Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, England, on July 30, 1818. She and her five siblings grew up in Haworth, where their father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was the church curate. Their mother died in 1821, and in 1824, Emily and three of her sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School in Lancashire. When her two oldest sisters died of tuberculosis, Emily returned to Haworth with her sister Charlotte.

After leaving school, Emily continued her studies with her two surviving sisters, Charlotte and Anne, and their brother, Branwell. With access to their father’s library, the Brontë siblings read and wrote extensively, producing a family magazine that featured their stories and poems.

In 1837, Emily became a teacher at the Law Hill School, but she left the position after several months. After teaching for a brief period at the Pension Héger in Brussels, she returned permanently to Haworth in 1842.

In 1846, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne self-published a collection of poetry under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. While The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Aylott and Jones, 1846) reached a very limited audience, the three sisters each went on to publish novels soon after. In 1847, Emily published her sole work of fiction, Wuthering Heights (Thomas Cautley Newby), which is widely regarded as one of the great novels of the English language.

Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on December 19, 1848. The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë (Hodder and Stoughton), a posthumous collection of more than two hundred poems, was published in 1923.