'I wished to tell the truth': Anne Brontë at 200
2/2/2021 - Conference Update
Following the postponement of our 2020 Anne Brontë Bicentenary conference we hope that our rescheduled conference will be able to go ahead on 3 - 5 September 2021 as planned. We are currently in discussions with the venue and are monitoring the ongoing situation with the Covid-19 pandemic.
If you have already booked your place, we will be in touch with you as soon as we have any further information, thank you for your patience.
We are not currently taking any more bookings but if you would like to register your interest we will contact you when it becomes possible. Please email Linda Ling at
linda.ling@bronte.org.uk .
The Brontë Society’s 2020 conference will celebrate the life and work of Anne Brontë in her bicentenary year, and presents an ideal opportunity to challenge the long-held perception that the youngest Brontë sibling was the least talented, and lacked the genius of her sisters.
We’re delighted to announce three keynote speakers: Professor Kathryn Hughes, literary journalist, historian, and Guardian columnist, who has published four books, including
The Victorian Governess; Professor Marianne Thormählen, author of
The Brontes and Education,
The Brontes and Religion, and editor of
The Brontes in Context; and Jane Sellars MBE, co-author of the seminal study
The Art of the Brontes.
The keynotes will address, respectively, the social context of Anne’s work, the realism/didacticism of her fiction, and her own artistic practice, and
panel sessions will engage with a broad range of topics. Click on downloads to see the provisional conference programme.
The location for this year’s conference is the seaside resort of Scarborough: a place Anne Brontë loved, a place that features in her work, and the place where she died and is buried. The conference venue is the cliff-top located 4-star Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough's oldest purpose built hotel, which enjoys beautiful sea views. The hotel is fully accessible, offers complimentary on street parking or chargeable private off street parking, and is a fifteen minute walk or five minute taxi ride from Scarborough train station.