Bookriot recommends some recent narrative nonfiction:
This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, A Life by Deborah Lutz The Brontës are having a bit of a moment again with adaptations and a semi-biographical film about Emily herself, and this book does its best to explain the elusive genius. Since the Brontës were not recognized as genius writers until much later, the historical record of their lives is incomplete. However, Lutz uses the poems, journals, and ephemera Emily left behind in her 30 years to piece together her internal life. Emily wrote about grief and commented regularly on nature and the rising industrialism in faraway cities. (Julia Rittenberg)
But it is William Wyler’s 1939 black and white swoonfest that is still ranked top on film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The clothes are pure old Hollywood glamour, the moody cinematography is sublime, Merle Oberon’s Cathy is ethereal, Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff is brooding. Does it matter that they ditched the second half of the story, ending with the lovers’ ghosts walking hand in hand through the snow? Not really. This is Wuthering Heights reimagined as a Thirties weepie and on its own terms, it is genius. (Ruth Leon) Broadway World announces the Autumn UK Tour of a new production of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre adaptation: Anna Yates, Khadija Raza and Joseff Harris join the production ahead of its run across England. The creative team has been set for the new production of Jane Eyre, touring across England in autumn 2026. The production will be directed by Lily Dyble as a result of her winning the 2025 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award. It is based on Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company's acclaimed adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's enduring novel. (Stephi Wild) Tour Dates Mercury Theatre, Colchester - 26 September – 10 October 2026 Rose Theatre, Kingston - 13 – 24 October 2026 Northern Stage, Newcastle - 3 – 7 November 2026 Storyhouse, Chester - 10 – 21 November 2026
The Book Tribune (Pakistan) lists book-to-screen adaptations to revisit after The Odyssey 2026. Wuthering Heights 2026 is one of them. Russh makes an interesting point after watching the film: Earlier this year, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights was an adaptation that gathered some controversy. Some loved it, while others argued it betrayed Emily Brontë's novel completely. Tail between my legs, I was one of the sceptics. While I admired Fennell's creativity, I'd struggled with how dramatically she had strayed from the original story. However, Fennell never pretended it was a true adaptation. She described the film as the version of Wuthering Heights she remembered reading as a 14 year old, a personal interpretation that filled the spaces between Brontë's words with her own imagination. The reviews, however, were a bit brutal. (...) While I did agree with some of these points, it started to unsettle my compliance. Why was I demanding literary fidelity from Wuthering Heights while happily embracing the artistic licence in Tony? The more I thought about it, the more I realised I'd been judging these films by different standards. It's easy to dismiss an adaptation by arguing it isn't faithful to its original text. Accuracy often become the ammunition we reach for once we've already decided we don't like something and want to fire it with criticism. In Wuthering Heights, fidelity suddenly became incredibly important to me. But was it just because I wasn't enjoying the film? (...) I think we've forgotten that truth and fact aren't always the same thing. A film can invent conversations that never happened and still capture something authentic. It can shorten timelines, combine characters to become one or imagine moments between what was recorded as events while remaining truthful to the spirit of the person. (...) If a film can evoke the essence we all knew and loved of (...) Wuthering Heights through a highly stylised memory of reading a book at age 14 – then it has done its job. (Samantha Corry)
El Most Wuthering Heights Day (El día de Cumbres borrascosas) es un evento alegre. Se baila cada julio en decenas de ciudades del mundo, con miles de participantes que emulan la coreografía del videoclip de Kate Bush: brazos que se abren de golpe, giros bruscos, manos que empujan el aire… Su exagerada teatralidad parece contar la historia con el cuerpo y evocar el espíritu de Cathy pidiendo entrar por la ventana. No es un baile bonito ni técnico. Es más bien raro, dramático y un poco fantasmal. Pero da igual bailarlo bien o mal porque nadie ha venido a lucirse, sino a formar parte de la coreografía. (...) La peregrinación a Haworth no es nueva. En noviembre de 1904, una jovencísima Virginia Woolf subió hasta aquí y escribió sobre la visita en un semanario londinense. En el libro de visitas de la casa de las Brontë han firmado, entre otras muchas mujeres, Sylvia Plath y Patti Smith. Durante más de un siglo, hasta aquí han venido sobre todo mujeres que buscaban a otras mujeres. Woolf se preguntaba si esta u otras romerías a las casas de los escritores no serían puro sentimentalismo, y se respondía que solo se justifican cuando el lugar añade algo a los libros. Con las Brontë, concluía, el viaje merecía la pena: Haworth y las hermanas, escribió, encajan “como un caracol en su concha”. Es imposible separar la obra del sitio que la produjo. (...) Siglo y medio después, una de sus colinas está llena de mujeres que no ocultan nada. Se visten todas iguales, de rojo, y en ese uniforme no se borran: se reconocen. Al contemplar la danza, es inevitable pensar en la ironía que produce una obra hecha en el aislamiento más extremo, y cómo sigue generando un mundo propio un siglo y medio después. (...) No es una postal perfecta: es una romería real, con su desorden, su frío, su espera. Y eso es exactamente lo que la salva del kitsch. La gente ha subido a un campo embarrado un día nublado a hacer algo aparentemente ridículo, y lo hace con una entrega absoluta. Ahí está la dignidad del gesto, en que nadie está posando para nadie. Emily, que escribió y describió el páramo como una fuerza anterior a toda ley, sigue convocando a los vivos. Por eso no envejece. (Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán) (Translation)
Other events: Otago Daily News (New Zealand), El Confidencial (Spain), National Post (Canada)... Despite its spelling, locals pronounce it“GYZ-lee” (rhyming with “guys” and “lee”), and getting it right is often seen as a badge of honour among Yorkshire newcomers. (...) One of Guiseley’s best-known landmarks is St Oswald’s Church, parts of which are centuries old. The church holds special literary significance as the wedding venue of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, parents of the famous Brontë sisters. Fans of Yorkshire's literary heritage often visit the church as part of their travels.
[Dr. Leonard] Sax advocates for “gender-aware” instructional strategies in K-12 schools.
“The best way to get boys excited about Emily Dickinson is very different from the best way to get girls excited about Emily Dickinson,” he said. “And the best way to get girls excited about computer coding is very different from the best way to get boys excited about computer coding.
“But you put in place gender-aware instructional strategies.”
When educators ignore gender differences, Sax added, they ultimately reinforce gender stereotypes.
“If you understand gender differences, you can break down gender stereotypes. And that same boy who loves football and video games will love ‘Jane Eyre’ and will love Emily Dickinson.” (Jason Swensen)
Two hundred and eight years since Emily was born in Thornton, and she's had the kind of year we don't usually get: a box-office hit and an auction record, back to back, both loud enough that you didn't need to be a Brontëite to notice.
On screen. Emerald Fennell's adaptation opened in February to the kind of divided reception this novel seems to specialise in provoking — a middling critical consensus, a lukewarm CinemaScore, and audiences who showed up anyway. It topped the box office on debut and kept climbing, eventually closing out around $242 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest releases of the year regardless of what anyone thought of Margot Robbie's Cathy or the liberties taken with the source. Whatever your verdict on the film itself, it did the one thing adaptations rarely manage: it got people who hadn't opened the book since school arguing about it again.
Under the hammer. Then, on 30 June, Christie's put the record to rest on a question that's lingered for a while: what is a first edition of Wuthering Heights actually worth now? The three-volume 1847 set — bound with Anne's Agnes Grey, still in its original publisher's cloth, one of only a handful of surviving copies in that condition since a copy last came to auction in 1908 — sold for £1,206,500. That's not just a record for Emily; Christie's confirmed it as the highest price ever paid at auction for a printed book by a woman, and the most expensive piece of 19th-century literature to change hands, full stop. The Ellis Bell pseudonym on the title page suddenly reads very differently against that number.
Oh, the irony. A book published under a man's name because nobody in 1847 believed a woman could write something this unruly just set the price record for any book by a woman, ever. Emily never saw a second printing, never mind a seven-figure hammer price. She'd probably have found both the film and the auction faintly ridiculous — but she'd have taken the money.
WCIA (Champagne, IL) announces that: The Stars of Tomorrow program of the Twin City Theatre Company’s is debuting its next production this weekend. Director Emily Ritter and Producer Chm. on Saturdays and Sunandra Galloway came on The Morning Show to talk about their organization and to preview their upcoming production: Emily Brontë: Teenage Necromancer. The show will run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the next two weekends at Parkland College’s Second Stage Theatre. Performances will be at 7 p.m. on Fridays and at 2 p.days.
A sea of red gathered on the moors for a day of music, movement and literary celebration. A total of 500 people took part in 'Mass Wuthering' in Haworth on July 26, 2026, an annual event inspired by Kate Bush’s iconic Wuthering Heights music video. The gathering saw fans don red dresses and recreate the famous dance against the backdrop of the Yorkshire landscape that inspired Emily Brontë’s novel and Bush’s 1978 hit. (...) Ms [Clare] O’Callaghan said: "We had fans of Kate Bush, fans of the Brontës, and people from all over the world who wanted to share the joy of how literature and the arts can inspire and cultivate community. "It really was a day of community and cohesion, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the brilliant messages we’ve received from people - and those we’ve seen posting on social media - saying it was one of the most memorable experiences of their lives. "We all got drenched on Sunday thanks to the ‘Wuthering’ weather, but it didn’t matter at all - it made it even better and the atmosphere was brilliant." (Amelia Short)
Still locally, The Yorkshire Post tells the story of 'How Wuthering Heights took Yorkshire to Times Square and beyond in Britain's international tourism push'. While the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights may have divided critics and audiences, the film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi helped put Yorkshire in the global spotlight. This was symbolised by a huge billboard in New York’s famous Times Square showing Robbie sitting on the Moors alongside a caption reading ‘It’s Not Wuthering Heights Without England’. The billboard was a small part of Visit Britain’s ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign to boost international tourism to the UK which sought to highlight popular TV shows and films as a way of drawing visitors here. Visit Britain worked with international film and TV studios to target ‘high value’ international audiences in countries like the US, France, Germany and Australia and the Gulf. Patricia Yates, chief executive of VisitBritain, explained in the organisation’s most recent results that Wuthering Heights had played a central role in this year’s campaign. “Last year VisitBritain launched its ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign,” she says. “This was the culmination of a monumental effort by VisitBritain teams across the globe who negotiated partnerships with nine studios to produce an incredible campaign platform on which to build. “In its first six months alone, the campaign generated an additional £217m in visitor spend. “Each extra pound represents a boost for the UK economy, a small business supported and a job sustained. The team has not lost momentum. “The release of Bridgerton Series 4 and Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights told a compelling story of regional Britain. VisitBritain secured new Wuthering Heights intellectual property for the campaign showing Yorkshire’s iconic moors and hosted media, buyers and influencers from around the world in Yorkshire. [...] While productions like All Creatures Great and Small and Wuthering Heights may be helping to give Yorkshire a wider international profile, there is still much to be done to keep the region’s hard-working tourism businesses deservedly centre-stage. (Chris Burn)
Folger Shakespeare Library publishes an excerpt of Greg Doran's Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare. In the excerpt, Greg Doran describes his visit to Skipton to see the First Folio that is kept at the Craven Museum: I ask Jenny [Hill, lead curator] to tell me how the cotton mill owner got hold of a folio in the first place. Jenny grins at her colleague Charlotte [Craig]. One theory is that it came from nearby Ponden Hall. Ponden had one of the largest private libraries not just in the West Riding, but in the whole of Europe. Charlotte has a theory about some of Ponden Hall’s close neighbours who might have used their library. “Well, Ponden Hall is just two or three miles across the moors from Haworth.” “Oh, no!” I gasp “From Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë sisters lived?” “That’s right,’ says Charlotte. “I used to work there.” “Are you saying that the Brontë sisters might have read this copy of the First Folio?” “We know they used to borrow books from Ponden Hall. But I can’t prove they read this folio.” “Just say it!” I explode. “Let somebody else disprove it. Oh, that is fantastic. What about that!” James smiles wryly. He thinks I’m mad. Jenny and Charlotte very kindly took the folio out of its case and carried it upstairs for me to examine more closely. While they were doing so, I did a bit of research. I remembered a reference to a letter Charlotte Brontë had written to a school friend about Shakespeare. By the time Jenny and Charlotte had laid out the folio upstairs, I had found the letter online. Jenny points out that the folio is missing quite a few pages, and doesn’t have any of the Comedies. So I tell them about Charlotte’s letter dated 4 July 1834, to Ellen Nussey. “Ellen was her best friend at school,” Charlotte interjects. “If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will though I don’t admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don’t be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great men and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare.” Omit the comedies of Shakespeare. And the Skipton copy has no comedies. “Perhaps Charlotte ripped them out,” Jenny laughs. “This just gets better and better,” I say. “Charlotte, you’ve got to get this story out there.” Once we have all calmed down a little, I tell Jenny that despite its now even more fascinating history, I think it might be the grubbiest copy of the First Folio I have ever seen. “Could you not say ‘grubbiest,’” Jenny grins. “Could you perhaps say ‘well-loved’?” The well-thumbed Skipton copy has become one of my very favourite copies of the First Folio, whether or not anyone can prove that the Brontë sisters ever read it.
Ocula explores the resurgence of film movies in theatres, an unexpected (by the popes of the AI-driven technofeudalism) trend led by the Gen Z audiences: Earlier this year, Emerald Fennell’s much-maligned, Mills & Boon-coded bonkbuster Wuthering Heights (2026) proved a great litmus test for how both film critics and film-industry tech bros have been failing to read the room. Fennell turned down Netflix’s $150 million distribution offer and its associated Faustian pact which demanded that the film go straight to streaming. Instead, she went for Warner Bros for $70-$80 million, with whom she got her theatrical release. On the day I watched Wuthering Heights in the cinema this February, Variety reported that it had already grossed $151.7 million worldwide against an $80 million production budget. This certainly wasn’t because it had been lauded in the press: the film was widely ripped to shreds by critics. Yet I can assure you that the much younger audience alongside which I saw it didn’t seem to care. It turns out that audiences are not brute forces capable only of liking or disliking, but sensitive instruments that might derive their enjoyment from camp, irony, strangeness, or the purely preposterous. (Sophia Satchell-Baeza) Vogue reviews Cat Cohen's last show, Broad Strokes: When Cohen first walks out onstage, she is wide-eyed and holding a candlestick. Before long, she launches into her first song, “By the Sea,” a catchy tune that also helps to explain the Victorian aesthetic of both her costume and the set. (While working with scenic designer Derek McLane, Cohen was variously inspired by Wuthering Heights and images of Gothic palaces and sanatoriums on Pinterest.) “I always wanted to be the main character and the author and the lighthouse,” she tells the audience. (Alex Jhamb Burns) Los Angeles Times recommends '17 page-turning beach reads for the ultimate summer escape' including ‘The Chateau on Sunset’ by Natasha Lester “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Marmont,” reads the opening of this gothic novel set at the Chateau Marmont in 1950s Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine getting into good trouble these days at the Chateau — a relic of a bygone era. Thankfully our protagonist, Aria Jones, does it for us. A midcentury reimagining of “Jane Eyre,” the novel captures the feverish glamour and underlying chaos of the studio era, with each character proving more cunning and bewildering than the last. The result is a gothic tale with a distinctly Old Hollywood twist, paying homage to the enduring mystique of the Chateau Marmont. The dialogue is so taut and snappy, you’ll find yourself holding your breath. Madness, cruelty and difficult women are welcome bedfellows at “The Chateau on Sunset.” (Maddie Connors)
“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre) Which is, of course, not by Charlotte Brontë. It's a quote from the screenplay of Becoming Jane... which was a film about Jane Austen. Double Blunder!
LaSexta (Spain) posts about Wuthering Heights. This is a German publication with a sort of compilation of poetry, quotes, excerpts, and... well, anything Brontë:
Eine Sammlung der schönsten Gedichte, Geschichten, Zitate und Briefauszüge zum Herbst – Die perfekte Lektüre für gemütliche Stunden ISBN: 9783150149225 13 Jul 2026
»Und dieser Wind, der in den Kiefern vor den Fenstern heult. Lass mich ihn bitte spüren, er kommt direkt vom Moor herunter. Lass mich nur einen Atemzug tun!« Sturmumwehte Anwesen und nebelbedeckte Moore bilden die ikonischen Schauplätze der Romane der Schwestern Charlotte, Emily und Anne Brontë. Ob in Jane Eyre, Sturmhöhe oder Agnes Grey – mit ihrem aufmerksamen wie auch verträumten Blick gelingt es jeder Schwester, die herbstliche Melancholie auf ganz eigene Weise literarisch einzufangen.
Claire O'Callaghan reviews Deborah Lutz's This Dark Night: Emily Brontë. A Life for History Today (Volume 76 Issue 8 August 2026): In telling the story of Brontë’s life, Lutz’s method is demarcated by two commitments. First is her interest in Brontë’s world and her place in it. To pursue this, she reconstructs what Brontë ‘wore, saw, heard, smelled, and felt along her skin’ using, among other things, weather reports, the diaries of her neighbours, and local newspapers. This attention to the everyday and the senses offers a thoughtful (and relatively new) approach in Brontë biography, and it is one well suited to Lutz’s established interests, which readers of her 2015 work, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, will recognise. The second is that This Dark Night joins an established tradition that frames Brontë in relation to the natural world and foregrounds the environment as context for understanding her. For Lutz, as for many before her, Brontë ‘brought the open sky, birdsong, and the peat bogs to life on the page’. The imagery is vivid and compelling, participating in a romantic imaginary that tries to enter the inner mind of a woman who conjured some 200 poems (or thereabouts, that we know of and survive) and, of course, Wuthering Heights. At the same time, Lutz’ environmental emphasis also opens onto Brontë’s preoccupation with darker worlds, such as the dungeons, caves, and graves that dominate her writing, as well as ‘the mortal body’. Neither strand is, in itself, entirely new, but the way Lutz binds them together through sustained sensorial attentiveness feels fresh and it sharpens our historical understanding of Brontë as a multifaceted and complex woman. Importantly, This Dark Night delves into territories that earlier biographers have overlooked, such as, for example, the practical question of how the Brontë sisters managed menstruation, which Lutz answers by drawing on broader health histories rather than evidence specific to the Brontës. This kind of detail may not deepen our understanding of Brontë as a writer, but that is not its purpose. Rather, it is a reminder that the sisters were flesh-and-blood women negotiating a monthly cycle that shapes women’s lives – a seemingly obvious fact that can easily be forgotten amid the iconography and fandom that surround them. It is these reflections that exemplify This Dark Night at its best: Lutz’s care for the material, embodied conditions of Victorian womanhood, which lends biography historic specificity.
The Yorkshire Post publishes a photo gallery of the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event that took place in Haworth last Sunday: Wuthering Heights: 500 people gather at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for celebration. Participants gathered at Penistone Country Park in Haworth for Actually the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever on Sunday - a celebration of all things Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush and Emily Brontë. The gathering was in the stunning setting of the Haworth moors. 500 people took part in the mass 'Wuther' in a joyful, windswept, red-dress sea of Cathys dancing for charity, supporting Women’s Aid. (DanieL Sheridan)
Hindustan Times publishes a variation on a classic logical puzzle: Irresistible, isn't it? Eleven classic novels stand in a row on a bookshelf in a library. I find each of them tempting, but in the end, I pick up only one of them.(1) The horror classics Frankenstein and Dracula both stand to the right of the book I chose. (2) Moby Dick and Animal Farm both stand to the left of the book I chose. (3) Two of the books are by Jane Austen. Of these, Pride and Prejudice stands somewhere right of Emma. (4) Pride and Prejudice also stands somewhere right of Frankenstein. (5) There are two titles by two of the Brontë sisters, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, with two other books (not by the sisters) standing between them. (6) Two books stand between Wuthering Heights and Moby Dick (7) Great Expectations (right) and Animal Farm (left) stand on either side of Wuthering Heights. (8) I notice two children’s favourites, with Heidi standing somewhere to the left of Oliver Twist. There are seven books between these two. (9) Six books stand between Dracula and Wuthering Heights. (10) The book I finally choose stands in the middle of the row of 11, i.e. sixth from either left or right. (Kabir Firaque) Many news outlets cover the Haworth event, or the Folkestone (Kent) one or the Bunbury one or...: London Now, WION, Bunbury Herald, The Independent, Kent Online, Kent Live, La Razón, Corriere della Sera... Collider lists 'romance books that are perfect from the first to the last page":
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is much more than just a love story. The novel follows Jane, an orphan who endures a lonely childhood before becoming a governess at the isolated Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the estate's enigmatic owner, Edward Rochester, whose cold demeanor and mysterious past immediately set him apart from the typical romantic hero. The narrative shows Jane and Rochester growing closer, but their relationship is constantly tested by secrets, painful sacrifices, and impossible moral choices that force Jane to decide whether love is worth compromising her own principles. The best thing about Jane Eyre is that, unlike many romances of its time, it never allows love to overshadow its heroine's individuality. Jane refuses to sacrifice her self-respect and independence, even if that means walking away from the man she loves. That gives the novel a remarkable sense of maturity that has influenced generations of romance writers, but few have matched Brontë's sensibilities. (Safwan Azeem)
Llevaba demasiados años escuchando que Jane Eyre era una de las mejores novelas jamás escritas. Cuando por fin la terminé entendí que no era una exageración. No solo he leído un clásico; he sentido que acababa de descubrir el origen de muchas de las historias románticas y de misterio que vinieron después. Y lo mejor de todo es que, lejos de sentirse antigua, me ha tenido completamente atrapado durante toda la lectura. (...) Cuando cerré Jane Eyre entendí por qué sigue apareciendo en cualquier lista de las mejores novelas de la historia. No es solo una historia de amor inolvidable; es la historia de una mujer que se niega a renunciar a sí misma, incluso cuando hacerlo parece el camino más fácil. Hay clásicos que se leen por obligación o por cultura general. Jane Eyre, en cambio, se disfruta de principio a fin y demuestra que las grandes historias no entienden de siglos, porque siguen emocionando exactamente igual hoy que cuando Charlotte Brontë las escribió. ( Translation)
3. Hathersage Hathersage has strong literary connections - having inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre. The nearby North Lees Hall (pictured here) also became the main inspiration for Thornfield Hall. The Grave of Little John, Robin Hood’s second-in-command, can be found at St. Michael’s Church in the heart of Hathersage. While there is little evidence proving he is buried here, ballads suggest that he originated from Hathersage and settled there again later in his life. (Tom Hardwick)
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