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Emily Brontë

Born

in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

July 30, 1818

Died

December 19, 1848

Genre

Fiction, Poetry

Influences

Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, John Milton, ...more

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Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, storytelling, and emotional intensity.
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to ...more

Combine Editions
Emily Brontë’s books

Average rating: 3.9 · 2,273,046 ratings · 122,518 reviews · 1,712 distinct works • Similar authors

	Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Pauline Nestor (Editor/Introduction), Lucasta Miller (Preface) 3.89 avg rating — 2,225,852 ratings — published 1847 — 108 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Brontë Sisters: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre 4.33 avg rating — 11,269 ratings — published 1847 — 105 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Night is Darkening Round Me 3.85 avg rating — 4,659 ratings — published 1846 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complete Poems by Emily Brontë, C.W. Hatfield (Editor), Irene Taylor (Foreword by) 4.17 avg rating — 3,715 ratings — published 1846 — 69 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wuthering Heights, Agnès Grey & Villette by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë 4.01 avg rating — 3,425 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wuthering Heights: In Modern English (The Readable Classics) by Emily Brontë, Avery Frost (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.81 avg rating — 1,203 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters by Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë 4.05 avg rating — 888 ratings — published 1846 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	مرتفعات ويذرنج - الجزء الأول by Emily Brontë, إيميلي برونتي, حلمي مراد (ترجمة) 3.84 avg rating — 515 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wuthering Heights 3.67 avg rating — 533 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bronte: Poems by Emily Brontë, Peter Washington (Editor) 4.13 avg rating — 429 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Emily Brontë…

Series by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights (3 volumes) (3 books)
by

Emily Brontë,

حلمي مراد (ترجمة),

إيميلي برونتي

3.90 avg rating — 815 ratings

Wuthering Heights (2 volumes) (2 books)
by

Emily Brontë

3.56 avg rating — 32 ratings

Wuthering Heights (6 volumes) (6 books)
by

Emily Brontë

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings

Good news, book nerds! And movie nerds! And TV nerds! It’s time once again for our regular roundup of new and upcoming book-to-screen...

Polls

March 2015 Revisit the Shelf Classic Reread

Which book would you like to read for our March 2015 Revisit the Shelf Classics group reread?

1903, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy, 204 pages

13 votes, 24.5%

1898, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, 192 pages

7 votes, 13.2%

1883, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, 311 pages

6 votes, 11.3%

1929, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, 293 pages

5 votes, 9.4%

1847, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 867 pages

5 votes, 9.4%

1839, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 554 pages

4 votes, 7.5%

1969, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 215 pages

3 votes, 5.7%

1961, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 453 pages

3 votes, 5.7%

1811, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, 409 pages

2 votes, 3.8%

1963, Dune by Frank Herbert, 604 pages

2 votes, 3.8%

1847, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 464 pages

1 vote, 1.9%

1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 324 pages

1 vote, 1.9%

1936, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, 1037 pages

1 vote, 1.9%

1935, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, 320 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

53 total votes

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Emily Brontë’s Followers (14,267)

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