Today marks the 172nd anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls.
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)
Let's hope the importance of protecting peatlands will be borne in mind when it comes to deciding about the windfarm.
An online alert for tomorrow, June 30:
Wednesday, July 1 • 2 AM - 5 AM CEST / 5pm PST / 8pm EST
Join us online for a conversation with Deborah Lutz on her new biography of Emily Brontë, This Dark Night. Deborah will be in conversation with Womb House Books founder, Jessica Ferri. Sustaining members of Womb House Books receive free admission to all author events, 15% off online and in shop, and more. Consider becoming a member today. Emily Jane Brontë was just 27 when she started writing the wayward and electric novel Wuthering Heights. Three years later, she was dead. Out of step with her own time and remembered as the strangest of the Brontë sisters, there's much that we don't know about her - most of her papers were destroyed after her death. But as Deborah Lutz explores in this, one of the first biographies of Emily in 20 years, the writing that has survived seethes with storm and strife and with the beautifully desolate landscape of Yorkshire. Drawing on a vast quantity of unexplored archival materials, Deborah reconstructs the texture of Emily Brontë's days, bringing us closer to one of the greatest and fiercest writers we have, by showing us her creative process and her confidence in her strange art. This book has much to reveal to readers of Wuthering Heights, as we accompany Emily around the wild moorlands she loved so much. Also threaded through with the contemporary politics and events of the era (from the early labour movements of the Chartists and reformists, to the slave uprisings in the colonies), and authors and locals that Emily read about or knew (from proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft to the masculine lesbian Anne Lister). Featuring illuminating readings of her poems, This Dark Night takes us inside the world of Emily's irrepressible spirit and wild imagination.
Let's open with the new cartoon by Tom Gauld for the latest issue of New Scientist:  The final twist reveals that the true source of terror is not ghosts, but Marta Carver, a disturbed woman who has been secretly living within the house. This shift from supernatural horror to human menace, similar to renowned gothic stories like Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, makes the story more unsettling and grounded. Country Living lists the UK's most inspiring gardens to visit this summer: Best restoration Parnham Park, Dorset (...) Just ten minutes from the Jurassic Coast, the gardens at Parnham are being thoughtfully brought back to life as part of a dramatic restoration of both house and grounds. The house was devastated by a fire several years ago, lending the estate a romantic, distinctly Jane Eyre feel as it slowly returns to glory. (Helen Daly)
Good Housekeeping has a quiz with one-sentence descriptions of "love stories or romance novels". Can you guess this one: 8. A young woman falls for the wealthy, mysterious man whose dark secrets threaten their future together. (Joanne Finney) TVInsider recommends some films for streaming: Don’t expect high fidelity to Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel about lovers brooding on the 19th-century English moors. Only the novel’s first half is covered here with Margot Robbie as the ill-fated Cathy and Jacob Elordi as her paramour Heathcliff. The bold costumes and sets make up for storytelling liberties. Streaming now, HBO Max (Michael Fell) Libero Magazine (Italy) and others comment on a recent edition of the local version of Wheel of Fortune, La Ruota della Fortuna. They decided to use Wuthering Heights for one of their panels, but they were quite sloppy. The episode of 19 June 2026 featured a literary round called Se la sai raddoppi, themed entirely around Wuthering Heights (Cime Tempestose), and it produced two separate errors about the same book. Error 1: "Set in the Victorian era" Contestant Francesco failed to solve this clue, which turned out to be the answer anyway — and the answer was wrong. The novel runs from 1771 to 1802, firmly pre-Victorian. The Victorian era begins in 1837 with Queen Victoria's reign and ends in the early twentieth century. Error 2: "A love story on the English moors" Francesco did solve this one and went on to win the episode. The show seems to confuse the book with its recent film adaptation throughout, getting both the historical period and the thematic substance wrong.
Finally, a German radio alert. Bayern 2 Salon – Buchgefühl: Emily Brontë, Sturmhöhe (Saturday 27 June 2026, 14:05–15:00 CET; also available as podcast via ARD Sounds). In this episode of Bayern 2's literary reading-and-conversation format, host Judith Heitkamp talks with prize-winning Dutch author Anjet Daanje — whose novel Das Lied von Storch und Dromedar (recently longlisted for the International Booker Prize) imagines the afterlife of Emily Brontë through literature — about why Wuthering Heights has fascinated her since childhood. Daanje argues that film adaptations almost always cover only the first half of the novel, losing something essential: Brontë's portrait of how the next generation survives after the parental one has burned itself out. She also reflects on Brontë's elusiveness as a biographical subject ("you learn more about the biographers than about Emily Brontë herself"). Readings are performed by Irina Wanka, the German voice of Sophie Marceau. In German. A new British Library publication with some Brontë-related content: Edited by Elizabeth Dearnley British Library Publishing British Library Tales of the Weird ISBN: 9780712369459 June 2026
Authors: Emily Brontë, Andrew Michael Hurley, Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Brontë, Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, Ted Hughes, Arthur Machen, Sabine Baring-Gould, Gertrude Atherton, L.T.C. Rolt, E. F. Benson, Phyllis Bentley, Lettice Galbraith, Michael Temple, F. W. Moorman.
The stars gave light enough for me to discern the figure as that of a man, but I could scarcely discover more. “Dark night, this,” I said. “Darker below,” he muttered, as though to himself; “darker, darker, darker.”
Yorkshire: a land entwined with a distinctive tradition of uncanny literature and folklore, home to twilit towns thronging with restless ghosts, woods alive with the whispers of fairies and vast moorlands stalked by boggarts and barghests after dark. Exploring Yorkshire’s position as a heartland of British supernatural fiction, the stories and poems gathered here trace its weird literary heritage from medieval tales of shapeshifting spirits to the Gothic worlds of the Brontë sisters, and from wartime hauntings to modern folk horror. Including local legends from rare sources and unsettling stories from Arthur Machen, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Andrew Michael Hurley and many more, this collection offers glimpses of a stranger England hidden among the shadows of the dales.
The Nerd Daily shares an excerpt from 4 Janes by Marian Yee. Through time, space, and the transcendence of maternal love, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is reimagined in the parallel lives of one soul searching for meaning, connection, and a place to belong. Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from 4 Janes by Marian Yee, which releases on June 30th 2026. Jane Eyre is a missionary’s wife. A bookseller in Vietnam. A time traveler. A hero in a modern gothic tale. What if Jane’s story didn’t end with her marriage to Edward Rochester? What if she never married him at all? In one lifetime, Jane travels to India and Burma as Mrs. St. John Rivers. In another, she’s Trang, a young woman selling books in Vietnam, vying for the love of the local priest. Yet another picks up where Brontë left her, now grieving the loss of her child and crossing time and space to find him. And finally, a young Vietnamese-American man searching for himself in Boston, a tutor whose relationship with a veteran feels strangely, achingly familiar… Each thread tells Jane’s story in sweeping, heartbreaking shades of loss, vulnerability, yearning, and the fierce love of mother and child that withstands time and space. While she may long for something more out of a life she didn’t get to choose, she can still decide what to make of it. (Elise Dumpleton)
Chapter One Marseilles, France, 1851 Jane Eyre is dead. The plain gold band on my finger is the sign of her demise. I am Jane Rivers now. Or, more accurately, Mrs. St. John Rivers. Mrs. St. John Rivers. I try on the name like a pair of new calfskin gloves. The syllables glide along my tongue smoothly enough once I get over the little bump at the beginning. Then I study the small hands lying calmly in my lap. They are encased in soft, pale-yellow leather, and like my new name, they seem to belong to somebody else. I have been a missionary’s wife for barely a week. I wait at one of the fashionable coffeehouses on La Canebière, surrounded by wonders: gilding, mirrors, paintings, tapestries, and a large revolving clock in the center that gives the time on three continents. They bring together the charms of this port city as if in miniature. I look about, my senses heightened: The drink served here is not to my liking, but I savor its rich, smoky aroma. For these moments at least, I sit alone. St. John is at the purser’s office, seeing to our cabins and passage. We arrived at this bustling French port last night, and were deposited, along with the English mail that had departed on the London train with us, in a damp heap along the quay. This followed a Channel crossing that was in itself a trial. I spent most of that time huffing short, shallow breaths and moaning miserably into my handkerchief while my stomach roiled. St. John held my hand dutifully while I battled nausea, but I could not entirely dismiss a sense that his patience was forced, that he hid his disapprobation at finding me such a poor traveler before we had even ventured beyond Europe. No matter. Now all is near ready. We have said our goodbyes. I wait with our few belongings, only the baggage we will need on the crossing, hardly enough for a journey of nearly two months. Fortunately, our present needs are few, and the rest of our trunks will be sent along. In our haste to depart we left them to Diana and Mary—his sisters, my cousins—to assemble, to cord, to nail the cards that would direct them to our final destination. They will chase us from port to port until we are reunited—only six weeks from now!—in India. At that point, we will open them with a sense of wonder that such luxuries and extravagances exist; we will puzzle what to do with calfskin gloves and fur muffs in the blazing heat of a sun-drowned continent. As I wait, I return to the book I laid aside and open it to the point where a folded sheet of paper divides the unread pages from the finished ones. The paper is nothing more, or less, than the very letter that started me off on this journey, having arrived for Mary two months ago from a friend in ⸺shire. As Mary shared its contents with Diana and me, one set of ears heard, with distant concern and casual curiosity, the misfortune of others that did not touch upon itself, while another set heard the end of the world. It was news of a devastating fire at Thornfield: The entire estate had been burned to the ground, and no one there had survived the destruction. No one. God forgive me, there was only one who mattered in that moment, only one whose death meant my own. I could barely bring myself to whisper his name. Edward. I recall Mary’s voice droning on, then pausing; Diana’s sharp oh dear. Was it for the news or at my fainting dead away? I was told afterward that I had collapsed in a wordless heap. I have no recollection of those hours, those days (five, they told me) immediately following, when I drifted in a haze of blankness. Feeling fled me; I was disembodied, perceiving only strange scraps. A slight stirring in the current of air let into the sickroom. Fragments of hushed speech floating in and out of range. Gradually, shadowy forms constellated into people coming in and going out, though one body remained the longest, hovering near my orbit like a constant moon. As the boundaries of my vision drew in, the blurred edges slowly sharpened into clear features: twin orbs of blue that floated, then settled upon a finely boned visage. “Jane.” The eyes probed my face. “You know me.” “Yes, St. John.” He heaved a sigh. “You have been gone a long time.” “I have been right here,” I said, bewildered. “In this bed. I have not moved.” Indeed, I felt stiff all over, for I had been practicing the pose of a corpse. “Stay,” he gently implored. “I am right here,” I repeated. “Nay, you were drifting again, Jane. To that place you have been these past five days, five years, it seemed. Sorrow’s shores. Come back to the living, Jane.” And then I remembered.
The Chosun Daily recommends Fanny Britt’s 2013 graphic novel Jane, le renard et moi, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault. As a university literature professor, I often recommend Charlotte Brontë’s *Jane Eyre* to students who find classics daunting. It is relatively accessible among so-called classics and, above all, unexpectedly entertaining. However, Hélène, the protagonist of Fanny Britt’s graphic novel *Jane, the Fox, and Me* (illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, 2013), reads *Jane Eyre* for a different reason. Bullied at school, Hélène pulls out her book on the bus. *Jane Eyre* is her sole escape. At an age when emotions run raw, the wounds inflicted by classmates are sharp enough to drain the color from a teenager’s world—gray corridors, ashen faces. Arsenault renders Hélène’s world in drab black and white, while the scenes Hélène imagines from *Jane Eyre* bloom in cheerful pastel watercolors. Jane, an orphan, poor, and far from conventionally beautiful, never relinquishes her dignity. But Hélène is not Jane. The girl confesses to the reader: “I am a sausage. Jane Eyre may be an orphan, ugly, abused, lonely, and abandoned, but she was never a sausage. Never was, never will be—a fat sausage.” The pair of sausages drawn on facing book covers, though initially comical, evoke a grotesque imagery reminiscent of Kafka. This is, of course, a visual metaphor for Hélène’s alienation. The climax arrives when Hélène, at a nature camp, is approached by a fox. Its gaze is gentle. Untamed yet unafraid to meet her eyes, the beautiful creature seems to sense her loneliness without a word. Though the fox vanishes like a mirage, this brief encounter grants Hélène a crucial realization. As she acts on it, her world finally blossoms like spring flowers—and swiftly fills with vibrant hues. What exactly Hélène realizes is for readers to discover within the pages. (Shin Seung-han)
A contributor to NR Today lists places to visit in literary Britain. The wild Yorkshire moors of northern England feature prominently in the 19th-century novels “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre,” by Emily and Charlotte Brontë. The sisters spent most of their lives in the village of Haworth, where you can visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which includes their manuscripts and writing desks. To see the landscape that inspired their work, you can take a five-mile roundtrip across Haworth Moor to the Brontë Waterfall. (Jane Green) The Brontë Sisters UK has a new full-length video on the Brontë diary papers — the scattered journal fragments left by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, covering everyday life at Haworth from the 1830s through the 1840s.
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