Mid-February
Edna Clarke Hall, Graeme Tytler & Material Culture
Mid-February Notes…
Pre-Order: Wuthering Heights Illustrated by Edna Clarke Hall
If you’ve been reading Symbolism & Structure for a while, you know I adore Edna Clarke Hall. Imagine my delight when I discovered Eiderdown Books (Beautiful art books written, designed and published by women.) will be releasing a special edition of Wuthering Heights, to include selected work by the artist.
The book, scheduled for release in March, is available for pre-order HERE. Also, The Brontë Parsonage will be hosting two events to coincide with the launch:
26 March 2026 Brontë Lounge with Eliza Goodpasture
15 May 2026 Parsonage Unwrapped: Wuthering Heights in Watercolours
Graeme Tytler’s Facets of Wuthering Heights: Selected Essays
A few months back I ordered a copy of Graeme Tytler’s Selected Essays and I now have the time to read it. The book is not new—it was published by Matador back in 2018; a second collection of essays was published in 2025.
Read a review of the book HERE, in the July 2019 edition of Brontë Studies.
If you’re not familiar with Tytler, he is a regular contributor to Bronte Studies and its forerunner, Brontë Society Transactions. I’ve read his individual essays on occasion and I’m really looking forward to settling in with this collection this month—as our fields are still coated in snow and the hepatica are not-yet-blooming in our dormant forests.
Why leave my house if I cannot mingle with our early-blooming spring ephemerals?
Research & Replica
I’ve been blissfully working on my current research project; while, writing a new essay on Emily Jane’s bedroom and also, finishing up another: on the 21 poems published in her lifetime.
We’re also nearing completion on the replica of Emily Jane’s little stool; just yesterday, a pack of reproduction brad nails arrived, so soon…we will fasten its seat!
The stool has been reproduced as accurately as possible, using information, specs and images kindly provided to us by one of the curators at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
It would have originally had a rush seat, but no one really knows what it looked like in Emily Jane’s lifetime—only that she famously carried it around the house, out into the garden and onto the moors. The Parsonage records it as having been made of red deal, (or, Scots pine). Here in the US, we have reproduced it using southern yellow pine. I’m looking forward to sharing more soon...
And Finally…
Thank you for sharing this little corner of Substack with me. If you found me during the February film frenzy, and you’re considering reading Wuthering Heights, take a look at my Reading Guides—a 9-Week self-guided collection and the 34 chapter themed read-along, focused on Nature and folklore—40+ essays, hours of supplemental reading.
If you’ve found me because you were already a life-long fan of Emily Jane Brontë, her poetry and/or Wuthering Heights, I’m happy to make your acquaintance. ♡
Delighted to find a whole stack on Emily Brontë - incredible! I will certainly not watch the film Wuthering Heights! I saw the trailer and that was enough...
Looking forward to whatever you're cooking up around EJB's poetry! And as you know, I'm enamored by the stool project + other objects you've acquired that, in my mind, make up your personal (and growing) The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (strikethrough three and nine).
Ohhh, the publication month of the gorgeous Edna Clarke Hall illustrated WH is my birthday month--I'm taking it as a sign to gift myself a special treat. The typography choice for the title on the cover has generated some fun brain food. The layout has by eye bouncing around with returns to the WU / THE / RING and HE / I. There's also the shared "G" linking Wuthering and Heights as if we're playing scrabble using only words from EJB's world. (And G for ghosts, grotesque, ghoul, goblin, glowered, gooseberry, gravestone...). And then the somewhat isolated HTS in the lower right hand corner could be interpreted as shorthand for Heathcliffs (multiple). Fun!