HISTORY and Heathcliff will keep visitors happy during the Brontë Society’s summer festival weekend.

History Wardrobe will present an evening of enlightenment during their Gothic for Girls presentation on June 8.

The audience will be taken back to the 18th century to explore the origins of Gothic novels, highlighting the Gothic elements of the works of Emily and Charlotte Brontë.

The presenters will then move forward through the centuries to examine how the Gothic tradition has influenced literature, fashion and culture, right up to the present day.

The presentation will feature a fabulous array of original costumes and accessories, as well as readings from well-loved writers.

The following morning Carol Dyhouse will deliver the annual Brontë Society lecture on the subject ‘The Eccentricities of Women’s Fantasy... and Heathcliff’.

Charlotte Brontë described her sister, Emily’s characters in Wuthering Heights as full of “perverted passion and passionate perversity”.

Carol will ask how and why Heathcliff continues to be pictured as a hero of romance when his author explicitly warned against this.

She will widen her enquiry to consider why woman’s fantasy has often been seen as eccentric, unsettling, pathological or perverse.

Visit bronte.org.uk/whats on or call 01535 652323 for further information.