The annual poetry festival at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Poetry at the Parsonage 2026

West Lane Baptist Church, Haworth

October 24, 10am - 6pm

Voices from a Yorkshire Moor 

From the Brontës to The Book of Bogs, moors, bogs and marshes have given rise to some of our finest writing. This is a day to revel in those words...

The audience are invited not just to listen but to respond by creating their own Book of Bogs: a handmade pamphlet containing words, drawings and found materials. Afterwards, participants will be invited to share their work through an open mic. 

Events run from 10am: you can join us for all or part of the day. 

Expect a friendly and accessible event where you can be as active and creative as the performers. There's also a warm welcome to audience members who prefer to sit quietly and listen!  

10am-12pm: Voices from the moor: a lively morning workshop with Clare Shaw and Anna Chilvers.

1-4pm: readings from the UK and Ireland’s best contemporary eco-poets: Jane Clarke, Michael Malay, David Morley, Harriet Tarlo, Victoria Gatehouse.

4-5pm: Open mic

5pm: Big Bog Disco 

Anna Chilvers (Bluemoose) and Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe) are popular writers and facilitators who have authored and edited 14 books between them - including poetry, novels and creative non-fiction. In 2025, they co-edited “The Book of Bogs: Stories of a Yorkshire Moor and other Peatlands” (Little Toller), featuring over 43 leading writers of ecology, nature and place. Book of Bogs is a model for what happens when poetry and ecology meet — when words help us look more closely at the natural world, feel it more deeply — and take action to defend it. 

   

Purists will be pleased to hear that Reid’s adaptation [of Sense and Sensibility] is a fairly faithful one – Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights this is not. (Katie Cunningham)

One of Carson’s most famous literary works is “The Glass Essay,” a long-form lyric poem that blends a personal narrative of heartbreak with critical commentary on Emily Brontë. Carson intertwines a constructed narrative of a devastating breakup with Emily Brontë’s oeuvre and life. In doing so, Carson incorporates critical analyses of Brontë’s life and observations from her sister, Charlotte, to comment on heartbreak, isolation, and literature as an emotional outlet. [...]

Brontë is intertwined with the speaker’s grief in a way that at first seems out of place—how does this author from the 19th century relate to the speaker’s breakup? Eventually, readers understand that the speaker identifies with Brontë, feeling that her liminality and isolation after being abandoned are turning her into Emily Brontë. At the end of the poem’s second section, “SHE,” the speaker asks: “What meat is it, Emily, that we need?”

The speaker does not just allude to Brontë as a kindred spirit, however. The poem’s unique perspective—what the Nobel committee calls “bold” and “inventive”—comes from Carson’s combination of this intensely personal narrative with literary analysis. The speaker quotes unnamed critics (likely inventions by Carson to represent a general argument within the literary world rather than any one scholar), using interpretations of Brontë and her life to deepen her self-understanding or refute a claim with her own experience. In one stanza, a disparaging critic wonders why Brontë longed for liberty when her home life was satisfactory. The speaker responds that imprisonment takes many forms and describes her own childhood, showing how she reads Brontë’s poetry through her own life. (Eden Bridge-Hayes)

   

The latest production from Mercer University Opera is no other than the Gordon & Caird Jane Eyre musical:

Jane Eyre. The Musical

Music by Paul Gordon

Lyrics by John Caird

Stage Director... Samantha Mishima Friedman

Conductor and Co-Music Director ... Richard Kosowski

Co-Music Director ... Timothy McReynolds

With Anna Grace Martin, William Little.

October 22 to October 24, 7:30 PM

Townsend School of Music -- Fickling Hall, Macon, GA

Be swept away in this romantic adaptation of Jane Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre. Follow the story of our independent and resilient heroine as she leaves the cruel world of the orphanage to become the governess at Thornfield Hall. At Thornfield, she falls in love with her brooding employer, Edward Rochester. Jane uncovers Rochester’s dark secrets and must decide what is best for her own interests. Will their passions bring them together or will Jane be left alone?

 Jane speaks her mind,” said Samantha Mishima Freidman, D.M.A., assistant professor of voice and director of opera. “She doesn’t let anyone get away with anything. She’s not afraid to tell people they’re wrong, which at the time was kind of a big deal, and she was sort of ostracized for it. Mercer has some pretty big personalities, and we have some ladies in the opera program who are strong and amazing, and I thought (this show) would fit really well with the people we had.”

In addition, “Jane Eyre” is a particularly fitting production for the fall season.

“It’s a perfect October show. It’s got a sort of spooky aesthetic to it,” said William Little, MUS ’28, who plays Rochester. “All of us have worked really hard. The songs are just gorgeous. We’re starting to sound really great, and I’m very excited to put it on for people.”

Anna Grace Martin, MUS ’27, plays Jane Eyre and found the role to be a welcomed challenge.

“Jane Eyre is a very complex character. In a single scene, she can go through all the stages of grief. Being able to kind of feel all of her joy and pain has really been a challenge, but it’s been really rewarding to be able to work through some of her inner workings,” said Martin, a music education major.

Friedman said she was surprised at how much the students stepped up during rehearsals.

“Anytime I have asked them to get to the next level, to push themselves a little bit further, they have pushed themselves even further than that,” she said. “So every day it’s exciting to come back and to see what new ideas they bring.”

Friedman is assisted in the production by co-music directors Tim McReynolds, D.M.A., Helen Wall Rich Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano, and Richard Kosowski, D.M.A., chair of vocal studies and professor of music. Martin said it’s been rewarding to work with these faculty and her fellow cast members.

“They’ve been so understanding with all of the very complex aspects of the character and helping me think through how she thinks,” she said.

Friedman hopes the audience feels the message of forgiveness in the show.

“The musical does a really good job explaining that forgiveness and tying it throughout. It’s one of the hardest things to do in your life, to truly forgive and let go, and I think that if people see that, they will leave changed in the best way possible,” Friedman said.  (Isaac Linen)

   

One of the most memorable moments from my senior semester of college was seeing Emerald Fennel’s “Wuthering Heights.” I watched it on Valentine’s Day at Silverspot Cinema with my sister and six of her friends, and I liked it way more than I should have. 

Ever since I was little, I remember hearing, “The book is always better than the movie.” Up until I saw “Wuthering Heights,” I used to believe it too.

When I read Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” my sophomore summer, I remember feeling underwhelmed. In my Apple Books review, I gave it three stars; I had hoped that book would shake my soul, and it did not. That was really sad for me, given how much I had enjoyed her sisters’ works — Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Anne Brontë’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

The week after watching the newest adaptation of Wuthering Heights was really stressful for me. It pained me to admit to all my friends that I had enjoyed the 2026 film more than the 19th century tome. I mean, I really loved it. I was sobbing so hard that people were turning around and pointing. I wasn’t the only one — a couple other girls in my row were similarly shaken. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.

When it came out, the “Wuthering Heights” adaptation was very controversial. Some described it as “hollow,” while others said it was worse for Emily Brontë than tuberculosis. Most critics had at least one thing to say: it’s nothing like the book.

The thing is, definitives are hard. Saying a book is “always” better than the movie is both false and highly unproductive. It’s a kind of snobbery; people who say this either want to feel smart, or they want to make you feel stupid. To me, preferences and absolutes should not be allowed in the same room. [...]

After watching “Wuthering Heights,” I went around to all my friends saying it was probably the best movie I’d ever watched and I really believed it at the time. Now, I see that my reaction had a lot to do with how my life looked last spring. I’m putting off rewatching it, because I’m scared I won’t like it as much the second time. 

Knowing our preferences aren’t fixed or absolute, it can be hard to make choices. How can you know what you’ll want in three months? 10 years? You’re asked to decide things now which are permanent — even when you know your preferences are fleeting. (Anna Garziera)

Speaking of wearing something connected to Wuthering Heights. Digital Spy focuses on 'Bake Off star Noel Fielding's Wuthering Heights jumper'.

Fielding's eclectic collection of jumpers has become a staple of the beloved Channel 4 baking show, and in Tuesday night's episode (October 20) he rocked a blue knit depicting a series of women in red dresses dancing around the moors.

The design is by Australian-based label Wah-Wah, as part of its collaboration with award-winning artist Tara Booth, in homage to musical icon Kate Bush.

Noel has a history of paying tribute to the British singer, whose debut single 'Wuthering Heights' – inspired by the Emily Brontë novel of the same name, which was of course also adapted for the big screen this year – topped the UK chart in 1978, when the song-writer was just 19 years old.

As part of the BBC's Let's Dance for Comic Relief, which aired back in 2011, Noel Fielding took to the stage to perform his own rendition of Kate Bush's hit song, referencing her iconic music video – more specifically, the second version, which saw the singer wearing the floaty red dress, dancing among woodland. (Laura Jane Turner)

   

A new Romanian paper and an Italian Bachelor's thesis:

From Resistance to Female Agency: Feminist Perspectives on Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Virgiinia Woolf

by Nicoleta-Cosmina Iliescu

Journal of Romanian Literary Studies 45 (2026), pp 152-159

Summary/Abstract: British women's fiction has long provided an important space for questioning dominant assumptions concerning gender, class, and identity. Although Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Virginia Woolf belong to different literary periods, their works share a sustained engagement with the representation of female resistance and the critique of patriarchal structures. This article examines the theoretical relationship between literary subversion and female agency by bringing together the historical contexts in which these writers produced their works and the critical perspectives that have shaped their interpretation. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, together with concepts developed by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the study explores how literary texts challenge dominant ideologies through narrative strategies, representations of femininity, and alternative forms of subjectivity. Rather than viewing subversion solely as explicit opposition to social norms, the article argues that it frequently operates through irony, narrative experimentation, psychological complexity, and the gradual reconfiguration of female identity. By examining the theoretical foundations of British women's fiction, this study highlights the ways in which Austen, the Brontës, and Woolf contributed to a ...

L’angelo e il mostro: genealogie del femminile tra Shelley e Brontë (The Angel and the Monster: genealogies of the feminine between Shelley and Brontë)

by Constanza Zanetti

Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari - DISLL, 2025

Abstract

Analysis of women's writing in nineteenth-century England, relating texts and historical context. An investigation into how economic, political, social, and cultural factors —and the resulting moral and ethical norms— influence the narrative structure of novels and the characterization of female and male characters in selected case studies. An analysis of the nineteenth-century English publishing world, focusing on women writers' practices, strategies, and authorial practices, to assess how material conditions have guided thematic and formal choices.