Cime Tempestose

by Emily Brontë

Paperback

About the author

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

Reviews

[Silvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

GRAZIE A DIO È MORTO.
Questo libro si potrebbe chiamare esseri umani orribili e dove trovarli. Sono sempre stata convinta di averlo letto da ragazzina, ma visto che lo ricordavo come un libro d'amore c'è qualcosa che non torna. Non c'è libro che descriva più lontanamente l'amore. Potrebbe però essere usato come bibbia su cosa NON È L'AMORE. Heathcliffe è un uomo orrendo che si ha subito soprusi e violenza da piccino e che per questo pensa di avere il diritto di rendere infelici tutti quelli che lo circondano. È un misto tra Piton e un uomo medio che non sa esprimere le proprie emozioni e nega la necessità di andare in terapia. Ma non che le figure femminili siano meglio! Catherine, dio santo che donna orribile, viziata e odiosa. La bravura dell'autrice sta non solo nel riuscire a coinvolgerti in una storia dove ci ritroviamo a tifare per i buoni (o per lo meno per i meno peggio) ma è riuscita a creare una donna meravigliosa quale Nelly Dean che si accolla letteralmente tutto il libro.

[Alessandra Del Gov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non vi aspettate da questo libro la classica storia d’amore… tutt’altro.
Cime tempestose è un romanzo avvincente che è capace di tenerti con gli occhi incollati sulle pagine. La lettura è molto scorrevole, inizialmente si fa un po’ fatica a distinguere i vari personaggi perché hanno tutti nomi simili, però una volta compresi la lettura si trasforma in un film…
Personalmente ho trovato questo romanzo a tratti triste, però è stato capace di avermi fatto riflettere e di innamorarimi della scrittura di Emily Brontë.
Consiglio di leggerlo perché è uno dei grandi classici, ma non lo classifico nei miei libri preferiti.☺️

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Violento, cupo, inaspettato.

[Antonella · Rating 2 out of 5]

non fa per me

[Giorgia Zanettini · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’ho adorato veramente tanto. Il modo in cui è stato narrato mi ha particolarmente colpito, i personaggi che si relazionano alla morte, insomma l’ho adorato