. Intentar convertir eso en un cántico a la sororidad, con la protagonista lanzando salvas solidarias a la neurasténica esposa del hombre que ama y que la ama... en fin. (Anna Grau) (Translation)
Jane Eyre: A New Musical, The Journey to SelfAugust 13, 2026 to August 16, 2026889 Dongdaming Road 东大名路889号Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" has been given a brand-new musical adaptation, which will be presented to Shanghai audiences from August 13 to 16 at AIA Grand Theater.This story of freedom, dignity, selfhood, and love is familiar to many. Jane's poignant question – Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? – has moved countless readers over the years.This new musical unfolds Jane's story in nine chapters. It is as if she has traveled across 180 years to the present, showing audiences through her actions that one can be plain, poor, or even unloved, but must always stay true to oneself."Many people tend to see Jane Eyre as a symbol of the nineteenth century; a textbook icon of the 'independent woman,' or a romantic legend," said director and musical singer Jin Shengquan."In fact, her dilemmas are our dilemmas, and her defiance is exactly what we long for. Her wholeness lies in her ability to remain self-possessed while also daring to love deeply," he added.Jin hopes that the musical, created in a contemporary theatrical language, will give this "female epic" a fresh look and inspire today's audiences.
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, at 3 p.m. in the lower level of Artworks, 106 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids, MIWuthering Heights"Wuthering Heights" is a challenging but memorable read because the novel does not offer a simple love story or a clear division between good and evil. There is a dark atmosphere surrounding "Wuthering Heights" and Thrushcross Grange. The reader is pulled into a world shaped by obsession, pride, revenge, class expectations, and emotional suffering. (...)Reading Wuthering Heights is unsettling because many of the characters are difficult to admire. Brontë does not ask readers to approve or condemn them. Instead, she asks us to think about how love, pride, class, and suffering shape people’s choices. It is a story that stays with the reader because it shows both the destructive power of obsession and the possibility of healing through compassion. (Barbara Ross)
HaworthHandsome, cobbled Haworth, former home of the Brontë sisters, is threatened by the construction of England’s largest wind farm.If approved, the Calderdale Energy Park will sit on the moors above the village where the Brontës wandered and composed. A total of 34 turbines – scaled back from an initial 61 – will blight the skyline, ruining the special atmosphere of places associated with the sisters such as Top Withens, the remote ruined farmhouse that inspired Wuthering Heights. “People come to Haworth to see the landscape and it will have a hugely negative impact on that,” said Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, whose constituency includes Haworth. (Christopher Winn)
Man fined £1,000 after fly-tipping at Penistone HillA Rogue waste carrier has been fined for dumping rubbish.He was working without a licence and left a large pile of waste at Penistone Hill Country Park.Bradford Council’s Environmental Enforcement Team was alerted to the fly tip in early May 2025 in the park's car park, a popular spot in Haworth known for its Brontë heritage and scenic views.The dumped rubbish included household and commercial waste such as furniture, timber, doors, cardboard, black bags, and general refuse. (Harry Williams)
Literary connectionsHathersage has strong literary connections - having inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre. The nearby North Lees Hall also became the main inspiration for Thornfield Hall. (Tom Hardwick)
There Are No Sex Scenes In Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights,’ But Plenty In The 2026 Movie Adaptation.Emily Brontë’s book is not steamy. It’s tragic, gothic, almost asexual - in fact, the star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff are soulmates, no sex needed. When society doesn’t allow them to marry because he’s poor, things become tragic and toxic, and with time love becomes obsession, and its beauty becomes withering.The movie has some of those elements, but it’s not interested in the yearning, but the lust between Cathy and Heathcliff, especially once she’s married Edgar, showing them having sex numerous times (there’s also a scene with the servants having S&M sex, for some reason).Director Emerald Fennell has said the film is inspired by how she felt reading the book when she was 14, so it makes sense that the yearning, in her eyes, involved lust. In turn, it logically follows that one of the things she was interested in adapting was creating this much more sexually forward version. (Rafa Boladeras)
What book made you fall in love with reading as a child? How and why did it capture your imagination?I don’t think I ever ‘fell in love’ with reading. And I don’t feel ‘in love’ with it now. Reading has always been much more embedded in my life than that (as necessary as eating and sleeping… and most of us aren’t ‘in love’ with sleeping). What books do I remember from all those years ago? Any number… Beatrix Potter’s Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit, Jane Eyre and the Guinness Book of Records.
"Yo soy Heathcliff", dijo Catherine Earnshaw. Y la historia de la literatura tembló. Emily Brontë acababa de escribir (en servilletas, apenas tenía papel)(????????) una de las novelas más emblemáticas de la tradición anglosajona, una de las historias de amor más infelices y arrebatadoras de todos los tiempos, 260 páginas de crueldad y desencuentro, de desamor desabrigado y escarpado como el abismo que la propia autora creó y colocó entre Heathcliff y Cathy, el kilométrico páramo que separaba Wuthering Heights de Thrushcross Grange, el salvajismo de la civilización, el corazón de la razón.Podría parecer que una historia así no debería suscitar el interés de una directora como Andrea Arnold, más inclinada –ya lo demostró en Wasp o en Fish Tank– hacia el drama urbano, el realismo social y la brutalidad infantil. Y sin embargo, la directora sorprende con una lectura fiel, que aunque prescinde del armazón más aparatoso de la obra (elimina el juego matrioskal de narradores) apunta a su más pura esencia, dispara al corazón mismo de la novela y empata con ella, consigue lo que Cumbres borrascosas logró en su momento: que al leer aquella historia de amor nos doliera el cuerpo.Pero su verdadero acierto es que para transmitirnos la esencia de Cumbres borrascosas no renuncia a su estilo, a su manera de contar las cosas. Su versión del clásico es casi muda (las palabras que intercala –"me has roto el corazón, me has matado"– son como puños golpeando en el estómago), la violencia y el barro y la mugre se hacen más explícitas, el lenguaje está inspirado en el de las barriadas de Essex, y su banda sonora son los animales, los gritos, el viento, las palmadas, el dolor… convirtiendo la adaptación en algo más parecido a un poema. Que Heathcliff sea más negro que en la novela quiere decir que la directora tampoco ha abandonado los temas que la inquietan y en los que le gusta ahondar: ¿qué sucede cuando un niño crece rodeado de violencia y sin amor? "Emily Brontë era Heathcliff", diría Andrea Arnold, "y todos podríamos ser él". (Andrea G. Bermejo) (Translation)
In the video for her 1978 song “Wuthering Heights,” Kate Bush wears a red dress and red flowers in her hair as she twirls, swoops, beckons and poses through a grassy plain. She’s mesmerizing, acting out the aching lyrics — “Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy / I’ve come home, I’m so cold” — in indelible gestures that I’ll admit I’ve stood in front of the screen mirroring more than once.Each summer, locations around the world host “The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever,” where people get together in cherry-colored dresses and recreate the dance. Here are gatherings in Melbourne, Atlanta, Edinburgh and the original performance that inspired them all in Brighton, from 2013. Many events are scheduled for this weekend, including one in the English coastal town of Folkestone, whose organizers have put together a tutorial for how to do the dance.It looks a little intimidating when you see Kate Bush kicking her leg up near her ear on each refrain, but, as one of the instructors in the tutorial says: “The point isn’t to look brilliant; the point is to make sure we have lots of fun.”Thanks to Ann Shaller, a reader from Orange County, Calif., who’s been known to dance her own Nelken Line, for the recommendation. ( Melissa Kirsch)
A new mural of Charlotte Brontë has gone up on the strand-line walls of Kilkee beach in Co. Clare, marking the town's real historical link to the novelist: Charlotte and her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls spent a week of their honeymoon there in 1854. The mural was commissioned by Kilkee Civic Trust, the group behind the town's four-year-old Brontë Festival, with sponsorship from Creative Ireland Clare. It occupies one of four wall spaces on the strand that were once used for alley or racquet ball — a game associated with actor Richard Harris, who was known for playing it there decades ago, though the tradition has since faded.The artist behind the piece is Marcus Vallböhmer, a German-born muralist based in Farrihy, between Kilkee and Doonbeg, who moved to West Clare in 2023 with his Swiss wife after buying a farmhouse there. He described the Kilkee commission as an unusually demanding one, given the exposed conditions — weather, tides, and constant public visibility on a working beach — though he said passersby frequently stopped to admire the work and offer encouragement as he painted. (AI summary from the original by Sharon Dolan D'Arcy)
Between Seasons 2 and 3 [of House of Dragons], Mitchell filmed Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” He had previously worked with the filmmaker on 2023’s “Saltburn,” for which he auditioned using a Harold Pinter monologue. For “Wuthering Heights,” Fennell simply texted Mitchell asking him to play Joseph, a servant in the Earnshaw house, whose sexual depravity electrifies Cathy.“I was like, ‘If you asked me to shine your shoes, Emerald, I would do that,’” Mitchell says. “All of her characters are so vibrant and so nuanced, and there is such a vision you see in her films. She’s a one-of-a-kind, singular visionary. I’ve learned so much working with Emerald that I’ve taken forward in my career.” (Emily Zemler)
"Wuthering Heights' (Warner), de Charlie XCXMientras muchos esperaban este viernes su nuevo disco de estudio, son otros muchos los que consideran que el mejor trabajo de la revolucionaria y joven compositora británica que aceleró el pop es la banda sonora que este mismo año publicó para la revisión cinematográfica de 'Cumbres borrascosas'. (Javier Herrero) (Translation)
Si è svolto di recente, il primo appuntamento della XV edizione della rassegna letteraria "Liberamente Sopra le Righe" nell'accogliente Piazza Duomo di Telti. Protagonista della serata Maria Laura Berlinguer con il suo nuovo romanzo "La cena delle anime" - una saga familiare che narra di una tormentata storia d'amore in pieno stile "Cime Tempestose" ma dall'ambientazione tipicamente sarda. Un viaggio tra memoria, tradizioni e segreti nella Sardegna del Meilogu. (Ilaria Del Giudice) (Translation)
AnneBrontë.org publishes a post for the anniversary of Ellen Nussey's 1833 first visit to Haworth, built around her own vivid, decades-later recollections of the Brontë family, the parsonage, and a memorable moorland ramble with Emily and Anne.
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë (1847)Charlotte Brontë presented an independent heroine who refused to submit to social constraints, a bold proposition at the time. Despite initial criticism, the novel later became one of the most prominent and influential English novels.Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (1847)The novel caused widespread shock due to its complex characters and gloomy atmosphere, but over time it has become one of the greatest romantic and psychological novels in world literature. (Medhat Elsheikh)
Calderdale Energy Park: Brontë Parsonage 'totally opposed' to wind farm proposalThe director of Yorkshire’s Brontë Parsonage has said the group behind the museum is “totally opposed” to plans for the Calderdale Energy Park development.Located in Haworth and previously home to the prolific family of writers, the Brontë Parsonage Museum is one of the region’s most well known attractions for tourists.But according to the museum’s director, the proposed Calderdale Energy Park wind farm scheme could put tourist numbers at risk of dropping. The project would see the creation of around 34 wind turbines between Haworth and Hebden Bridge, standing at a maximum height of 200m.In a statement given to The Yorkshire Post, Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: “The Brontë Society is totally opposed to Calderdale Energy Park.“The location is environmentally sensitive, and we believe the development would have a significant and detrimental impact on an iconic local viewpoint and world-renowned landscape.“People walk the moorland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge for reflection, inspiration and to understand how the natural surroundings influenced the Brontes’ work; it’s a unique place which allows the literary tourist to physically travel through the landscapes of the Brontës’ imaginations and the worlds of their novels and poetry.“The Museum welcomes over 75,000 visitors each year and for many of them, the walk to Top Withins from Haworth is a form of pilgrimage: the connection between the landscape and literature cannot be ignored.” (Michael Crossland)
The vampire saved the show from imminent cancelation, prompting a spike in ratings and a new direction away from a moody Jane Eyre-like gothic romance style to outright supernatural (if unintentionally campy) horror. (Greg Evans)
Elizabeth Heffernan: What is one book that changed your life?Shady Cosgrove: I can’t limit it to one! My life was transformed by Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
Si vives tu amor en plan Heathcliff y Catherine en 'Cumbres Borrascosas', como una tormenta de arrebatos emocionales y montándote una película mental 24/7 y conviertes un 'crush' platónico en 'ups & downs' anímicos para que tu objeto de deseo te corresponda, toca pararse a reflexionar sobre dónde está la línea entre una relación sana y una obsesiva. (Rosa Alvares)
Britain’s Favourite Railway Stations (C4, 5pm)The rerun More4 series chugs along, with Siddy Holloway taking a trip on West Yorkshire’s “Brontë line”, as seen in The Railway Children. Si King experiences the Snowdon Mountain Railway, and Damion Burrows extols the architecture of Wemyss Bay station. (John Dugdale)
Some more articles about The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in Dublin and other places: The Irish Times, The Journal, DPA Inernational...
Livejournal user drush1891 reviews Wuthering Heights 1992.
The Bronte Society’s response was given to the recent statutory consultation CEP held on the proposals.The society said while they have a commitment to environmental sustainability and renewable energy, they “are strongly opposed to this development” with concerns about the Preliminary Environmental Information Report (PEIR) – a key document in the consultation on the impact of the development on moorland.Reporting details of objections on the Parsonage Museum’s social media, they said: “The PEIR does not contain the baseline evidence for any assessment of the effect on Bronte heritage of the proposal and simply claims that ‘effects on the Bronte-related landscape are minor and not significant.’“We strongly dispute this claim: the moorland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge allows the literary tourist to physically travel through the landscapes of the Brontes’ imaginations and the worlds of their novels and poetry.“This link between the Bronte texts and the surrounding landscape was noted by Virginia Woolf when she visited Haworth in 1904:” ‘I do not know whether pilgrimages to the shrines of famous men ought not to be condemned as sentimental journeys.“‘It is better to read Carlyle in your own study chair than to visit the sound-proof room and pore over the manuscripts at Chelsea.“‘The curiosity is only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books.“This justification you have for a pilgrimage to the home and country of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.'”“Woolf, along with the 70,000 visitors who visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum from across the world each year, clearly understood the inseparable connection between the local landscape and the Brontës, a connection which cannot be dismissed,” said the society. (John Greenwood)
'The Last of Us' Meets 'Wuthering Heights' in This Near-Perfect Gothic Book. (...)Gothic novels will always be popular. Some of literature's all-time greatest efforts belong to the Gothic genre, from the seminal horror of Dracula to the timeless romance of Jane Eyre. (...)As the title implies, Mexican Gothic borrows from the rich tradition of Gothic stories to a T. There's a large, tetric manor, High Place, haunted by the ghosts of generations past and very much modeled after the genre's best-known mansions: think of Wuthering Heights, Thornfield Hall, or Manderley. (...)The Gothic genre has always dealt with themes of class and status. In classics like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, class plays a major role in the central romances between Heathcliff and Cathy and Jane and Mr. Rochester. The differences in standing, background, and prospects complicate the relationship between these couples, allowing the Brontë sisters to provide some very sharp observations that remain relevant almost two centuries later. (David Caballero)
Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëEmily Bronte made a very interesting choice when choosing the narrators of this novel and it has always felt like one of the most important aspects of the story to me. Cathy’s servant Nelly Dean tells the story, but it is written down by Mr Lockwood who is renting the house where Cathy once lived. Both arrive with their own biases, Nelly because she was once from the same class as Cathy and then became her servant, and Lockwood, who feels outside the long established families who rule this part of the Yorkshire moors.The layers of unreliability run throughout, Nelly often not hearing or knowing everything that happened between Cathy and Heathcliffe and Lockwood often interpreting. And the brilliance of this lies in the fact that Wuthering Heights is a novel about being an outsider, so who better to tell it than two outsiders with their own scores to settle, just like Heathcliff.
Old men may remember what Charlotte Brontë wrote: “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” (Devendra Saksena)
Haworth, West YorkshireOver in Bradford, Haworth is a beauty spot best-known as the home of the Brontë sisters. The Yorkshire Moors that surround the village can be seen both in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. (Jennifer Cartwright)
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)
A rare first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, together with Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, sold earlier this evening in The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures for £1,206,500, setting a new world auction record for Emily Brontë.The result marks the highest price ever achieved at auction for any printed book by a woman, as well as the highest price for any work of 19th-century literature.Regarded as one of the finest surviving examples in private hands, the set remains in its original 1847 publisher’s cloth binding. No other textually complete copy of Wuthering Heights in publisher’s cloth has appeared at auction since 1908.Mark Wiltshire, Specialist, Books & Manuscripts, Christie’s commented, “This is exactly the kind of book collectors dream about but almost never see. A first edition of Wuthering Heights in original cloth is extraordinarily rare. It’s a true survival – and a landmark result for Brontë collecting. It is an honour to have been entrusted with such an exceptional work.”
Sarah West, a volunteer at the site who met the Queen at the time, said: “One of the joys of volunteering at the Brontë Birthplace is meeting fascinating people from all over the world who come to discover where the Brontë story began.“Having the opportunity to meet Her Majesty during her visit was a wonderful experience, and it is fantastic news that she has chosen to become our royal patron.”A group of people stand and watch as the Queen lifts a cloth covering a memorial plaque mounted on an easel in front of the buildingCathy Boyden, the chairman of Brontë Birthplace, said it was an “incredible honour” that the Queen had become its royal patron.She said: “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.“Her Majesty’s patronage is a wonderful endorsement of what has been achieved so far, and gives us great encouragement as we look towards the future.” (Tom McArdle in The Telegraph)
Also on Museums+Heritage.
For 26 years now, local heritage champion Steven Stanworth has been celebrating the area’s Brontë legacy. Since the turn of the millennium, the now 70-year-old has dedicated countless hours of his time to restoring and promoting the Bell Chapel and, with fellow Bradfordian the broadcaster Christa Ackroyd, also created a Brontë exhibition at St James’ Church in the village, which includes the font at which five of the Brontë children were baptised.Formerly involved in both the Brontë Birthplace Trust and Brontë Birthplace Ltd, Stanworth has also helped to shape a lasting celebration of Thornton’s place in the Brontë story at what was once the family home on Market Street.Next month, he’ll give a talk there about his Brontë journey, one of a number of Bradford-born or based speakers taking centre stage at this year’s Bradford Literature Festival to reflect the city’s rich literary and cultural landscape. (...)Stanworth’s involvement with the Brontë story began in 2000, whilst a church warden for Thornton’s St James’ Church, opposite the ruin of the Bell Chapel. After spotting two people tending to graves in what was its rather overgrown graveyard at the time, he got together a working group to tidy the place up and clear it from weeds and brambles.“I didn't realise how big the site was, or what its historical significance was at the time,” he reflects. “But people kept turning up and saying ‘you do realise this is where Patrick Brontë was the minister and five of the six children were christened in this place?’ I didn't at that time but I started to research it...And lo and behold there we are with this unique selling point for Thornton that had been left to go to rack and ruin.“So I really wanted to set about making this place known to people. Brontë fans come from all over the world to Haworth but they very rarely came to Thornton. This seemed wrong, you know, this is the birthplace of the children. These are three of the world's greatest, well-known authors and they should be celebrated in the place where they were born. I thought it's time to put Thornton on the map.”Fast-forward to 2012 and Stanworth took a leading role in The Brontë Birthplace Trust, which was established to raise funds to purchase the house where the family previously lived. “But unfortunately we didn't have enough time to get the money together and buy it,” he recalls.It was a lot of work and Stanworth, who retired as an engineer for Northern Powergrid six years ago, was reluctant at first to get involved in a second opportunity a decade later.But he did in fact become a key part of a group of heritage campaigners who stepped in to buy the Grade II-Listed house and convert it into a visitor attraction. After being lovingly restored to reflect both its historic character and contemporary charm, the building opened to the public as Brontë Birthplace last year and was paid a royal visit by Queen Camilla.More than £650,000 was raised to bring the site back to life, with money from more than 700 individual investors, together with grants from Bradford City of Culture 2025, the Community Ownership Fund, National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Rural England Prosperity Fund, contributing to the purchase. The house now runs as a museum, cafe and education centre with facilities for overnight stays."I think you have to celebrate people where they were born,” reflects Stanworth, who last year released the book Birthplace of Dreams, with photographer Mark Davis, to champion the Brontë heritage in Thornton. “Famous people from your town inspire other people. I want children in particular to be inspired because these girls lived in a humble terrace house and they became world famous and are still famous 200 years later. That’s aspirational.” (Laura Reid)
What would happen if Georgiana, younger sister of Pride and Prejudice’s swoonworthy hero Fitzwilliam Darcy, met Branwell, the troubled only brother of the famous Brontë sisters, shining stars of the 19th century literary firmament? (...)Georgiana finds herself in 1845, only forty-six years in the future, and at gloomy Thorp Green Hall in Yorkshire. It’s the home of the ageing Reverend Robinson and his decades younger wife… and also the place where Branwell and Anne Brontë are employed as the children’s tutor and governess.Mistaken for the eldest and troublesome daughter Lydia’s ‘special companion,’ Georgiana settles in but anticipates she has been drawn to Thorp Green Hall for a reason… to investigate another murder. However, even before she discovers the cook’s father dead on a chopping block, Georgiana finds herself entangled in a web of passion, deception, and danger centred on the eccentric, haunted Branwell.It seems Branwell is engaged in a perilous affair with Mrs Robinson and experiencing a series of sinister omens and terrifying encounters. As Georgiana uncovers the secrets of the house, and learns more about the origins of her time-travelling, she must find the killer and save the Brontë siblings from an evil plot… thus preventing, of course, a most terrible loss to future readers everywhere.Blackwell’s ingenious blend of crime, time travel, all things Austen-esque, and now the Brontë siblings, delivers an atmospheric murder mystery while allowing readers a fresh and fun perspective on much-loved fictional Austen characters, and a glimpse into the real lives of characters like Anne, youngest of the famous sisters, and the tragic Branwell whose turbulent, alcohol-addicted life ended at the early age of 31. (Pam Norfolk)
What makes Jane Eyre still relevant today? That was a question very much on my mind when I was writing my own Jane Eyre reimagining, 4 Janes, which traces the parallel lives of one soul searching for meaning, connection and a place to belong.For a character self-described as small, plain and poor, Jane remains larger than life. Is it because of her independence, her intelligence, her endurance, her moral courage? These are admirable traits, but perhaps what makes Jane most relatable is her desire for more, for a bigger life. Jane wants love — who doesn’t — but she will not compromise herself for it. No wonder readers can’t get enough of Jane Eyre.The roundup below brings together new and earlier reimaginings of Jane’s story. Each uniquely picks up and elaborates upon an important theme in Jane Eyre. Altogether, these retellings are a testament to Jane Eyre as an enduring source of inspiration for both readers and writers.
As previously announced, Charlie Burn (Mean Girls, Savoy Theatre, Les Misérables, UK and Ireland tour) will take on the title role opposite Ashley Gilmour (Miss Saigon, West End/UK and international tour, Evita, Curve) as Rochester.They will be joined by Claire Greenway (Abbot/Grace Poole), Melad Hamidi (St John/Lord Ingram), Connor Wood (John Reed/Vicar), Jonathan Andrew Hume (Brocklehurst/Mason), Izzi Levine (Agnes/Leah/Jane’s Mother/Mary Ingram), Hannah Lindsey (Scatcherd/Bertha Mason), Isabelle Methven (Helen Burns/Bessie), Gemma Page (Reed/Fairfax), Eve Shanu-Wilson (Blanche/Sophie), Poppy Jason (Young Jane/Adele) and Emily-Rose Samuel (Young Jane/Adele).Co-directed by RSC and National Theatre director John Caird (Les Misérables, Spirited Away) and Broadway star Megan McGinnis (Beauty and the Beast, Little Women, Beetlejuice), Caird and Paul Gordon’s musical reimagining of the classic novel will play a strictly limited season at the south London venue from 28 August to 24 October.Commenting on the London premiere of the musical which was first seen in Canada in 1996, Caird said: “I’m so pleased to have the opportunity to explore a new version of Jane Eyre in the beautifully intimate Southwark Playhouse Elephant. It’s always a pleasure to work on this timeless romance but all the more exciting to be collaborating with the brilliant and innovative Megan McGinnis as co-director.”Co-creator Gordon added: “I’m beyond thrilled to finally bring the musical of Jane Eyre to the UK. Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece is not only a landmark portrayal of a strong female protagonist, but a story that sends audiences out of the theatre feeling better about their own lives than when they walked in.” (Angela Thomas)
It seems Emerald Fennell is at it again, riding on the high from her very successful Saltburn, she has reprised her trusty Jacob Elordi to take a stab at adapting Wuthering Heights into a glossy, shock-value-heavy, erotic reimagining.When the trailer for her adaptation dropped, it seemed she had a very different vision to the gothic classic than people were expecting. A vision of a whitewashed Heathcliff with a horrendous Yorkshire accent, a bleach blonde Catherine Earnshaw sticking her fingers into Elordi’s mouth and a Charlie XCX soundtrack thundering across the windy moors.To put it simply, she has taken a classic story rooted in racism, classism and generational trauma and reduced it to a ‘dark erotic romance’ created simply for aesthetics.The most glaring controversy of Fennel’s adaptation is her casting choice, once again she has casted Jacob Elordi as her main lead. Talk about beating a dead horse. This casting choice has not only made the film terribly unexciting and overdone but has also stripped away the core plot of the entire novel. (Kate Koles)
Fennell’s storytelling style and directorial instinct tend towards overstatement and hyperbole which in some sense is appropriate for a story that has such huge emotional highs and lows. Robbie and Elordi are equal to those and portray them well enough, but it is a shame that as empathetic and nuanced actors they are not given much of an opportunity to develop or explore their characters and the dynamic between them beyond the two-dimensional. Where the film scores highly is in the beautiful cinematography from Linus Sandgren and the luminous depiction of the Yorkshire landscape, the soundtrack featuring specially written songs from Charli XCX and the stunning production design and costumes. It is undoubtedly a visual feast. (Yvette Huddlestone)
Haworth - Nestled within West Yorkshire's Worth Valley, Haworth is closely associated with the literary legacy of the Brontë sisters. Their novels remain deeply linked to the surrounding moorland landscapes and the village where much of their lives unfolded.The steep main street climbs through the centre of Haworth, passing stone-built shops, tearooms and historic buildings. The atmosphere feels distinctly different from larger market towns, with much of the village retaining its nineteenth-century appearance.Literary visitors often head to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, housed within the family's former home. Nearby, St Michael and All Angels Church remains an important part of the village's history and contains the Brontë family vault.
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me), delivered on all fours with a ribbon-tied ponytail, is an intentional homage to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Isabella, but there are certainly likenesses. (Anna Moloney)
Cime Tempestose, analisi critica e socio-psicologica del potente e immortale capolavoro della scrittrice Emily BrontëL’apparente monoliticità dell'opera nasconde in realtà una struttura mineraliforme di vettori culturali e concettuali, che Brontë edifica per manomettere, dall'interno, i canoni estetici e morali della sua epoca. (Massimo Triolo)
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.
Ministers have announced a £47m funding boost for projects aimed at protecting some of peatlands, which are vital for absorbing and storing planet-heating carbon from the atmosphere.The money, announced by the Environment Department (Defra) today, will be divided between three pots, each supporting projects related to either building wetting infrastructure, growing wetland crops and bulrush, or receiving peatland restoration training.Farmers, land managers, drainage boards, water companies and environmental organisations can apply for grants from these different schemes depending on which action suits them best.Peatlands store more than half of the carbon found in England’s land-based ecosystems.This makes them a powerful nature-based solution against climate change, which is mostly driven by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.However, 80 per cent of England’s peatlands have been degraded after centuries of drainage to make way for farming caused the soils to dry out and the organic matter they contain to decompose, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere. [...]Defra’s announcement comes amid plans to build a huge wind farm on Walshaw Moor, in Calderdale, the wild landscape that inspired Wuthering Heights.Despite its legal protections, Saudi-backed developers are pushing ahead with plans to build 34 wind turbines – at 200m more than 40m higher than the Blackpool Tower – and a battery energy storage system.MPs from Labour and the Conservatives have objected to the project, highlighting the fact that the scheme would cover more than 2,300 hectares of protected peatland. (Ralph Blackburn)
When Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1847, several critics used the word “strange.” As the New York Times’ B.D. McClay points out, one review simply began, “This is a strange book,” while others described the novel as “strangely original” and “a strange, inartistic story.”“Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it,” another observed. “We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them that they never have read anything like it before.”The novel’s first edition was divided into two volumes, released alongside a third volume containing Agnes Grey, a novel by Emily’s younger sister, Anne. Each one was covered with green-grey cloth, with arabesques and floral patterns decorating the cover. The siblings published under the pseudonyms Ellis and Acton Bell.Of the estimated 250 copies printed, only a few complete copies survive with their full-cloth binding intact. On June 30, Christie’s will sell the first edition’s three volumes in one lot at an auction in London, where the collection is expected to go for between $540,000 and $800,000.“The last time one appeared at auction was in 1908, so no collector alive has had a chance to acquire one,” Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, tells the Art Newspaper’s Maev Kennedy. “Private and public collectors all over the world will want this book.”When Emily and Anne saw the printed editions, they realized that the books contained a numbllings of “Agnes Grey” (“Anges Grey”) and three misspellings of “Heights” (“Heer of errors. Some pages were marked with the wrong numbers, while others contained incorrect or missing punctuation. Perhaps the most egregious mistakes were six misspeghts”).In letters written in the weeks after publication, their sister Charlotte complained that the volumes were full of “errors of the press” that she described as “mortifying.” Writing under the pseudonym Currer Bell, Charlotte had published her own debut novel, Jane Eyre, earlier the same year, and it had been an immediate success. She was deeply protective of her younger sisters, and she was disappointed that their publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, had allowed so many mistakes to make it to press. “If Mr. Newby always does business in this way,” she wrote, “few authors would like to have him for their publisher a second time.”Newby hoped to capitalize on the popularity of Jane Eyre, but Wuthering Heights, which explored darker themes, didn’t enjoy the same level of success. Readers were “shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity and the most diabolical hate and vengeance,” according to Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper. North American Review criticized the novel, writing that “Nightmares and dreams, through which devils dance and wolves howl, make bad novels.”Wuthering Heights follows Catherine Earnshaw, a young girl who lives with her family in northern England, and Heathcliff, an orphan who grows up alongside them. The pair forms an inextricable bond that breeds misery across two generations. The story is set against the dramatic, untamed moors of Yorkshire—which is also where the Brontë siblings grew up. [...]Emily didn’t live to see her novel become so beloved, admired by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf. “The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries,” Woolf wrote in 1925. “She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.” The novel has inspired art, music and film, in addition to literature.“It remains a work that artists return to again and again because of its emotional force, its atmosphere and its psychological intensity,” Wiltshire tells the Associated Press’ Jill Lawless.Few surviving first-edition copies still have their original binding. Wiltshire has only been able to track down five others: Three are in the university libraries of Leeds, Oxford and Princeton universities, according to a statement, while the fourth is housed at the British Library in London. The fifth, which contains Charlotte’s annotations, is missing several pages, and it sold for $86,500 in 2009. (Ellen Wexler)
largely inspired by the wild beauty and dramatic landscapes of Top Withens and the Yorkshire moors that the Brontës capture in their work. (Laura Reid)
The Newlands House Gallery in Petworth has collated works and personal artefacts to create a mesmerising exhibition, Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature, showing until 6th September. Paula Rego was one of the great printmakers and storytellers of our time and she took inspiration from a range of literary sources such as fairy tales, nursery rhymes, literary classics and folklore. This summer exhibition draws upon three of Paula’s major printmaking works: Nursery Rhymes, Peter Pan and Jane Eyre to illustrate her striking and unexpected portrayal of these well-known stories. Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature, 22nd May – 6th September
A consultation on plans to build a large wind farm on moorland associated with the Brontë sisters has fallen "well short of standard", Bradford Council has said.Calderdale Energy Park (CEP) wants to install 34 turbines on Walshaw Moor, between Hebden Bridge and Haworth. Although the site lies within Calderdale, councillors said the impact on neighbouring Bradford would be "significant".Developers say the scheme could generate enough low‑carbon electricity to power about 198,000 homes a year.In its response to CEP the council said it had effectively been consulted "on an abstract concept rather than a transparent, scientifically robust infrastructure design".The South Pennine moors and the Pennine Way are closely associated with writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, who were raised at the Haworth parsonage, now a museum, in the 1840s.CEP originally proposed up to 65 turbines on the land near Haworth, reducing the number to 41 in April 2025 and then to 34 in February 2026 after saying it had listened to residents' concerns.The plans have faced opposition from campaigners, including Josh Fenton-Glynn, Labour MP for Calder Valley, who fear damage to peatland habitats and the loss of moorland used by bird species.Bradford Council said it had not been adequately involved in the consultation, raising concerns about both environmental information and engagement.It argued that key details remained unclear, including proposals for a cabling corridor that could pass through Bradford if the project goes ahead.Councillors also criticised what they described as flaws in the assessment of the "globally significant" Brontë cultural landscape, warning of potential impacts on tourism, biodiversity and historic villages.The authority added it had not been included in meetings or technical working groups linked to the environmental impact assessment.CEP has previously said the turbines would not deter visitors to the moors.A spokesperson said the company had followed all legal requirements and extended the consultation period to encourage engagement, adding it remained committed to "constructive and ongoing engagement" with the council and other stakeholders. (John Greenwood and Andrew Barton)
“Instead of people coming to the National Gallery, the National Gallery is coming to the people and reminding them of their national collections because this is a public collection,” explains Dr Janine Sykes, Kirklees Council’s curator (Visual Arts). “Our gallery in Kirklees, the Huddersfield Art Gallery, closed in 2020 as part of a huge regeneration project, Our Cultural Heart, and won’t open until 2030, it is a whole generation without a gallery, so I responded to the National Gallery’s call-out. I immediately thought about Oakwell Hall because I know there are so many amazing stories and the history here – it is the oldest property in Kirklees Museums and Galleries.”To Janine’s delight, Oakwell Hall was selected as one of the destinations for the exhibition which has been curated to encapsulate links to the Bröntes (sic), through Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Winter Landscape’ 1811, the hall and to Birstall, birthplace of the scientist and founder of Oxygen, Joseph Priestley.Interestingly, one of the paintings located here features the work of Joseph Wright’s ‘of Derby’ ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ 1768 which, Janine explains, links perfectly with Priestley.“As we know Joseph Priestley discovered Oxygen and carbonated water and they knew each other through the Learned Society where they would meet to swap ideas on science, so it allows us to talk about the history of Birstall,” says Janine. “The Winter Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich was from the German Romantic Movement where nature was considered very powerful. All the Brönte [sic] siblings were artistic and their novels were all part of the literary British Romantic genre. I thought wouldn’t it be amazing to somehow link this place-based history to an exhibition with The National Gallery.” [...]“What is very distinct about ‘Art On Your Doorstep’ in Kirklees is I like people to hear different voices in interpretation. It reminds us that it is our collection and for us to enjoy, and it helps to raise awareness of the public collection.”Near the old railway bridge where trains once trundled along the Leeds New Line linking Birstall to Leeds and London before its closure during the Beeching era, is Joseph Mallord William Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway’ 1844. Janine says it encourages viewers to imagine Birstall in the industrial era.“There was a lot of wealth here. When you look at Oakwell Hall it was connected to wealth. A lot of Charlotte Brontë’s friends were middle class from textiles and industry. The wider industrial connection was the railway. There was a lot of freight, whether textiles or coal, and it reminds us of the industrial past. [...]Special events planned over the summer include fun science sessions for children, a family art club and, on July 25, Janine and Programme Officer, Samuel Harrison from the Brönte (sic) Society & Brontë Parsonage Museum, will host a special tour.“There is something for everyone. Whether you are interested in engineering, there is the industrial past, there are national and global literary connections with the Bröntes (sic), there are some amazing role models. There are different stories and we are making it part of the paintings and about the place,” says Janine. (Sally Clifford)
They all have their different reasons, but their responses, including some officially submitted to the statutory consultation organised by Calderdale Energy Park, are clear in their opposition to the proposals.Calderdale Energy Park plans to put 34 giant wind turbines on Walshaw Moor, which is located between Hebden Bridge and Haworth, the village associated with the Brontë sisters. [...]Keighley and Ilkley Conservative MP Robbie Moore has long opposed the proposals and has lodged a ten-page document with the consultation outlining his concerns.“To make it clear, I’m not against renewable energy and understand the important role it plays in our energy mix.“But I cannot simply stand by to see the construction of wind turbines being installed and constructed on protected peatland and on world-renowned heritage landscapes such as Walshaw Moor, which is the beating heart of Brontë country.“This scheme will have lasting effects on our community, our landscape and environment.“On paper, it sounds like a triumph for renewable energy, but in reality, it is anything but,” he said.Mr Moore said he did not relish the prospect of 34 200-metre high turbines – “roughly twice the height of Big Ben” – and said his objection latter raised “grave concerns.”“It harms our environment, our ecology, our wildlife and our bird population.“It harms our precious peatland, our peat bogs and its carbon storage potential, it harms our heritage, our landscape, and our communities and neighbours,” he said.Mr Moore has long-pressured fellow West Yorkshire and Lancashire MPs to come out in opposition to the proposals.After considering his response carefully, Calder Valley Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn, in whose constituency the project would be sited, has done.Mr Fenton-Glynn has always argued that the issues need careful consideration rather than immediate opposition, but says the science has led him to oppose Calderdale Energy Park in his response.“I continue to have concerns about the impact of the Calderdale Energy Park on peat.“I believe in net zero but I don’t think we get there by damaging carbon stores.“Peatland is our Amazon rainforest and we should follow the science and protect it.“That is why I have stated my opposition in response to the consultation,” he said on his social media pages.Hebden Bridge and Todmorden East councillors from different parties have also responded in the negative.Green Party and Labour politicians have been pressed for their view, and have now given it.Councillor Hannah Mickleburgh-Benn (Green, Hebden Bridge and Todmorden East) is opposing the proposals in her consultation response.“I remain – based on the most recent updated information provided by Calderdale Energy Park – strongly opposed to the Walshaw Moor wind farm proposal,” she said.This is because the provided literature does not provide information on key parts of the construction and decommission in order to form a complete opinion on the environmental and ecological effects, she said.In her response she asks dozens of questions of the company on a range of aspects of the proposal.These include concerns about the impact on peatland, challenging assertions that the wider region and this site in particular is among the best for siting wind power, questioning its operational capacity and predicted carbon savings, assessment of flood risk potential impacts, and questions about the proposed cabling arrangements.Coun Mickleburgh-Benn said in her consultation response: “Besides the implausibility of restoring a peat bog that’s been upearthed and in storage for up to 35 years, leaving turbine bases and roads on the site could have a legacy of negative impact for local ecology.”And Labour’s Coun Sarah Courtney has said: “I am aware that we absolutely need to be supporting sustainable energy production, and that it is important that we are not NIMBYs and embrace opportunities for our area to contribute to renewable electricity production.“However, having read information available, the scientific evidence in terms of water and peat, appears to indicate that this moor may not be the right site for these turbines.”Calderdale Council’s ruling Reform UK group have long been clear in their opposition to the scheme.“We will fight to scrap Net Zero, protect our countryside, and put local people before profiteers.” (John Greenwood)
Based on the book by Janice Hadlow, “The Other Bennet Sister” retells Jane Austen‘s “Pride and Prejudice” from the viewpoint of overlooked Mary. Surprisingly, Ella had never read the Austen novel before she landed the part. “It’s mad, isn’t it?’ she laughs. “But I’m from North Yorkshire and I just thought Jane Austen wasn’t a writer for me. She was more for posh southern people. I used to read loads of Brontë because that was the world I was from.” (Simon Button)
The fair also marks the debut of two new releases: I Hide Myself within My Flowers, a commemorative poetry collection published to mark the 140th anniversary of American poet Emily Dickinson's death, and a deluxe gilt-edged hardcover edition of Emily Bronte's classic novel Wuthering Heights. (Xing Wen)
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Christie's30 JUN 4:30PM BST | Live auction 24521Lot 35Property from a Private Charitable TrustEstimateGBP 400,000 – GBP 600,000A truly exceptional first edition of Wuthering Heights in the original cloth binding. Preserved within the same historic house library since shortly after its publication in 1847, it is perhaps the finest example remaining in private hands of a masterpiece of English literature. No textually complete copy has appeared at auction in the publisher’s cloth binding since 1908.Due in part to its distinctive landscape and the wild intensity of its characters, Wuthering Heights ‘has emerged as one of those rare texts, like Frankenstein and Dracula, which has transcended its literary origin to become part of the lexicon of popular culture – the subject of film, song and even comedy. At the same time it has become one of the most written about novels in the language, to the point where the novel’s critical history reads like the history of criticism itself’ (Nestor). Its strangeness troubled early reviewers, especially in light of Charlotte Brontë’s more acceptable Jane Eyre, but its status as one of the great novels in English continues to grow. To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it was ‘a fiend of a book – an incredible monster’, and to Virginia Woolf it was the result of a ‘gigantic ambition’: to look out ‘upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and […] unite it in a book’.Although both Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were written and accepted for publication before Charlotte had completed Jane Eyre, it was the latter work which was published first. The immediate and enormous success of Jane Eyre prompted Thomas Cautley Newby to bring forward the release of the present works in order to capitalise on the phenomenon. Perhaps as a result of this hastiness, Charlotte judged that ‘the books are not well got up – they abound in errors of the press.’ She subsequently added that ‘the orthography and punctuation of the books are mortifying to a degree: almost all the errors that were corrected in the proof-sheets appear intact in what should have been the fair copies’. The present set contains the following errors and issue points as noted by Smith: vol. I has p.342 numbered ‘242’; vol. II has the low comma after PUBLISHER on the title, the full stop missing after VOL. in B1, p.382 numbered ‘282’, the headline HEGHTS on pp.71, 163, and 265; vol. III has the full stop missing after VOL. in C1, the headline AGNES GREY on pp.49, 96, 183, 204, 309 and 326, and p.313 numbered ‘213’.The exact number of copies printed is unknown, but it was suggested by Charlotte that the run was limited to just 250. Of these, examples preserved in any form of publisher’s binding are exceedingly scarce, with those in full cloth being the rarest of all. Smith records five variant publisher’s bindings for the first edition, including examples in boards backed with cloth which ‘were intended for the circulating libraries. Such copies, though quite rare, are more commonly found than copies bound in cloth’. Variants of full-cloth bindings are distinguished by differences in colour, in the central stamps on their covers, in the number of blind-stamped lines in their borders, in the direction of the diagonal ribbing in the cloth, and in the lettering stamped in gilt upon the spine. The example which was given from the Blavatnik-Honresfield Library to the Brotherton Library in 2022 added a further variant in maroon cloth, and the present copy is slightly different again. It shares many of the common characteristics of other variants, including pale yellow endpapers, a four-line border, diamond-shaped and plain-ruled bands on the spine, and the arrangement of the gilt titles, and is perhaps closest to Smith’s variant D, having the publisher’s details at the foot of each spine. It differs in the shape of the central blind-stamped arabesque, the presence of decorative blind-stamped corners, the colour of the cloth, and in the absence of a full stop after the volume number on the spines.We are aware of only five other examples of the first edition preserved in any variant of the publisher’s full-cloth binding: (1) The Blavatnik-Honresfield copy, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; (2) Weston Library, University of Oxford; (3) Ashley 2465, British Library; (4) Charlotte Brontë's annotated copy, sold Christie’s New York, 4 December 2009, lot 27 [lacking titles and 6 pages of text]; (5) Anne Brontë's annotated copy, Princeton University Library [see Parish pp.85-87].References: Parrish, Victorian Lady Novelists pp.85-87; Sadleir 350; Smith 3; Wise pp.97-103.3 volumes, 12mo (199 x 122mm). (Short marginal tear in L4 of vol. I, occasional very minor spots or marks, lacking the advert leaves R3-4 in vol. III as usual.) Original diagonally-ribbed green-grey cloth, covers with blind-ruled four-line border surrounding blind-stamped floral corners and central arabesque, spines stamped in blind with a band at the head and two at the foot and three diamond-shaped bands in between, lettered in gilt with titles and volume numbers between the first and second diamond bands, and with LONDON / T. C. NEWBY. at the foot, pale yellow endpapers (spines of Wuthering Heights volumes slightly cocked and faded, that of vol. II with vertical crease from textblock bulge and tiny split at upper joint, upper hinge of vol. II and hinges of vol. II cracked but holding, the lower hinge in vol. II revealing binder’s waste from North Ludlow Beamish’s History of the King’s German Legion (London: Thomas and William Boone, 1837; vol. II, p.393), faintly rubbed and marked). Provenance: Lord Harris of Belmont House (George Francis Robert Harris, 3rd Baron Harris GCSI, 1810-1872, who succeeded his father to the barony in 1845; bookplate, contemporary ink shelf numbering on endpapers recording presence of Wuthering Heights volumes on H3 and Agnes Grey on J4) – thence by descent.
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