Jane Eyre on the moors: reading, walking & writing in the Peak District

The London Literary Salon invites you to join a five-day study based in Edale, in the Peak District National Park in June 2026. There we will explore Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through landscape, literature and creative practice. This long weekend will be a living conversation between text, location and lived experience — an invitation to read, write and walk in immersive engagement with Brontë’s novel and the moors that inspired it.

How might we read Jane Eyre today — as a story of selfhood and rebellion, but also as a text shaped by gender, empire, class and desire? This immersive study combines literary discussion, reflective writing, and walking on the moorland paths that inspired Brontë’s novel. A short train trip to Hathersage, the village closely linked to the novel, will offer further insight into the places that inspired Brontë’s writing. Participants will also have the opportunity to walk the 8 km Jane Eyre Hathersage Trail, tracing the village, architecture and landscape that shaped Brontë’s imagination.

Toby Brothers will lead our literary discussions, guiding us through the rich text with reflections that include psychological, feminist, postcolonial and queer readings of Jane Eyre. Alison Cable will co-facilitate and offer walking and creative writing sessions, encouraging reflection, response and imaginative engagement with both text and landscape. Together, we will explore the familiar and the overlooked: Jane’s struggles for autonomy, the silences within the text, and the ways literature continues to resonate with questions of freedom, identity and justice in our own lives, here and now.

According to the poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich:

‘The concern of the tale is not with social mores, the social mores may occur among the risks and challenges encountered by the protagonist. Neither is it an anatomy of the psyche, the faded chemistry of cosmic forces. It takes its place between the two: between the realm of the given, that which is changeable by human activity, and the realm of the fated, that which lies outside human control: between realism and poetry.

‘The world of the tale is above all a “vale of soul making”, and when a novelist finds herself writing a tale it is likely to be because she is moved by that vibration of experience which underlies the social and political, though it constantly feeds into both of these. In her essay on Jane Eyre, critic Q.D.  Leavis perceives the novel’s theme as “. . . an exploration of how a woman comes to maturity in the world of the writer’s youth”. I would suggest that a novel about how a man “comes to maturity in the world of the writers youth” would not be dismissed as lacking in range or in Woolf’s words, “a sense of human problems”. I would suggest further that Charlotte Bronte is writing not a bildungsroman but the life story of a woman who is incapable of saying “I am Heathcliff” because she feels so unalterably herself. Jane Eyre, motherless and economically powerless, undergoes certain traditional female temptations, and finds that each temptation presents itself along with an alternative –the image of a nurturing or principled or spirited woman on whom she can model herself, or to whom she can look for support.‘

Adrienne Rich, Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman (published in the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre)

While Virginia Woolf wrote that the Brontes:

‘. . . seized those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a dull page or display the writer’s powers of observation – they carry on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book.’

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1916)

We will be based in Edale, with accommodation confirmed at The Gathering, a combination of glamping ‘lodges’ and barns, with options for shared or single rooms. Walking across the hills and moors will offer space for thought and inspiration, but all activities are optional: indoors, we will read, write and talk together, fostering immersive engagement with text and the landscape. To round out the evenings, participants may choose to join the local pub quiz or a folk music night, taking advantage of the lively sense of community and place.

SAMPLE SESSIONS INCLUDE:

• Morning literary discussion with Toby Brothers: close reading of key passages, exploring Jane’s journey, moral choices and the novel’s social and political contexts.
• Afternoon creative writing and walking with Alison Cable: guided reflective walks on the moors, using the landscape as inspiration for short writing exercises and prompts.
• Short train trip to Hathersage: experiencing the village that inspired Brontë, with an optional walk to Stanage Edge, passing ‘Vale Hall,’ ‘Thornfield’ and ‘Moor House’, and the added bonus of Robin Hood’s cave and the gravesite of Little John.
• Evening reflection sessions: sharing insights, discussing emergent themes, experimenting with creative responses, and optional participation in pub quiz, bonfire, and folk night.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five-day study in Edale, Derbyshire led by Toby Brothers and Alison Cable
• 18-22 June 2026
• £550 for the study and background notes, plus £105 for three days half board (breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday), total cost £655
• Additional costs: participants are responsible for arranging and paying for their own travel, glamping accommodation at The Gathering, additional meals and insurance. Group bookings for accommodation and optional guided walks must be arranged in advance.
• We strongly recommend reading or re-reading Jane Eyre in preparation for the weekend so the language, ideas and vision of the text are fresh.  Recommended edition: Norton Critical Fourth Edition (published in 2016, this is preferable to the third edition) ISBN: 978-0-393-64050-2.
• An initial non-refundable deposit of £50 secures your place, with the balance of £605 (including breakfasts and lunches) payable by 1 May 2026.
• Any refunds will be at the discretion of the London Literary Salon, dependent on our ability to fill the place, and will be subject to an administration charge.