BRADFORD Literature Festival pays tribute to the Brontes with a series of events, including a quiz, heritage trail and beginners’ guide.

As the world now knows, the Bronte sisters were much more than the daughters of a country clergyman. Like their father, they were social pioneers, recording the difficult times they lived in, when death was commonplace to their family and others in a damp mill town clinging to bleak, unforgiving moorland.

Emily, Charlotte and Anne wrote under masculine pseudonyms because the subjects they embraced would never be, in Charlotte’s words, considered “positively feminine” enough for a Victorian readership. As their books continue to fascinate generations, more than 150 years after they wrote them, the story of these extraordinary women is just as exciting and passionate as anything that came from their fertile imaginations.

Next month’s festival looks at how the Brontes’ lives and work continue to inspire writers, artists and film-makers today, with their spirit living on through themes of fairness and equality of class, race, gender that remain relevant.

Playwright, author and critic Bonnie Greer, who is president of the Bronte Society, leads a discussion on race and gender in Bronte novels.

Women feel as men feel, says Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. With its honesty about female desire and independence, the novel is widely viewed as a feminist manifesto. The Brontes’ views on race were also free from prevailing notions of their times and there is much critical debate about the origins of Heathcliff, the ‘dark-skinned gipsy’ in Wuthering Heights.

Also on the panel are Juliet Barker, former curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum; John Bowen, a professor of 19th century literature; Rebecca Fraser, author of a feminist biography of Charlotte Bronte; and journalist Boyd Tonkin, who has judged the Booker Prize. The panel’s critical exploration of race and gender within Bronte novels looks at the context of the age they lived in and highlights the relevance of their work today.

Bonnie Greer and Boyd Tonkin will also join Tamar Yellin, writer of Kafka in Bronteland, for a panel discussion called Inspired by the Brontes looking at the legacy of the sisters’ novels and how their memorable characters, landscapes and themes of passion, danger, and the redemptive power of love continue to inspire.

The Brontes’ Haworth home has become a destination for pilgrims from across the world, and the family’s letters, manuscripts and personal possessions - many of which have now returned to the Parsonage - are revered as relics.

Ann Dinsdale, the museum’s collections manager, will discuss key objects from the Brontes' Haworth home and tell the fascinating story of the development of the Bronte Society’s collection over a special afternoon tea at Bradford’s Midland Hotel.

If you’ve yet to discover the literary siblings’ work, Brontes for Beginners is a whistle-stop guide by Susan Newby, education officer at Bronte Parsonage Museum, offering an introduction to the family.

Also, a heritage tour led by join Bronte enthusiast Christa Ackroyd covers significant sites on a vintage bus. The tour looks at the siblings’ visionary father, sent to the West Riding by William Wilberforce to help the poor; travels to Thornton where Patrick Bronte preached and where his famous daughters were born; takes in views of the moors immortalised in Wuthering Heights; stops for lunch in Luddenden at one of Branwell’s drinking haunts; and ends with a private tour of the Parsonage and its library, to view close up treasures of the collection.

lRACE and Gender in the Novels of the Brontes (11.30am-1pm); Inspired by the Brontes (1.30pm-3pm); Afternoon Tea (3pm-4.30pm) and Brontes for Beginners (1.30am-11am) are on Saturday, May 23 at the Midland Hotel.

The Bronte Heritage Tour is on Sunday, May 24 from 10am - 5pm. Meet at the National Media Museum. Tickets for all events at bradfordliteraturefestival.co.uk.