Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
The remarkable Brontës- Charlotte, Emily and Anne, each produced masterpieces of intense emotional depth and psychological insight, which became cornerstone classics of English literature. In her eye-opening new biography This Dark Night, academic Deborah Lutz illuminates the short but momentous life of Emily Brontë offering greater insights into the delights and tragedies of Brontë family life that inspired much of the sisters writing. In Take Courage, playwright Samantha Ellis records the poignant and surprising life of Anne, the ‘lesser known’ sister. With British Library curator Lesley Ruthven and journalist and author Bee Rowlatt, they explore the brilliant, curtailed and undeniably tragic lives of the sisters.
Deborah Lutz is a Victorian literature scholar who has been teaching and writing about the Brontës for decades. She edited the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre and a Norton Library edition of Wuthering Heights. Her book, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, was shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Deborah is one of the few scholars to have closely examined the Brontës’ material legacy, including desks, chairs, letters, books, and all of their tiny poetry manuscripts and notebooks, notably the rediscovered handwritten manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems found in 2021 at Honresfield House near Haworth Parsonage.
Lesley Ruthven is a Curator in the Printed Heritage Collections team at the British Library, where she works primarily with nineteenth-century printed material from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Samantha Ellis is the author of Chopping Onions on My Heart, a memoir about losing her mother tongue, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, as well as How to Be a Heroine and Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist.
Bee Rowlatt is a writer whose books include One Woman Crime Wave, In Search of Mary (winner of the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust Award), and the best-selling Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. She was one of the main presenters of the BBC docuseries Austen: Rise of a Genius. She programmes cultural events at the British Library and is a former broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service. She is Chair and founder of the Wollstonecraft Society and was recently awarded an MBE for services to women’s rights.
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#BrontëSisters #literature #womenwriters
The remarkable Brontës- Charlotte, Emily and Anne, each produced masterpieces of intense emotional depth and psychological insight, which became cornerstone classics of English literature. In her eye-opening new biography This Dark Night, academic Deborah Lutz illuminates the short but momentous life of Emily Brontë offering greater insights into the delights and tragedies of Brontë family life that inspired much of the sisters writing. In Take Courage, playwright Samantha Ellis records the poignant and surprising life of Anne, the ‘lesser known’ sister. With British Library curator Lesley Ruthven and journalist and author Bee Rowlatt, they explore the brilliant, curtailed and undeniably tragic lives of the sisters.
Deborah Lutz is a Victorian literature scholar who has been teaching and writing about the Brontës for decades. She edited the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre and a Norton Library edition of Wuthering Heights. Her book, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, was shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Deborah is one of the few scholars to have closely examined the Brontës’ material legacy, including desks, chairs, letters, books, and all of their tiny poetry manuscripts and notebooks, notably the rediscovered handwritten manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems found in 2021 at Honresfield House near Haworth Parsonage.
Lesley Ruthven is a Curator in the Printed Heritage Collections team at the British Library, where she works primarily with nineteenth-century printed material from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Samantha Ellis is the author of Chopping Onions on My Heart, a memoir about losing her mother tongue, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, as well as How to Be a Heroine and Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist.
Bee Rowlatt is a writer whose books include One Woman Crime Wave, In Search of Mary (winner of the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust Award), and the best-selling Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. She was one of the main presenters of the BBC docuseries Austen: Rise of a Genius. She programmes cultural events at the British Library and is a former broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service. She is Chair and founder of the Wollstonecraft Society and was recently awarded an MBE for services to women’s rights.
Follow us on –
Website - jlflitfest.org
Facebook - facebook.com/JLFInternational
YouTube - youtube.com/@JLFInternational
Instagram - instagram.com/jlfinternational
X - twitter.com/JLFLitfest
#BrontëSisters #literature #womenwriters
