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Emily Brontë

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Emily Brontë
A portrait of a young woman with curly brown hair and a pale, expressionless face.
Detail of Emily Brontë, from a painting by her brother, Branwell, c. 1834
Born
Emily Jane Brontë

(1818-07-30)30 July 1818
Thornton, Yorkshire, England
Died19 December 1848(1848-12-19) (aged 30)
Haworth, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England
Resting place
St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth, Yorkshire, England
EducationCowan Bridge School
Occupations
Parent(s)Patrick Brontë
Maria Branwell
RelativesBrontë family
Writing career
Pen nameEllis Bell
Period1846–48
Genres
  • Fiction
  • poetry
Notable workWuthering Heights
Movement
Romantic Period
Wikisource logo Works related to Emily Brontë at Wikisource
Signature

Emily Jane Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /-teɪ/;[1] 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848)[2] was an English writer best known for her 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. She also co-authored a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Emily was the fifth of six Brontë siblings, four of whom survived into adulthood. Her mother, Maria Branwell, died when she was three, leaving the children in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Apart from brief intervals at school, Emily was mostly taught at home by her father, Patrick Brontë, who was the curate of Haworth. She was very close to her siblings, especially her younger sister Anne, and together they wrote books and journals depicting imaginary worlds named Glass Town, Angria and Gondal. She was described by her sister Charlotte as solitary, strong-willed and nonconforming, with a keen love of nature and animals.

Apart from a brief period at school, and another as a student and teacher in Brussels with her sister Charlotte, Emily spent most of her life at home in Haworth, helping the family servant with chores, playing the piano and teaching herself from books.

Her work was originally published under the pen name Ellis Bell. It was not generally admired at the time, and many critics felt that the characters in Wuthering Heights were coarse and immoral. In spite of this, the novel is considered a classic of English literature. Emily Brontë died in 1848, aged 30, a year after the novel's publication.

Early life

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Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818[3] to Maria Branwell, the daughter of a wealthy Penzance merchant and property owner,[4] and Patrick Brontë, a curate from an impoverished Irish family.[5] The Brontë family lived in Market Street, in Thornton, a village on the outskirts of Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.[5] Their house is now open to the public and is known as the Brontë Birthplace.[6][7]

A view of the village from above, with narrow tall houses in typically blackened Yorkshire stone.
Haworth in 2013

Emily was the fifth of six siblings, preceded by Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Branwell.[5] In 1820, Anne, the last Brontë child, was born.[5] Soon after Anne's birth, the family moved 12 miles (19 km) away to the village of Haworth, in the Pennines,[5] where Patrick Brontë took employment as perpetual curate.[8] Haworth was a small community with an unusually high early mortality rate.[9] In 1850, Benjamin Herschel Babbage reported deeply insanitary conditions,[10] including contamination to the village water supply from the overcrowded graveyard nearby.[11] This is believed to have had a serious impact on the health of Emily and her siblings.[12]

On 15 September 1821, Maria Branwell died, after a long illness[13] which her nurse believed to have been uterine cancer.[14] Her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, had joined the household to nurse her, and made the move permanent to care for the three-year-old Emily and her siblings.[5] Elizabeth Branwell was not especially maternal, taking her meals alone, as did Patrick Brontë.[14] She is portrayed as a stern disciplinarian in Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë, but Nick Holland states in his biography of her that she also had an affectionate and supportive side.[15]

Cowan Bridge school

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In 1824, Emily and her three elder sisters were sent to the newly opened Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge.[5] At her admission, the school register said of Emily that she "reads very prettily, and works a little".[16] At six years old, she was the youngest student, and the superintendent described her as "quite the pet nursling of the school".[5] The children suffered severe privations at Cowan Bridge, including poor and insufficient food, unsanitary conditions, harsh discipline and frequent outbreaks of infectious disease such as typhoid and tuberculosis.[5] In 1825, following an outbreak of typhoid fever, Maria and Elizabeth both fell ill,[16] and were sent home, where they died of tuberculosis within three months of one other.[5][17] After this, Charlotte and Emily were brought back to Haworth by their father.[5] The children were subsequently educated at home, and were cared for by their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had given up her plans to return to Penzance, and the house servant, Tabby Ackroyd.[18]

A long stone building, like a row of terraced cottages, against a background of trees.
Cowan Bridge School, now known as "The Brontë School"

Early influences

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The Brontë children were encouraged by their father and aunt to develop their literary talents and to take an interest in politics and current affairs. Girls were not allowed access to the public library, but Branwell borrowed books which he shared with his sisters, and Patrick Brontë had a large personal library, to which he allowed his children access.[10] Thus Emily and her siblings read a wide range of published material, including books, periodicals and magazines. Favourites included: Aesop's Fables, the Arabian Nights,