Emily Brontë (1818–1848) wrote a single novel, Wuthering Heights, published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell: the story of the wild love between Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff, set on the Yorkshire moors. Misunderstood by its first critics, it is now counted among the greatest novels in English. She was also a remarkable poet, and died at thirty.
Genres
novels and stories, poetry
Works
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Wuthering Heights
A child of the moors
Emily Jane Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 at Thornton, Yorkshire, and grew up at Haworth parsonage with her sisters Charlotte and Anne and her brother Branwell. She was briefly at the school at Cowan Bridge where her two eldest sisters fell fatally ill.
With Anne she created the imaginary island kingdom of Gondal, about which she wrote poems and prose until the end of her life; the prose is lost. She loved the moors around Haworth, walked on them with her dog Keeper, and was miserable whenever she had to leave home.
Brief absences
Emily spent three months as a pupil at Roe Head school, where Charlotte taught, but fell ill from homesickness and returned. She worked for some months as a teacher at a school near Halifax, and in 1842 went with Charlotte to Brussels, where Constantin Héger judged her mind more powerful than her sister's.
Back at Haworth she kept house for her father, baked bread, and wrote. Her poems, among them Remembrance, were discovered by Charlotte in 1845. Emily was furious at the intrusion, but agreed to their publication in the sisters' joint collection of 1846.
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby, in a set with Anne's Agnes Grey. Its story is told by two narrators, the visitor Lockwood and the housekeeper Nelly Dean, and spans two generations of two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, dominated by Heathcliff's love and revenge.
Many reviewers found the book savage and coarse; others recognised its power. After Emily's death Charlotte wrote a preface for a new edition in 1850, defending her sister while describing her as a nursling of the moors who hardly knew what she had written. Twentieth-century critics saw it instead as a carefully constructed masterpiece.
A swift death
Emily caught a cold at her brother Branwell's funeral in September 1848. It turned into tuberculosis, but she refused to see a doctor or to rest. She died on 19 December 1848 at Haworth, aged thirty, and was buried in the family vault in the church there.
No second novel survives. Some scholars think she began one, mentioned in a letter from her publisher, and that Charlotte may have destroyed it. Her poems are now regarded as among the finest of the Victorian age.
Anecdotes
Keeper at the funeral
Emily's mastiff Keeper walked behind her coffin in the funeral procession and lay at the foot of her pew during the service. According to Elizabeth Gaskell, he then lay outside her empty bedroom door for days, howling.
The diary papers
Emily and Anne wrote short 'diary papers' every few years, to be opened at a later date. The one from 1834, written when Emily was sixteen, mixes the doings of the household, peeling potatoes and the cat's whereabouts, with news from the kingdom of Gondal, in a spelling of her own.
Frequently asked questions
How many novels did Emily Brontë write?
Only one, Wuthering Heights (1847). She also wrote about two hundred poems.
What is Wuthering Heights about?
It tells of Heathcliff, a foundling raised by the Earnshaw family, his passion for Catherine Earnshaw, who marries the wealthy Edgar Linton, and the revenge he takes on both families over two generations.
How old was Emily Brontë when she died?
Thirty. She died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848, a year after Wuthering Heights was published.