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Emily Brontë

Born

in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

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

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Emily Brontë’s books

Average rating: 3.91 · 2,059,746 ratings · 86,107 reviews · 1,512 distinct works • Similar authors

	Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Pauline Nestor (Editor/Introduction), Lucasta Miller (Preface) 3.90 avg rating — 2,017,474 ratings — published 1847 — 513 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 — 11,168 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 — 4,383 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 — 3,611 ratings — published 1846 — 67 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 — 3,362 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
	Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters by Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë 4.04 avg rating — 874 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) 3.85 avg rating — 506 ratings — 7 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
	Bronte: Poems by Emily Brontë, Peter Washington (Editor) 4.11 avg rating — 414 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
	Wuthering Heights and Poems 4.06 avg rating — 300 ratings — 7 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
	Poems of Solitude by Emily Brontë, Helen Dunmore (Foreword by) 4.06 avg rating — 288 ratings — published 2004 — 3 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

3.91 avg rating — 800 ratings

Wuthering Heights (2 volumes) (2 books)
by

Emily Brontë

3.70 avg rating — 20 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...

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August 2014 Revisit the Shelf

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

29 votes, 17.1%

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

29 votes, 17.1%

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

18 votes, 10.6%

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

16 votes, 9.4%

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

15 votes, 8.8%

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

15 votes, 8.8%

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

12 votes, 7.1%

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

11 votes, 6.5%

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

6 votes, 3.5%

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

6 votes, 3.5%

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

6 votes, 3.5%

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5 votes, 2.9%

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

2 votes, 1.2%

170 total votes

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