Penn State University features Deborah Lutz's new biography of Emily Brontë and has a Q&A with the author. English author Emily Brontë is best known for her novel “Wuthering Heights,” a multigenerational story of obsession, revenge and love set in the Yorkshire moors. “This Dark Night,” the first full-length biography of Brontë in over 20 years and written by Penn State Professor of English Deborah Lutz, draws on Brontë’s formerly inaccessible notebooks and manuscripts to bring new light to the author’s tragic and fiercely independent life. Lutz, the George and Barbara Kelly Professor in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature, discussed in the following Q&A her new biography of Brontë and why readers still obsess over her novel nearly 200 years later. Q: Who was Emily Brontë? Lutz: Brontë grew up in a family of writers, and she collaborated with her siblings on all of her work. Both “Wuthering Heights” and her sister Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” grew out of this shared writing space. While she composed her great, gothic novel, with its gloomy passions, she did chores around the house — sewing her own clothing, making bread and cleaning the parlor. In “This Dark Night,” I evoke her as an embodied self; I ask, what was it like to be in a woman’s body in 1830s and 1840s West Yorkshire? What were the sounds, smells, the feelings along the skin? Q: Why continue to study her almost 200 years after her death? Lutz: New lovers of her novel “Wuthering Heights” appear every day, it seems! And so much new research over the past 30 years changes the way we see her. She knew queer people, like Anne Lister — called Gentleman Jack and recently was the subject of her own HBO series — a local lesbian. And the character Heathcliff was likely based on a person of color, possibly the child of an enslaved person passing through Liverpool — a major stop for ships involved in the slave trade. When he first arrives in the novel, after being found on the streets of Liverpool, he is speaking a foreign language and is described as “black,” a “gypsy” and with the appearance of an Indian sailor. Brontë also witnessed the beginnings of the climate crisis. Textile mills and mining in her area polluted the air and streams, and some of the birds she so loved were going extinct. Q: What new insights did you discover in your research? Any surprises? Lutz: I was surprised at how much she revised “Wuthering Heights,” since it’s easy to imagine it coming from her fully formed. But it went through distinct versions, and she really labored over it. But also how quickly she wrote it! She finished it in about two years. And then, after her death, Charlotte revised it again, when it was reprinted. Charlotte had always been ashamed of the novel, finding it coarse, violent and immature. She made it more conventional by stringing together short paragraphs and smoothing out the local speech. This seemed like a real betrayal of her sister, given that Emily had her own eccentric voice and Charlotte tried to tame it. Q: The new “Wuthering Heights” movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi recently hit streaming. Any thoughts about the film or why we keep returning to it two centuries later? Lutz: The new film is a visual feast and the costumes and interiors are amazing. It seemed a shame, though, that only about 5% of the dialogue comes from the novel. The novel is mainly oral — it's a tale full of people talking to one another — so it’s a missed opportunity to ignore most of Brontë’s text. It was also a shame to have Heathcliff played by a white actor. It’s fairly unusual for a great Victorian novel to have a major character who is a person of color, and I think today filmmakers should run with that. (Francisco Tutella)
Speaking of the film, We Live Entertainment interviews cinematographer Linus Sandgren, production designer Charlotte Dirickx, and set decorator Susie Davies. Speaking to Sandgren first, he detailed the creative process behind the film’s visual language, the use of weather as an emotional tool, and the technical decision to shoot on VistaVision and Sandgren details the creative process behind the film’s visual language, the use of weather as an emotional tool, and the technical decision to shoot on VistaVision and 35mm film. When asked about Fennell’s approach to the film, Sandgren stated, “We were about to design a film from scratch from her sort of mind… everything—and you will talk maybe with Suzie about it—but how she built sets just from a fantasy version of how she basically saw it.” With the movie notably shot on film, that choice also had a key reason. Sandgren explained it, “Emerald really felt that the grain was needed for the emotional story… in my opinion, 16 millimeter is the most poetic emotional of all of those usually because… there’s some nostalgia or something that is helping you feel the texture of the skin.” Of course, with this film, Sandgren had to work with VistaVision cameras. For that format, as he stated, “What’s good with VistaVision for us was that we could have the same film stock and the same format and then just have a VistaVision camera. To me, like everything you—every decision you make should have a reason… usually in emotional stories I think it always helps with film so far… to create that sort of—that you’re actually watching an impression of reality and not reality.” Sandgren had plenty more to say about the production, including how the film’s visual style was built around “heightened realism,” using a stage-bound environment to create a “magical” and “surreal” atmosphere. Key emotional beats were emphasized through weather motifs. Production designer Susie Davies further expanded this. For Davies, the key was the process of building the film’s “heightened, surreal” world on a soundstage, her meticulous approach to designing the contrasting environments of the Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and the close-knit collaboration between herself, the cinematographer, and the set decorator. Again, commenting on that “heightened realism,” Davies noted, “We were aiming for that sliver between reality and unreality. And when you’re on a soundstage, we aimed to make it feel real. We didn’t want anyone really to know, but ultimately… You end up with this weird sliver between reality and unreality.” Davies also recognized that this was something Fennell had wanted to do since her younger days. With that in mind, “This whole world building, you know, this teenage lens that we were going to show this story through, bringing to life her imagination was extraordinary.” As a great way to set things up for production designer Charlotte Dirickx, Davies talks about this continued collaboration. As she states, “She’s a real perfectionist, whereas I might cut corners for speed. She knows when to hold fast or, you know, her wealth of knowledge is like nothing else… yeah, she’s extraordinary and so talented with her eye.” For Dirckix, the experience did have its challenges. As she states, “The production involved highly unusual props and set details, spanning from real fish accented with lipstick set in resin jellies to massive fake strawberries crafted from cake. For the outdoor sets, the team referenced the stagey atmosphere of Florence Yoch’s gardens from Gone with the Wind and Fragonard’s painting The Swing, adding 12-foot weaves of dried gypsophila to construct a dreamlike background. This also spoke to the anachronistic take that was key to Fennell’s vision. “…We would take like a period shape, say for the furniture, but then upholster it in a kind of different or more modern fabric. So you’ve always got that slight jarring going on.” It’s this wide variety of choices that allows for the movie to stand out as much as it did in theaters. I was quite the fan and would have been happy spending so much more time with each of these three to dive even further into what the process of making so many exciting choices to realize this fully realized version of the world, originating with Emily Brontë and reimagined here by Fennell, was like. Given that all of these craftspeople worked on Saltburn as well, I’ll certainly be curious to see what they all tackle next. (Aaron Neuwirth)
A contributor to Literary Hub thinks that 'Hollywood Needs to Stop Hot-Washing Literary Adaptations'. I finally caught the latest film adaptation of Wuthering Heights last week and even though I knew it had been divisive I was still disappointed in a way I hadn’t imagined. I was prepared for the film to be tacky and over the top and too much, and that didn’t faze me at all. I welcomed it. The source material demands it, in fact. But I cannot forgive the fact that in the 2026 version of Wuthering Heights there is absolutely no haunting. What is Wuthering Heights without ghosts? It becomes a mildly sordid tale of the romance between two very beautiful people that ends when one of them dies, and it also makes Kate Bush’s song of the same name make no sense at all. A non-Gothic Wuthering Heights is a particularly odd choice because I’d assumed the auteur Emerald Fennell would have jumped at the chance to explore Heathcliff’s despair for dead Cathy throughout his troubled life and use his pain as an opportunity to get really weird. I still can’t believe Saltburn is still the only Emerald Fennell film with a very dirty graveside wanking scene. Ending Wuthering Heights at Cathy’s death is like ending The Great Gatsby after the big party, or ending The Secret History at the bacchanal. There is so much more that happens afterward—and it’s the uglier, messier parts that make great fiction great. As it stands the latest movie version is simply too pretty, with all of its rougher edges flattened out. I suppose I should have expected this, given that the role of Catherine is played by Barbie herself (Margot Robbie), after all. Fennell’s film is just one example of a phenomenon adjacent to whitewashing in film that I’ll call hot-washing. There’s nothing new about Hollywood adaptations featuring profoundly good-looking people, but film stars used to be made to look a bit more… regular, particularly before plastic surgery made the faces of so many A-list actresses look eerily similar. Hot-washing is when source material that’s complicated has its edges smoothed out by the casting of conventionally hot people who are made to look conventionally hot in a way that clashes with the source material, and it’s ruining a bunch of recent literary adaptations whose characters are meant to seem a little more real. Imagine if Bridget Jones’s Diary were remade in 2026 with Sydney Sweeney as the title character. (Maris Kreizman)
A columnist from The Daily Star thinks that the film is a 'reimagining that strays too far from its roots'. This film is everything the book is not. It doesn’t adapt the novel so much as it uses it almost loosely as a starting point, and then turns the entire material upside down. Emily Brontë never imagined that her Cathy would be played by a Barbie-era actress, with a Charli XCX score blaring in the background, accompanied by an Australian Heathcliff and a boudoir-esque Isabella. In fact, there is reason to speculate that she would not be fond of any of these twists of events. Naturally, fans of her work aren’t either. The biggest disconnect comes from how the film markets itself: “the greatest love story ever told”. Yet, that’s never what the original story was. “Wuthering Heights” is not a romance in the traditional sense. It’s a cautionary tale about obsessive love, cycles of abuse, domination, vengeance, and the way toxicity echoes across generations. It’s about how that kind of love doesn’t just destroy the people involved, but everyone around them as well. The only sense of peace comes when those patterns are finally partially broken. Catherine and Heathcliff are often mistaken for the ultimate romantic ideal, but their connection is rooted in possession, mutual destruction, and something almost brutally confusing. It’s about the faint possibility of redemption through the next generation. The novel focuses on class difference, racism and discrimination, and deteriorating mental health. It never romanticises the eventual psychosis. However, the movie barely explores these dynamics. Instead, it leans heavily into the intensity that comes with yearning. And yes, there is a lot of it, particularly crafted for the female gaze. I would actually argue that there is too much of it. The cast is perfectly capable of adapting their lines, but on screen, their chemistry is reduced to just playing dialogue. It pushes a narrative of forbidden love that is absent because of the plot lines that the movie doesn’t adapt. There is an interesting, unexpected positive note, though, which is the visuals. The direction is unapologetically bold. Emerald Fennell rejects the muted minimalism that a lot of modern films lean into and instead embraces a loud, saturated, and almost overwhelming aesthetic. The use of colour is striking: Cathy’s skin against her crimson outfits that represent her inner turmoil, the deliberate clashing tones, and the heightened tone of the palette that turns every frame into something picturesque. There isn’t a single scene or outfit that wasn’t carefully placed or thought out. The film uses vast, evocative backdrops to conjure a kind of sentimentality that feels aptly grand. A few instances that come to mind are the colder scenery changes during the lowest pivots, as well as Cathy’s room, which resembles the veins beneath our skin. The latter, in particular, perfectly articulates her eventual descent. Even the stylistic choices, like the almost anachronistic elements and the unexpected costume influences, add to the film’s identity, allowing it to go beyond the boundaries of traditional period drama. At times, it feels like the film is more interested in being seen than being understood and strangely, that’s where it succeeds the most. Even when the narrative falters, the imagery carries it. You could honestly watch this film purely for its cinematography and walk away satisfied. “Wuthering Heights”— intentionally titled with quotation marks—exists here as more of an idea than an adaptation. A reinterpretation, a reimagining that prioritises emotion, aesthetics, and atmosphere over fidelity. Emerald Fennel said her goal was to capture the experience of a teenage girl reading a romance book for the first time. She clarified several times that she has no intention of adapting the book but rather depicting her own interpretation of it. Watching the movie with that in mind might leave less shock and bitterness, and could even satisfy a cinephile who prefers the visuals. (Tinath Zaeba)
A contributor to Los Angeles Times writes about her 'bucket-list trip to Yorkshire'. Brontë Country It is difficult to imagine a fictional tale more gothic, inspirational and remarkable than that of three brilliant sisters who lived in relative isolation on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, secretly battling their socially conscripted futures by writing poems and novels that they dared not publish under their own names. Two of those novels — ”Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë and “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, are still considered masterworks, influencing subsequent generations and endlessly adapted for film and television. (In the ultimate Yorkshire crossover, Wainwright wrote the breathtaking two-part Brontë biopic “To Walk Invisible,” which everyone should see.) The Brontë Parsonage Museum, and the town of Haworth which it overlooks, is very much a tourist attraction. An information annex, gift shop and public restroom have been added behind it, but once you enter the small garden that stands between the parsonage’s front door and St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, you are in another world. In 1820, Patrick Brontë, recently appointed incumbent of St. Michael, moved his wife, Maria, and their six children into the parsonage where they all lived for the rest of their natural (albeit in most cases, short) lives. Maria died in 1821; the two older children, Maria and Elizabeth, died four years later after being sent to a typhoid-plagued school Charlotte would pillory as Lowood in “Jane Eyre.” The museum is meticulously restored to reflect the years that the surviving children — Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell, the only son — were young adults. The dining room table, where the sisters wrote, is strewn with manuscripts, quill pens and tea cups; a bonnet and shawl bedeck a chair in the small kitchen. Patrick had his own study but it is difficult to imagine three women being able to write separate works, never mind classics, in such close quarters. Ironically, only Branwell’s room, papered with sketches and poems, looks like an artist’s refuge. Unlike his three sisters, Branwell, his artistic career stunted by alcoholism and an opium addiction, never published. He died of tuberculosis in 1848 at 31. If any place should be haunted, it is the Brontë parsonage. Shortly after Branwell’s funeral (and just a year after “Wuthering Heights” was published), 30-year-old Emily also died of tuberculosis, expiring on the sofa that stands beside the dining room table. A few months later, after the publication of her second novel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” Anne, 29, succumbed to the disease in nearby Scarborough, just south of Whitby. Charlotte, who wrote two more novels after “Jane Eyre,” was the only sister to be celebrated during her lifetime. She married and then died at the parsonage in 1855 at 38 of complications from her first pregnancy. Only Patrick lived to old age — 84 — dying in 1861 in the home where he had served for 41 years. But it is not a sad house; instead visitors are left to wonder at the genius, resolution and audacity that roiled the quiet rooms and halls where the sisters secretly wrote and sent out their manuscripts, all initially under the the names of Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne) Bell. The steeply descending main street of Haworth is filled with tea shops, pubs and stores clearly dedicated to pleasing Brontë pilgrims, but its basic form, including the original stationery store where the sisters once bought their paper, remains the same. As do the moors that stretch behind the parsonage. On a walk to the Brontë Waterfall (more like a small but still lovely rill) and Top Withens, the ruin of a 16th century farmhouse believed to have inspired “Wuthering Heights,” the wild silence and sweeping vistas are even more transporting than the parsonage. One imagines not the ghost of Cathy or Heathcliff, but a trio of women, very much alive and striding through the heather, their minds alight with the stories they would tell, set among similar terrain. (Mary McNamara)
The poetry collection The High Flight by Emma Connally-Barklem is already available:
by Emma Connally-Barklem Black Cat Poetry Press Cover by @emilyingondal
The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë’s Hawk is a poetry collection by Emma Conally-Barklem that draws inspiration from the legend of Emily Brontë’s beloved hawk, Nero. Through fifty poems, the book explores the wildness, imagination, and emotional intensity associated with Brontë’s world, blending literary homage with a strong sense of nature and place.
‘By turns mythic, soaring, earthbound and unyielding, this collection is a dazzling addition to the Brontë canon.’ Karen Powell, author of Fifteen Wild Decembers
‘A truly astonishing collection bristling with piercing insight and originality- this is Conally-Barklem at the height of her powers’ Sharon Wright, journalist and Brontë biographer
‘One of the most interesting British poets working today’ Graham Watson, author of The Invention of Charlotte Brontë
PureWow lists '11 Novels that Will Define the Summer' and one of them is 4. The Chateau on Sunset by Natasha Lester Release date: June 2 Read if you liked: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld It’s been a while since I lost sleep over a book that was not a mystery—and Natasha Lester’s glamorous retelling of Jane Eyre did it for me. Lester’s novel transports us to the sparkling world of Hollywood and the most famous hotel on the Sunset Strip. Aria Jones has spent her entire life being invisible in the Chateau Marmont. But when a brooding rockstar buys the hotel she calls home, Aria quickly finds that what she thought she wanted is anything but. (Marissa Wu)
Emerald Fennel's [sic] Wuthering Heights is divisive at best, with its radical reinterpretation of Emily Brontë's classic, but no one can deny the sizzling chemistry between its two leads. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as the ill-fated Catherine and Heathcliff raised eyebrows, as the romance between the two took a steamy, intimate turn, ultimately ending in tragedy for everyone around them. Wuthering Heights got backlash for turning Cathy and Heathcliff's destructive dynamic into something romantic, and there were concerns about casting all-white characters, particularly Heathcliff, who had been described as a dark-skinned man. Even so, Wuthering Heights had hearts racing, and thankfully, there are several more great steamy romantic titles to choose from to recreate that feeling. (Fawzia Khan)
An alert from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Fri 15 May, 5:30pm Brontë Parsonage Museum
Join us to look closely at a series of drawings and prints by British Modernist Edna Clarke Hall (1877-1979), whose obsession with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights inspired her for decades. Art historian Eliza Goodpasture will bring these works to life in the context of early twentieth-century British art, as well as the artist’s own life. She yearned for the passion she found in Brontë’s novel, which was always missing from her own Victorian marriage. Working with both expressive watercolours and printmaking techniques, she made hundreds of works inspired by Wuthering Heights, some of which are now in the Parsonage’s collection.
Eliza Goodpasture is an art historian and writer. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She holds a PhD from the University of York.
Looper recommends '5 Movies To Watch If You Like 2026's Wuthering Heights'. A somewhat divergent take on the Emily Brontë classic, Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" mixes soapy, anachronistic plot elements into the novel's brew of class issues, generational trauma and forbidden, star-crossed love. The story of rich girl Cathy Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), the foundling boy her father brings home one day, has been told many times before — but never quite in this florid manner. It's not restrained, and it's anything but civilized — but it is a lush visual feast laden with passion that will liven up an afternoon. If you loved this take on "Wuthering Heights," then you're probably going to be intrigued by other frankly-written stories about anachronistic historical heroines, or erotic tales of frustrated love. This list of five films contain heartbreaking tales of lovers who are felled by miscommunication, stubbornness, bad luck and other forms of havoc which ruin — and sometimes resurrect — their sublime faith in togetherness. Whether true love has its say or not, these five films will definitely appeal to anyone who had a good time watching "Wuthering Heights.' Jane Eyre "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" are both beloved books that have multiple movie adaptations — 47 versions of the former exist to the latter's 30. The 2011 big-screen version of "Jane Eyre" will appeal to people who loved the 2026 edition of "Wuthering Heights" because it knows how to ratchet up the melodrama while leaving you invested in the impossible love story between Jane (Mia Wasikowska) and Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender, in one of his best movies). It's more serious and certainly more genteel than "Wuthering," but no less intense for that sense of reserve. The film follows Jane as she becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, located deep in the moorland. She is an orphan whose cruel childhood has formed her into a woman of staunch but caring character. Yet she's unprepared for the secrets that Edward harbors, even as she begins to fall in love with him. Ultimately, she must have the courage to run from Edward's vagaries — even if it means shedding their fragile new bond. (Melissa Lemieux)
Comic Book Resources claims that, despite its success on streaming, Wuthering Heights 2026 'Is Far From Jacob Elordi's Best Role'. HBO Max has become the Jacob Elordi channel, first with Euphoria and now with the success of Wuthering Heights. The controversial adaptation of Emily Brontë’s seminal novel was met with division. The period piece was such a wild departure from the book that it could hardly be called an adaptation at all. While Wuthering Heights is admittedly climbing the streaming charts, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best example of Elordi’s work. Already an Oscar nominee, the actor is one to watch. Sadly, his best role to date was one that passed many viewers by in Sofia Coppola’s A24 film, Priscilla. (Carolyn Jenkins)
We had two readings from books (I suppose we had a slight literary theme for our wedding). I read from the final chapter of Jane Eyre, which begins with the famous line “Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had, he and I, the parson and the clerk, were alone present.” (Deirdre McArdle)
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