Editorial Introduction

2024 marks a series of anniversaries in Bront€ e history.The year commemorates the anniversary of Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily Bront€ e's registration at the Clergy Daughters' School in Cowan Bridge.On 21 July 1824, Maria and Elizabeth, the eldest children, were only the seventeenth and eighteenth children to arrive at the school, but as Juliet Barker notes, the children should have arrived at the school sooner but were delayed 'because they were still delicate from having had whooping cough and measles in the spring' ([1994] 2010, 148).Charlotte joined her older sisters a few weeks later on 10 August, and Emily followed soon after on 25 November.Charlotte's immortalisation of the Clergy Daughters' School in the guise of Lowood in Jane Eyre (1847) will ensure that readers need no reminder of the hardships the Bront€ e children experienced while at Cowan Bridge.Nor will readers need reminding that less than a year after their arrival, Maria and Elizabeth were brought home suffering from consumption and passed away at home aged just 11 and 10, respectively, something that Elizabeth Gaskell attributed to the children's weakened 'constitutions', the 'principal' cause of which was the bad food at the institution ([1857] 1997, 58).2024 also marks the bicentenary of the Bog Burst at Crow Hill, an ecological phenomenon witnessed by a then six-year-old Emily, seven-year-old Branwell and four-year-old Anne.On Thursday 2 September, they were walking on the moors with the family's servants, Nancy and Sarah Garrs, when the bog violently erupted, leaving the walking party facing an unexpected torrent of muddy water, peat and rocks hurtling towards them in the valley.Patrick Bront€ e, who heard the thunderous explosion from the upstairs windows of the Haworth Parsonage, famously wrote about the event in a variety of forms, including his private letters, a delivered and published sermon, and poetry, among others.For more on the history of Patrick's bog burst writings, Shawna Ross's article in the journal from 2021 (issue 46:3) is invaluable; here, Ross argues persuasively for the scientific relevance-and not dismissal-of Patrick's assorted writings on the incident.In a different spirit, issue 49:1-2 of Bront€ e Studies marks the climax of something I hope will generate its own history in Bront€ e scholarship: the inaugural Bront€ e Studies Early Career Essay Prize.This annual prize, which is generously supported by Taylor & Francis and the Bront€ e Society, aims to encourage new scholarship in the field of Bront€ e studies, recognise and reward outstanding achievement by new researchers, and support the professional development of the next generation of Bront€ e scholars.Launched in 2023, the prize was established in