One year more, here we are trying to summarise what 2018 will bring to Brontë enthusiasts. Once again, we close the year with a bit of controversy in the Brontëland air (a thing that is almost consubstantial to Brontëites). Labeling these intestine wars as modernists vs traditionalists is as misleading as it is inappropriate. The Brontë fan tends to feel a personal connection to the Brontës (as corny as that may sound) so intense that any disturbance on what it seems right in the treatment of their life and works is taken on a personal level. You only need the fuel of social networks and the snowball begins to roll.
This judging by feelings and not by rationality is, curiously enough, quite fitting in our current world. The slow but unappealable decline of Western democracies is directly connected to this self-reinforced mixture of social networks and primary emotion-based decisions which is the current sign of the times.
For Brontëites, this year is, of course, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë and a lot of the events and releases will be focused on the most mysterious of the Brontë sisters. The Brontë Parsonage Museum will lead the celebrations with a new exhibition: Making Thunder Roar:
To mark the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth, this exhibition invites a number of well-known Emily admirers to share their own fascination with her life and work. Specially commissioned contributions from Maxine Peake, Lily Cole and Helen Oyeyemi amongst others result in a thoughtprovoking selection of Emily’s possessions, writing and artwork as well as some of the well-loved household objects she used daily. These personal responses to Emily acknowledge the gaps in our understanding about this intriguing writer, but also encourage fresh perspectives on her life and work.More personal responses to Emily's life and work will come from the hands of The Unthanks, Patience Agbabi (who will be writer in residence), Ceryl Phillips, Sally Wainwright, Ben Myers...
Two more exhibitions will complement Emily Brontë's celebrations: Peter Brears. The Real Wuthering Heights will feature original illustrations created by Peter Brears for The Real Wuthering Heights: The Story of the Withins Farms, a book he co-authored with Steven Wood. Wings of Desire (from May 25th) by Kate Whitford will explore Emily’s hawk, Nero, through aerial photography and film to create a birds-eye view of the landscape around the Parsonage and across the moors to Top Withens. Finally, Branwell's Pillar Portrait will return to the Parsonage for the summer months.
Finally, the Brontë Society will hold a conference, Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music, that will take place in York in September.
Many of the book releases of the year will be related, somehow or another, to Emily Brontë: A special anniversary edition of The Oxford Companion to the Brontës (May) including a new foreword by Clare Harman. Dr Patsy Stoneman will also publish a second and expanded edition of her seminal Brontë Transformations. The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (March). An exploration of Emily Brontë's world through some of her poems: Emily Brontë. A Life in 20 Poems (May) by Nick Holland.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, will be revisited in a 1980s Yorkshire setting in The Heights (January) by Juliet Bell; Heathcliff's absent years will be explored in Michael Stewart's Ill Will (May). Heathcliff himself is the subject of a collection of sixteen short stories (some of the writers are Joanna Cannon, Juno Dawson, Louise Doughty...) curated by Kate Mosse: I am Heathcliff (July). The celebrations traspass frontiers and a new Spanish translation of Emily Brontë's complete poems will be published in February.
Other Brontë releases this year include: Catherine Rayner (who is the Honorary Publications Officer of the Brontë Society) publishes The Brontë Sisters. Life, Loss and Literature (February), part of the Trailblazing Women series. A YA retelling of Jane Eyre in space: Brightly Burning (May) by Alexa Donne. Another Gothic ('irreverent') teen retelling of Charlotte Brontë's novel is My Plain Jane (June) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.
Also, on the YA front, Celia Rees's The Glass Town Wars is announced for this year. It's also possible that Nick Holland's Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy, an exploration of a tangential but substantial character in the Brontë story will be published in 2018.
The BBC will broadcast a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Rachel Joyce sometime in 2018 but probably before July when it will be available as a digital download or CD.
Emily Brontë's novel will also be adapted into film once more as an independent production directed and written by Elisaveta Abrahall (July).
In January a mono opera based on poems by Emily Brontë: Through Life and Death, A Chainless Soul by Akemi Naito will be premiered in New York. A new play by Stephen Kaplan: Branwell (and the other Brontës) will also be presented (not performed, just a reading) in New Jersey. A new Jane Eyre adaptation (by Janys Chambers and Lorna French) will be presented in Bolton at the Octagon Theatre. Another Wuthering Heights will tour the UK, but in this case, it will not be an Emily Brontë adaptation but a Kate Bush tribute.
Hurlevents (February, in Montreal) is a new text by Fanny Britt (author of Jane, le Renard et Moi) inspired by Wuthering Heights. Another new piece is Kirsty Smith & Kate-Rose Martin's Jane Hair (in a hair salon near you!) that will tour Yorkshire this January. New adaptations of Wuthering Heights (by Elena Mavridou) will be premiered in Athens, Greece (February) and Jane Eyre (by Pirjo Liiri-Majava) in Åbo, Finland (September). The Alan Stanford adaptation of Jane Eyre (originally seen in Dublin a few years ago) will be performed in Pittsburgh in April.
Among the usual suspects, we will see how the ChapterHouse Company will present their Jane Eyre in Beijing, Polly Teale's Jane Eyre will be performed in Cincinnati, the Gordon & Caird Jane Eyre musical besides school and amateur productions around, will be performed in the Feinstein's 54 Below (February) with Elena Shaddow and Robbie Rozelle, in Philadelphia in March or in Gmunden, Austria in March. The Northern Ballet's Jane Eyre production will the tour the UK (March-June). More UK tours, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Rebecca Vaughan (March-April), etc ...
And, of course, the countless and diverse unexpected things that always, unfailingly, surprise and amaze us each and every time and that will turn 2018, as usual, into a very Brontë year.
