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This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë: ONE OF THE GUARDIAN’S ‘BEST BOOKS TO DIP INTO THIS SUMMER’
A lyrical and searing portrait of England's wildest and most brilliant writer — Emily Brontë.
Emily Jane Brontë was just 27 when she started writing the wayward and electric novel Wuthering Heights. Three years later, she was dead. Out of step with her own time and remembered as the strangest of the Brontë sisters, there's much that we don't know about her — most of her papers were destroyed after her death. But as Deborah Lutz explores in this, one of the first biographies of Emily in 20 years, the writing that has survived seethes with storm and strife and with the beautifully desolate landscape of Yorkshire.
Drawing on a vast quantity of unexplored archival materials, Deborah reconstructs the texture of Emily Brontë's days, bringing us closer to one of the greatest and fiercest writers we have, by showing us her creative process and her confidence in her strange art.
This book has much to reveal to readers of Wuthering Heights, as we accompany Emily around the wild moorlands she loved so much. Also threaded through with the contemporary politics and events of the era (from the early labour movements of the Chartists and reformists, to the slave uprisings in the colonies), and authors and locals that Emily read about or knew (from proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft to the masculine lesbian Anne Lister).
Featuring illuminating readings of her poems, This Dark Night takes us inside the world of Emily's irrepressible spirit and wild imagination.
Emily Jane Brontë was just 27 when she started writing the wayward and electric novel Wuthering Heights. Three years later, she was dead. Out of step with her own time and remembered as the strangest of the Brontë sisters, there's much that we don't know about her — most of her papers were destroyed after her death. But as Deborah Lutz explores in this, one of the first biographies of Emily in 20 years, the writing that has survived seethes with storm and strife and with the beautifully desolate landscape of Yorkshire.
Drawing on a vast quantity of unexplored archival materials, Deborah reconstructs the texture of Emily Brontë's days, bringing us closer to one of the greatest and fiercest writers we have, by showing us her creative process and her confidence in her strange art.
This book has much to reveal to readers of Wuthering Heights, as we accompany Emily around the wild moorlands she loved so much. Also threaded through with the contemporary politics and events of the era (from the early labour movements of the Chartists and reformists, to the slave uprisings in the colonies), and authors and locals that Emily read about or knew (from proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft to the masculine lesbian Anne Lister).
Featuring illuminating readings of her poems, This Dark Night takes us inside the world of Emily's irrepressible spirit and wild imagination.
Audible Audio
First published May 5, 2026
About the author
Deborah Lutz
17 books78 followersDeborah Lutz is the Kelly Professor in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Pennsylvania State University. A Guggenheim, Cullman, and NEH Fellow, she is the author of This Dark Night, The Brontë Cabinet, Pleasure Bound, and other works. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including the New York Times. She lives in Pennsylvania and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
July 7, 2026
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑎𝑦.ᐟ 𓆩♡𓆪
This was an absolute delight to read. So thorough, so insightful, so curious above all. What can't be known for sure, the author wonders, asks the reader to join in on the fun of wondering.
The life of the Brontës is fascinating: a troupe of poets (and, in a way, actors) brought up in a parish house in the middle of wild, open nature, raised by a widower cleric father who admitted an immense amount of progressive and transgressive thinking from his daughters — to the point that even nowadays he would be considered forward-thinking and somewhat relaxed. The siblings had a comfortable home, a loving family, and the most important creative tool of all, time, and within their bond they created entire worlds, where they lived out their loves and fears with an intensity they couldn't exercise often in "real" life.
Emily's was a life marked by grief, contemplation, and introspection. While I was reading, I kept trying to imagine what it was like to live in a place so immediately and completely, unequivocally surrounded by imposing, overwhelming nature. Not only nature in the greenery sense — an enormous variety of fauna and flora with little disturbance to explore, an unchanging landscape for the most part of her life, with an openness of sky and land that I honestly don't believe I've ever known in my modern, urban little life — but nature in the sense of life and death cycling constantly in full view of the Brontës, of raw human condition being taken to extremes in sudden illnesses and departures, of decomposing bodies overwhelming the church's cemetery plot so much so that the very soil was becoming unstable, the environment toxic.
Something I found out reading the book is that there was an element of Buddhist fervor in Emily's behaviour: keeping silent, observing, not reacting, exercising restraint (sometimes to the point of asceticism) as a core value, spending entire days in deep meditation in the woods around her house, all on her own, being content with her reality rather than desiring otherwise, appreciating the labour of domestic life, finding purpose in it. She had a room of her own everywhere she went.
The book does a fantastic job of piecing together the incredibly fragmented and incomplete Brontë archives to weave a narrative that manages to stay on chronological track, providing deep context of not only the happenings of their lives, the events that led them to fame, but also of the surroundings of their lives — what they ate and heard and read and discussed and attended and smelled and wore — creating an atmosphere that follows throughout the book even for someone like me, with little to no knowledge of Victorian history. The author also dives deeply into Emily's poetry, not shying away from the task of analyzing it from a literary as well as a historical point of view all at once. People who know of Wuthering Heights but don't know of Emily's poetry (which I believe to be a majority) will finish the book with a vast comprehension of this side of her.
Also, December 19 is now officially my Reread Wuthering Heights holiday.
"From early on, this was a home where girls created, performed, and wrote fiction with confidence. It seemed a natural activity for them. It was never curtailed or censored as being too masculine or unfit for girls who should be trained up as mothers and wives — common attitudes at the time. Emily would step right into this world, a woman writer born and bred." 💗💖💓💖💞💝💕💝💓💖💗💘💞💕💘💝💓💖💓💕💘💖
This was an absolute delight to read. So thorough, so insightful, so curious above all. What can't be known for sure, the author wonders, asks the reader to join in on the fun of wondering.
The life of the Brontës is fascinating: a troupe of poets (and, in a way, actors) brought up in a parish house in the middle of wild, open nature, raised by a widower cleric father who admitted an immense amount of progressive and transgressive thinking from his daughters — to the point that even nowadays he would be considered forward-thinking and somewhat relaxed. The siblings had a comfortable home, a loving family, and the most important creative tool of all, time, and within their bond they created entire worlds, where they lived out their loves and fears with an intensity they couldn't exercise often in "real" life.
Emily's was a life marked by grief, contemplation, and introspection. While I was reading, I kept trying to imagine what it was like to live in a place so immediately and completely, unequivocally surrounded by imposing, overwhelming nature. Not only nature in the greenery sense — an enormous variety of fauna and flora with little disturbance to explore, an unchanging landscape for the most part of her life, with an openness of sky and land that I honestly don't believe I've ever known in my modern, urban little life — but nature in the sense of life and death cycling constantly in full view of the Brontës, of raw human condition being taken to extremes in sudden illnesses and departures, of decomposing bodies overwhelming the church's cemetery plot so much so that the very soil was becoming unstable, the environment toxic.
Something I found out reading the book is that there was an element of Buddhist fervor in Emily's behaviour: keeping silent, observing, not reacting, exercising restraint (sometimes to the point of asceticism) as a core value, spending entire days in deep meditation in the woods around her house, all on her own, being content with her reality rather than desiring otherwise, appreciating the labour of domestic life, finding purpose in it. She had a room of her own everywhere she went.
The book does a fantastic job of piecing together the incredibly fragmented and incomplete Brontë archives to weave a narrative that manages to stay on chronological track, providing deep context of not only the happenings of their lives, the events that led them to fame, but also of the surroundings of their lives — what they ate and heard and read and discussed and attended and smelled and wore — creating an atmosphere that follows throughout the book even for someone like me, with little to no knowledge of Victorian history. The author also dives deeply into Emily's poetry, not shying away from the task of analyzing it from a literary as well as a historical point of view all at once. People who know of Wuthering Heights but don't know of Emily's poetry (which I believe to be a majority) will finish the book with a vast comprehension of this side of her.
Also, December 19 is now officially my Reread Wuthering Heights holiday.
"From early on, this was a home where girls created, performed, and wrote fiction with confidence. It seemed a natural activity for them. It was never curtailed or censored as being too masculine or unfit for girls who should be trained up as mothers and wives — common attitudes at the time. Emily would step right into this world, a woman writer born and bred." 💗💖💓💖💞💝💕💝💓💖💗💘💞💕💘💝💓💖💓💕💘💖
May 12, 2026
3.25 After reading Wuthering Heights and watching the BBC’s To Walk Invisible, I was eager to learn more about what kind of environment produced not one, but three, female authors in the 1800s. This biography breaks Emily’s life into chronological segments, offering a deep look at the Brontë family dynamic.
The author is transparent about how much of Emily’s personal work and history was destroyed, which is a detail that aligns with other accounts I’ve seen. However, because so much is missing from the historical record, I occasionally found myself questioning how certain specific details could be known. If you go into it keeping that in mind, it is an enjoyable and informative read. I actually wish I had read this before Wuthering Heights, as it sheds so much light on Emily’s creative choices and the overall atmosphere of her writing.
The author is transparent about how much of Emily’s personal work and history was destroyed, which is a detail that aligns with other accounts I’ve seen. However, because so much is missing from the historical record, I occasionally found myself questioning how certain specific details could be known. If you go into it keeping that in mind, it is an enjoyable and informative read. I actually wish I had read this before Wuthering Heights, as it sheds so much light on Emily’s creative choices and the overall atmosphere of her writing.
January 31, 2026
Absolute masterpiece. A lyrical, highly-researched and myth-busting must-read.
June 21, 2026
I’d call This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life by Deborah Lutz the rare literary biography that feels haunted by its subject. Not haunted in the cheap Gothic sense, but in the way the moors haunt Wuthering Heights: a persistent presence, a voice carried on the wind, impossible to fully grasp and yet impossible to forget. Lutz has achieved something remarkable here. She has written what may well be the quintessential biography of Emily Brontë—not because she solves every mystery surrounding Emily, but because she understands that mystery itself is central to who Emily was.
For generations, Emily Brontë has existed less as a historical figure than as a myth. She is “wild Emily,” the solitary genius wandering the Yorkshire moors, speaking more easily to dogs and wind than to society. She is the author who produced one of the greatest novels ever written and then vanished from the world before she could explain it. Every biographer who approaches her faces the same challenge: how do you write the life of a woman who left behind so little of herself?
Lutz’s answer is elegant. Rather than forcing certainty where none exists, she reconstructs Emily’s world with extraordinary sensitivity. She gives us the texture of Haworth, the rhythms of the parsonage, the harsh beauty of the moorland landscape, and the intimate, complicated web of the Brontë family. The result is a biography that feels alive rather than merely informative.
Emily’s life, on paper, appears almost startlingly small. Born in 1818, the fifth surviving child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë, she spent nearly all her life in Haworth. Her mother died when Emily was young. Soon afterward, her two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, perished following their experiences at the grim Clergy Daughters’ School. These losses cast long shadows over the remaining Brontë children: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne.
Lutz traces how the siblings responded to grief by creating worlds. The famous juvenilia—the kingdoms of Angria and Gondal—emerge not as quaint childhood games but as foundational acts of imagination. Emily, alongside Anne, built Gondal into a vast realm of passion, warfare, betrayal, and longing. Reading about these writings, one can already see the seeds of Wuthering Heights: the fierce emotional intensity, the refusal to separate love from destruction, the sense that human feeling can be as violent and untamable as nature itself.
What makes this biography so compelling is the way Lutz refuses to flatten Emily into a stereotype. Too often, Emily has been reduced to a lonely recluse who stumbled into genius. Here, she becomes a fuller and stranger figure. We see her devotion to animals, her fierce attachment to home, her discomfort in conventional social settings, and her profound inner life. She was shy, certainly, but not weak. Reserved, but not passive. There is a toughness to Emily that Lutz captures beautifully.
Indeed, one of the biography’s greatest strengths is its insistence on Emily’s strength. This was a woman who endured loss after loss and yet maintained an astonishing independence of mind. She did not court approval. She did not seek literary fame in the way Charlotte often did. There is something almost elemental about her character. Reading Lutz’s account, I was reminded again and again that Emily Brontë seems less like a Victorian author than a force of nature.
The heart of the biography, naturally, is the creation of Wuthering Heights. Even now, nearly two centuries after its publication, the novel retains its power to shock. It remains unruly, difficult, and magnificent. Lutz places the book within the context of Emily’s life without reducing it to autobiography. She understands that the temptation to explain Heathcliff and Catherine through biographical parallels ultimately diminishes the novel’s achievement.
Instead, she shows how Emily’s imagination transformed the materials of her world into something immortal. The moors became a spiritual landscape. Human passion became mythic. Love became a force that could survive death itself.
That immortality is perhaps the biography’s central theme. Emily lived only thirty years. She published a single novel and a small body of poetry. By ordinary measures, her life was brief and narrow. Yet her influence feels boundless. Lutz repeatedly returns to the strange contradiction at the center of Emily’s legacy: how could someone who lived such a secluded life create work that speaks so powerfully across centuries?
The answer, of course, lies in the work itself. Emily possessed an almost supernatural understanding of emotional truth. She stripped away social conventions and exposed something rawer underneath. Reading her today feels startlingly modern because she was never interested in polite surfaces. She was interested in obsession, longing, grief, rage, ecstasy—the feelings that remain constant regardless of era.
Lutz also handles the darker chapters of the Brontë story with great care. Branwell’s decline, the deaths that devastated the family, and Emily’s own final illness are rendered with heartbreaking clarity. Emily’s death, in particular, remains one of the most moving episodes in literary history. Refusing medical treatment, continuing her household duties despite severe illness, she seemed determined to meet death on her own terms. There is something tragic and awe-inspiring about her final months.
And yet the biography never descends into sentimentality. Lutz understands that Emily herself would likely have rejected such treatment. Instead, she presents her as she was: stubborn, brilliant, difficult, loving, private, and utterly singular.
What I admired most about This Dark Night is its atmosphere. Many literary biographies feel like archives brought to life. This one feels like literature. Lutz writes with a lyrical precision that mirrors her subject without imitating her. The pages are filled with weather, landscape, memory, and silence. One comes away not merely informed about Emily Brontë but immersed in her world.
By the end, I found myself experiencing the peculiar melancholy that accompanies all great biographies. We learn more about Emily than we knew before, yet she remains elusive. Perhaps that is inevitable. Perhaps it is even fitting. Emily Brontë has always existed at the border between history and legend.
Deborah Lutz understands this better than any previous biographer I have read. Rather than trying to tame wild Emily, she follows her onto the moors.
The result is a magnificent work of literary scholarship and storytelling. If Wuthering Heights is the definitive expression of Emily Brontë’s imagination, then This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life may be the definitive account of the life behind it. Richly researched, beautifully written, and deeply humane, it captures both the woman and the myth without sacrificing either.
For readers fascinated by the Brontës, this book feels essential. For admirers of Emily, it feels revelatory. And for anyone who has ever stood in awe of the immortal brilliance of that strange, fierce genius from Haworth, it is nothing short of extraordinary. Emily remains untamed, unknowable, and eternal. Deborah Lutz has come closer than anyone to showing us why.
For generations, Emily Brontë has existed less as a historical figure than as a myth. She is “wild Emily,” the solitary genius wandering the Yorkshire moors, speaking more easily to dogs and wind than to society. She is the author who produced one of the greatest novels ever written and then vanished from the world before she could explain it. Every biographer who approaches her faces the same challenge: how do you write the life of a woman who left behind so little of herself?
Lutz’s answer is elegant. Rather than forcing certainty where none exists, she reconstructs Emily’s world with extraordinary sensitivity. She gives us the texture of Haworth, the rhythms of the parsonage, the harsh beauty of the moorland landscape, and the intimate, complicated web of the Brontë family. The result is a biography that feels alive rather than merely informative.
Emily’s life, on paper, appears almost startlingly small. Born in 1818, the fifth surviving child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë, she spent nearly all her life in Haworth. Her mother died when Emily was young. Soon afterward, her two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, perished following their experiences at the grim Clergy Daughters’ School. These losses cast long shadows over the remaining Brontë children: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne.
Lutz traces how the siblings responded to grief by creating worlds. The famous juvenilia—the kingdoms of Angria and Gondal—emerge not as quaint childhood games but as foundational acts of imagination. Emily, alongside Anne, built Gondal into a vast realm of passion, warfare, betrayal, and longing. Reading about these writings, one can already see the seeds of Wuthering Heights: the fierce emotional intensity, the refusal to separate love from destruction, the sense that human feeling can be as violent and untamable as nature itself.
What makes this biography so compelling is the way Lutz refuses to flatten Emily into a stereotype. Too often, Emily has been reduced to a lonely recluse who stumbled into genius. Here, she becomes a fuller and stranger figure. We see her devotion to animals, her fierce attachment to home, her discomfort in conventional social settings, and her profound inner life. She was shy, certainly, but not weak. Reserved, but not passive. There is a toughness to Emily that Lutz captures beautifully.
Indeed, one of the biography’s greatest strengths is its insistence on Emily’s strength. This was a woman who endured loss after loss and yet maintained an astonishing independence of mind. She did not court approval. She did not seek literary fame in the way Charlotte often did. There is something almost elemental about her character. Reading Lutz’s account, I was reminded again and again that Emily Brontë seems less like a Victorian author than a force of nature.
The heart of the biography, naturally, is the creation of Wuthering Heights. Even now, nearly two centuries after its publication, the novel retains its power to shock. It remains unruly, difficult, and magnificent. Lutz places the book within the context of Emily’s life without reducing it to autobiography. She understands that the temptation to explain Heathcliff and Catherine through biographical parallels ultimately diminishes the novel’s achievement.
Instead, she shows how Emily’s imagination transformed the materials of her world into something immortal. The moors became a spiritual landscape. Human passion became mythic. Love became a force that could survive death itself.
That immortality is perhaps the biography’s central theme. Emily lived only thirty years. She published a single novel and a small body of poetry. By ordinary measures, her life was brief and narrow. Yet her influence feels boundless. Lutz repeatedly returns to the strange contradiction at the center of Emily’s legacy: how could someone who lived such a secluded life create work that speaks so powerfully across centuries?
The answer, of course, lies in the work itself. Emily possessed an almost supernatural understanding of emotional truth. She stripped away social conventions and exposed something rawer underneath. Reading her today feels startlingly modern because she was never interested in polite surfaces. She was interested in obsession, longing, grief, rage, ecstasy—the feelings that remain constant regardless of era.
Lutz also handles the darker chapters of the Brontë story with great care. Branwell’s decline, the deaths that devastated the family, and Emily’s own final illness are rendered with heartbreaking clarity. Emily’s death, in particular, remains one of the most moving episodes in literary history. Refusing medical treatment, continuing her household duties despite severe illness, she seemed determined to meet death on her own terms. There is something tragic and awe-inspiring about her final months.
And yet the biography never descends into sentimentality. Lutz understands that Emily herself would likely have rejected such treatment. Instead, she presents her as she was: stubborn, brilliant, difficult, loving, private, and utterly singular.
What I admired most about This Dark Night is its atmosphere. Many literary biographies feel like archives brought to life. This one feels like literature. Lutz writes with a lyrical precision that mirrors her subject without imitating her. The pages are filled with weather, landscape, memory, and silence. One comes away not merely informed about Emily Brontë but immersed in her world.
By the end, I found myself experiencing the peculiar melancholy that accompanies all great biographies. We learn more about Emily than we knew before, yet she remains elusive. Perhaps that is inevitable. Perhaps it is even fitting. Emily Brontë has always existed at the border between history and legend.
Deborah Lutz understands this better than any previous biographer I have read. Rather than trying to tame wild Emily, she follows her onto the moors.
The result is a magnificent work of literary scholarship and storytelling. If Wuthering Heights is the definitive expression of Emily Brontë’s imagination, then This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life may be the definitive account of the life behind it. Richly researched, beautifully written, and deeply humane, it captures both the woman and the myth without sacrificing either.
For readers fascinated by the Brontës, this book feels essential. For admirers of Emily, it feels revelatory. And for anyone who has ever stood in awe of the immortal brilliance of that strange, fierce genius from Haworth, it is nothing short of extraordinary. Emily remains untamed, unknowable, and eternal. Deborah Lutz has come closer than anyone to showing us why.
April 4, 2026
The was such a beautiful biography of Emily Brontë that I was left practically in tears by the end of it. Inspired by the TikTok trend, I’ve been embarking in a personal curriculum on Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights. I found this book in my search for a book about her life that wasn’t 500+ pages. It’s hard to know a lot about Emily because so many of her papers were lost/destroyed. But this author did a wonderful job conveying the story of her life. I went into this book thinking I would have little in common with a moody Victorian woman living on the Yorkshire moors, but as I learned more about her life, I found more glimmers of Emily in myself than I would have ever expected. I highly recommend this book for fans of Wuthering Heights or anyone looking for a biography of a tragic, fascinating, genius unrecognized in her own time.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Sadly, this was not a particularly strong biography. I appreciate what Lutz was trying to achieve (an emotional resonance with Emily brought about through facts, probabilities, and poetic prose), but I didn’t really gel with this text. I like my non-fiction to be more exact, less fluffy, and with an academic tone. Because I didn’t get on well with the narrative style, it then made the book feel like a slog rather than a page turner. Love my girl Emily, but this biography just didn’t hit the mark. Juliet Barker’s work remains the most authoritative when it comes to the beloved Brontë sisters.
Kind thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my thoughts.
Kind thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my thoughts.
July 7, 2026
3.5 stars
June 19, 2026
Excellent! One of the best accounts I’ve read.
May 13, 2026
This is one of the most entertaining biographies I ever read, I am not a fun of biographies because I think you have to be very passionate about the subjects to really enjoy the detail that frequently abound in this type of books. Although this book is detailed and very well researched, I enjoyed the writing and the exploration of new aspects in the lives of the Bronte sisters, especially of Emily. Some of these were never brought to light so respectfully before. I would recommend this book even if you are not that into the Brontes, because the portraying of the historical context is amazing.
July 4, 2026
I did not understand the scale of the Brontë sisters' imaginations until I read this book.
They used everything.
The landscape. The newspapers. Politics. Religion. Death. Illness. Their brother. The families they worked for. The people they watched. The limitations placed on women.
So much of what eventually appeared in their books came from somewhere in their actual lives.
They noticed everything and it made its way into their novels.
I learned so much reading Deborah Lutz's biography of Emily Brontë.
These young women were wildly creative and intelligent. Their minds were constantly taking in the world around them and finding a place for it in their writing.
And then Emily writes Wuthering Heights…
Sigh.
Emily was creative across every domain.
I was so impressed by her paintings, which are included in a section of the book.
Really, the whole Brontë family, starting with their parents, was gifted in the arts.
I had the chance to attend a talk with Deborah Lutz after finishing the book, which was so wonderful!
Her insight and devotion to maintaining the integrity of Emily Brontë's life really impacted me.
I asked her if there was a passage in Wuthering Heights that she now reads completely differently after writing This Dark Night.
Her answer was yes.
One of the poems Nelly reads near the beginning of the novel now has a completely different and much more heartfelt significance to her after she researched its meaning.
I loved that answer.
That's exactly what this biography did for me.
It gave me another way into Emily's work.
I can already tell that when I read Wuthering Heights again, I'm going to see things I didn't know to look for before.
I definitely recommend this to anyone who loves any of the Brontës' novels.
Lutz goes deeply into the whole family and the worlds that shaped their writing, with Emily at the center, of course.
I have so much respect for someone who spends years in archives, following tiny pieces of a life, trying to bring us closer to the truth about one of the most famous authors of all time.
They used everything.
The landscape. The newspapers. Politics. Religion. Death. Illness. Their brother. The families they worked for. The people they watched. The limitations placed on women.
So much of what eventually appeared in their books came from somewhere in their actual lives.
They noticed everything and it made its way into their novels.
I learned so much reading Deborah Lutz's biography of Emily Brontë.
These young women were wildly creative and intelligent. Their minds were constantly taking in the world around them and finding a place for it in their writing.
And then Emily writes Wuthering Heights…
Sigh.
Emily was creative across every domain.
I was so impressed by her paintings, which are included in a section of the book.
Really, the whole Brontë family, starting with their parents, was gifted in the arts.
I had the chance to attend a talk with Deborah Lutz after finishing the book, which was so wonderful!
Her insight and devotion to maintaining the integrity of Emily Brontë's life really impacted me.
I asked her if there was a passage in Wuthering Heights that she now reads completely differently after writing This Dark Night.
Her answer was yes.
One of the poems Nelly reads near the beginning of the novel now has a completely different and much more heartfelt significance to her after she researched its meaning.
I loved that answer.
That's exactly what this biography did for me.
It gave me another way into Emily's work.
I can already tell that when I read Wuthering Heights again, I'm going to see things I didn't know to look for before.
I definitely recommend this to anyone who loves any of the Brontës' novels.
Lutz goes deeply into the whole family and the worlds that shaped their writing, with Emily at the center, of course.
I have so much respect for someone who spends years in archives, following tiny pieces of a life, trying to bring us closer to the truth about one of the most famous authors of all time.
Read
April 26, 2026Anyone wanting to learn about the life of Emily Brontë is going to come up against an insuperable obstacle: there are just not nearly as many primary sources for her life as there are for her sister Charlotte. That means that biographies are not likely to really unearth any new facts, and so in a way there's not much to distinguish a biography of Emily from one of the many biographies of her family.
BUT, if you are a huge Emily Brontë fan and you really want a book focused on her, what you might appreciate about Deborah Lutz's new book is that she explores Emily's poetry by way of adding some depth to the biographical facts. And she does a creditable job in outlining this rather enigmatic woman without speculating *too* wildly.
I previously read Lutz's book, The Brontë Cabinet, and enjoyed it except for a few assumptions/interpretations that I questioned. The same caveats apply here.
Thanks to W W Norton for providing me with this advance copy via Netgalley.
BUT, if you are a huge Emily Brontë fan and you really want a book focused on her, what you might appreciate about Deborah Lutz's new book is that she explores Emily's poetry by way of adding some depth to the biographical facts. And she does a creditable job in outlining this rather enigmatic woman without speculating *too* wildly.
I previously read Lutz's book, The Brontë Cabinet, and enjoyed it except for a few assumptions/interpretations that I questioned. The same caveats apply here.
Thanks to W W Norton for providing me with this advance copy via Netgalley.
May 11, 2026
A gorgeous portrait of Emily Brontë, written in a lyrical and accessible prose style while bristling with (unobtrusive) citations to a vast body of research.
Always the most elusive of the Brontës, Emily has been unjustly portrayed as an odd social isolate incapable of coping with work or life, a portrait that had its roots in Elizabeth Gaskell's famous biography of Emily's older sister, Charlotte. While Gaskell's book established Emily as a stoic eccentric, it did little to explain how she came to be the author of Wuthering Heights, an intense psycho-sexual drama rooted in the Yorkshire landscape. Lutz, conversely, pays close attention to not only Brontë's childhood games and writing but also her early and profound losses of both her mother and two sisters (buried nearly directly under the family pew in the church where the father, Patrick, preached). In a characteristic passage, she describes how this pew was too short to fit the entire family without some members--usually Anne and Emily--having to sit turned away from the congregation. In Lutz's explanation, this becomes not a defiance of sociability but an effort to cope with the intense trauma of living in a death-infused environment.
One of the mysteries of the Brontë sisters is how three women in such remote geographical and literary circumstances could craft such brilliant fiction: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's too-often overlooked The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. But by turning to the previous generation and exploring the literary tastes and writing ambitions of their parents, Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, Lutz offers helpful context for both the feminist inclinations of the authors' novels and their immersion in the contemporary fiction of their day.
This is a gorgeous, long overdue account that examines Emily Brontë as a writer of landscape, and one of the author's minor strengths is her close attention to Yorkshire diction, with words like "flittermice" (a local term for bats) offering a sense of how place infuses Brontë's language in her choice of key terms like "wuthering."
Always the most elusive of the Brontës, Emily has been unjustly portrayed as an odd social isolate incapable of coping with work or life, a portrait that had its roots in Elizabeth Gaskell's famous biography of Emily's older sister, Charlotte. While Gaskell's book established Emily as a stoic eccentric, it did little to explain how she came to be the author of Wuthering Heights, an intense psycho-sexual drama rooted in the Yorkshire landscape. Lutz, conversely, pays close attention to not only Brontë's childhood games and writing but also her early and profound losses of both her mother and two sisters (buried nearly directly under the family pew in the church where the father, Patrick, preached). In a characteristic passage, she describes how this pew was too short to fit the entire family without some members--usually Anne and Emily--having to sit turned away from the congregation. In Lutz's explanation, this becomes not a defiance of sociability but an effort to cope with the intense trauma of living in a death-infused environment.
One of the mysteries of the Brontë sisters is how three women in such remote geographical and literary circumstances could craft such brilliant fiction: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's too-often overlooked The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. But by turning to the previous generation and exploring the literary tastes and writing ambitions of their parents, Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, Lutz offers helpful context for both the feminist inclinations of the authors' novels and their immersion in the contemporary fiction of their day.
This is a gorgeous, long overdue account that examines Emily Brontë as a writer of landscape, and one of the author's minor strengths is her close attention to Yorkshire diction, with words like "flittermice" (a local term for bats) offering a sense of how place infuses Brontë's language in her choice of key terms like "wuthering."
June 18, 2026
(Maybe I am biased on the subject topic) I loved it
May 19, 2026
I really enjoyed this literary biography. From the very first well-chosen quotation, the author opens up Emily Bronte’s life in a beautiful way. It felt like sitting next to a friend who keeps looking up from their research to share some new and fascinating fact.
July 3, 2026
My favourite of the three Brontë sisters has always been Emily; although I love Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I love Wuthering Heights more and I also find Emily herself the most interesting and intriguing person of the three. When I came across this new biography by Deborah Lutz, then, I knew I wanted to read it. I’ve read other books about the Brontës – mainly fictional ones such as Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks and The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan – but I liked the idea of one with a specific focus on Emily.
The book takes us through Emily’s entire life, beginning with her birth in 1818, the fifth of six children. When Emily was three, her mother died, leaving the children to be raised by their aunt and their father, Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Growing up in a parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, Emily and her younger sister Anne developed their writing skills with a series of poems and stories set in the imaginary world of Gondal. Although most of this material has been lost, some of Emily’s Gondal poems still exist and Lutz uses them to explore what they can tell us about Emily as a person and how they provided the foundation that led to the writing of Wuthering Heights.
Emily’s early life was marked by various tragedies – just a few years after her mother’s death, her two eldest sisters also died of tuberculosis, having fallen ill at Cowan Bridge School (the model for Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As Patrick was reluctant to let his three surviving daughters attend school after this, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were largely educated at home. Rarely mixing with people outside the family, Emily didn’t make friends easily and was seen as a quiet, reclusive, fiercely private person. As an adult, although she briefly worked as a teacher and studied in Brussels with Charlotte, Emily continued to spend most of her time at home, managing the household and caring for her father and brother, Branwell, who was descending into alcoholism, having failed in his attempts to establish a literary career of his own.
Emily died in December 1848 at the age of thirty, just three months after Branwell and five months before Anne, all probably of tuberculosis. Charlotte, the only sibling to marry, died seven years later from complications during a pregnancy. It’s thought that the insanitary conditions in the village of Haworth, including a water supply contaminated by the nearby graveyard may have contributed to the poor health of the Brontë family.
As Emily left so little of her own work and correspondence behind, most of what we know of her comes from letters written by Charlotte and her friend, Ellen Nussey. Because we don’t have much insight into what Emily herself may have been thinking or feeling, a lot of this biography is based on speculation – ‘Emily probably thought’ or ‘it’s possible that Emily felt’ – as well as a general overview of the world in which Emily lived and how things she saw or experienced may have influenced her character and work. It also seems that almost as much attention is given to Charlotte and Anne, although that’s understandable as the lives and careers of the three sisters are so closely connected.
Something that comes across strongly is how exceptionally talented Emily was. Obviously, her writing is discussed in detail: her poems including the Gondal poetry; Wuthering Heights, the difficulty she had in getting it published and the way it was reviewed at the time; and the second novel she was working on at the time of her death, which has sadly never been found. However, Emily was also an accomplished pianist and a gifted artist – some of her artwork is reproduced in the book, including her wonderful drawings of her dogs. Her achievements are particularly impressive when you remember that she spent very little time at school and was mostly self-educated.
Although I can’t say that I learned a lot from this book (maybe because, as I’ve mentioned, there’s simply not that much we can learn due to the limited information available), I did enjoy reading it. It doesn’t feel too academic and is an easy book to read. For those who want to dig deeper, there are notes, references and a bibliography at the end of the book, but otherwise I think this would probably be a good introduction to the lives of Emily and her siblings.
The book takes us through Emily’s entire life, beginning with her birth in 1818, the fifth of six children. When Emily was three, her mother died, leaving the children to be raised by their aunt and their father, Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Growing up in a parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, Emily and her younger sister Anne developed their writing skills with a series of poems and stories set in the imaginary world of Gondal. Although most of this material has been lost, some of Emily’s Gondal poems still exist and Lutz uses them to explore what they can tell us about Emily as a person and how they provided the foundation that led to the writing of Wuthering Heights.
Emily’s early life was marked by various tragedies – just a few years after her mother’s death, her two eldest sisters also died of tuberculosis, having fallen ill at Cowan Bridge School (the model for Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As Patrick was reluctant to let his three surviving daughters attend school after this, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were largely educated at home. Rarely mixing with people outside the family, Emily didn’t make friends easily and was seen as a quiet, reclusive, fiercely private person. As an adult, although she briefly worked as a teacher and studied in Brussels with Charlotte, Emily continued to spend most of her time at home, managing the household and caring for her father and brother, Branwell, who was descending into alcoholism, having failed in his attempts to establish a literary career of his own.
Emily died in December 1848 at the age of thirty, just three months after Branwell and five months before Anne, all probably of tuberculosis. Charlotte, the only sibling to marry, died seven years later from complications during a pregnancy. It’s thought that the insanitary conditions in the village of Haworth, including a water supply contaminated by the nearby graveyard may have contributed to the poor health of the Brontë family.
As Emily left so little of her own work and correspondence behind, most of what we know of her comes from letters written by Charlotte and her friend, Ellen Nussey. Because we don’t have much insight into what Emily herself may have been thinking or feeling, a lot of this biography is based on speculation – ‘Emily probably thought’ or ‘it’s possible that Emily felt’ – as well as a general overview of the world in which Emily lived and how things she saw or experienced may have influenced her character and work. It also seems that almost as much attention is given to Charlotte and Anne, although that’s understandable as the lives and careers of the three sisters are so closely connected.
Something that comes across strongly is how exceptionally talented Emily was. Obviously, her writing is discussed in detail: her poems including the Gondal poetry; Wuthering Heights, the difficulty she had in getting it published and the way it was reviewed at the time; and the second novel she was working on at the time of her death, which has sadly never been found. However, Emily was also an accomplished pianist and a gifted artist – some of her artwork is reproduced in the book, including her wonderful drawings of her dogs. Her achievements are particularly impressive when you remember that she spent very little time at school and was mostly self-educated.
Although I can’t say that I learned a lot from this book (maybe because, as I’ve mentioned, there’s simply not that much we can learn due to the limited information available), I did enjoy reading it. It doesn’t feel too academic and is an easy book to read. For those who want to dig deeper, there are notes, references and a bibliography at the end of the book, but otherwise I think this would probably be a good introduction to the lives of Emily and her siblings.
May 14, 2026
When I received This Dark Night (a biography of Emily Bronte), I was wondering how my reading and reviewing it was going to play out. You see, I am one of the three people left on the planet, who has never read any books by any of the Brontes (not Emily nor Charlotte or even Anne), so I wasn't sure if I would even understand any of the references that the book would inevitably make to Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey. I needn't have worried. In some ways I have been given a gift. Because when I go to read the aforementioned books, I will know exactly what inspired them, informed them, and breathed life into them. The author, Deborah Lutz, does a magnificent job of painstakingly dissecting Emily's life (and those of her siblings), while doing so in a way that does not feel like a textbook or an entry in an encyclopedia. Instead, the reader feels like yet another sibling, walking the moors or sitting by the fireside; a passive observer taking everything in, there but not seen. To that end, what a life she had! For a woman who spent a good deal of her life sitting and writing, I was still exhausted at the end of each chapter. So many tasks, so many responsibilities, so many expectations (many of them by Emily, on herself), and so much death! It's a wonder that people's brains didn't implode from the stress of it all. Even just adjusting to the constant cold and wind and dampness, and never being quite warm enough or dry enough, or in the case of food, not quite full enough. Emily Bronte used nature in quite the same way as one today uses a smartphone, as a distraction from self and the relentless pressure to be other than what one is. Interspersed throughout the book are snippets of Emily's poems and of her novel. I thought, "Well I don't know if Emily's writing appeals to me. It seems so fraught and melodramatic." But that was her life! And her sibling's lives as well! She wrote, in many ways, what she knew. If you are a fan of the Brontes, or even if you are just interested in the time period in which they lived, I cannot recommend this book enough. A beautiful biography, beautifully rendered. ** I received this book for free from the publisher, but all views are my own.
June 30, 2026
I loved this biography of Emily Bronte. The author also told the story of her family members, Patrick, Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne. Their stories were so intertwined with each other. I also learned about the poetry they wrote, especially about the kingdoms and stories they made up. One of Emily's poems was requested by Emily Dickinson to be read at her funeral. Other admirers of her poetry were Edith Wharton, Henry James, Mary Ann Evans or George Eliot. The author showed how the environment around Haworth was such an influence on Wuthering Heights. Great and informative book!!
July 5, 2026
A brilliant biography of an equally brilliant writer. “This Dark Night” is well-written and well-researched, expertly bringing Emily Brontë, the England that shaped her, and the moors she so loved to life. You really get a feeling for who she was as a person and how her writing developed (as well as deliberations on how it might have further developed, had she lived longer). Also expertly interweaved are interesting analyses of Brontë’s poetry, examined from both a literary and new-historicist point of view that I appreciated.
May 28, 2026
A comprehensive account of the Brontë sisters, showcasing Emily. Much of this biography detailed Emily's determination to stand out as woman, which was evident in writing her classic novel WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
May 21, 2026
I have been so incredibly excited for this for MONTHS, so I was thrilled to receive a gifted copy from the publisher!
I immediately read it, and it was such a fascinating read! While Emily is obviously the main focus, the author does a great job of fleshing out all of the Brontë siblings. Emily’s life was truly so dramatic, and I found myself completely swept up in her life’s story. I just wish we knew more!
Deborah Lutz wrote this in a completely bingeable way. It never felt too stuffy or pretentious, but I also got a lot out of it. I think this is one that will stick with me for a long time! It’s unfortunate that so much information about Emily has been lost to time, because I genuinely could’ve read a much longer book by Lutz.
Thank you again to W.W. Norton for the #gifted copy!!
I immediately read it, and it was such a fascinating read! While Emily is obviously the main focus, the author does a great job of fleshing out all of the Brontë siblings. Emily’s life was truly so dramatic, and I found myself completely swept up in her life’s story. I just wish we knew more!
Deborah Lutz wrote this in a completely bingeable way. It never felt too stuffy or pretentious, but I also got a lot out of it. I think this is one that will stick with me for a long time! It’s unfortunate that so much information about Emily has been lost to time, because I genuinely could’ve read a much longer book by Lutz.
Thank you again to W.W. Norton for the #gifted copy!!
May 17, 2026
Excellent—this is just the kind of creative and engaging biography that I wished existed for Charlotte. I love how the author recreates Emily’s world, and the insight into her incredible poetry gives context to Wuthering Heights that I’ve never had before. I’ve always wondered how Emily wrote such a crazy novel, and this biography presents some solid ideas about how she might have done it—she was a genius. I think I need to deep dive into her poetry now…
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Thank you to Norton for providing me with an ARC of this release.
Since freshman year of high school, I've had a fascination with Wuthering Heights: memorizing and reciting passages, watching and endlessly critiquing film adaptations of it, reading literary criticism about it, fuming over what I perceive as misinterpretations of the text... yet somehow, I hadn't had an equivalent fixation with its author. I knew she was considered the "weirdest" of the Brontë sisters, and thus felt her to be a kindred spirit, but I never delved into biographical details.
Now, when I came across this release, I felt it was finally time to get deeper into my favorite book of all time, a book I reread at least once every year. What the book does best is situate all Brontë sisters within the context of the time period, in all its social and historical circumstances; there are times when the reader feels catapulted into the past, with its rich sensory details. The moors come to life, and make Wuthering Heights's setting feel even more organic and real--and besides that, Brussels and York, and other destinations that Emily explored with her sisters.
On the other hand, at times the speculative tone can feel intrusive or patronizing; the author frequently poses questions that the reader could ponder themselves, without her prompting or suggestion. It's written with the short attention span in mind, too, an issue that plagues much of modern media, with constant reminders of facts stated not more than a few pages before, like one of Emily's nicknames and who people such as Anne Lister were, or simply repetitive sentence structures.
Because of that, some aspects of Emily's identity weren't explored fully. One suggestion the author makes is both Charlotte's and Emily's queer proclivities, though the former's is only briefly alluded to; what might have been interesting is how they could have impacted Charlotte's later disavowal and censure/censorship of Emily's work after her death in the wake of Charlotte's growing literary success.
One of Emily's features I hadn't expected was how she literally kept house, in terms of finances and housework. The former is especially appreciated because the way that Emily is described by critics, her family, friends, and acquaintances, she can often be cast in a patronizing, even infantilizing light, surely due to her introversion and lack of regard for social conventions. The author maintains Emily's independence and agency throughout the biography, giving her full integrity, and awareness of her craft, besides.
Little details like her sense of humor, her love of doodling in her books, her preference for her own orthography... ultimately, her zeal and love of life and nature, and her observant personality, all shine through. The material and technical aspects of her craft also give more weight to the themes of her poetry and work in general; in modern times, the tactile aspect of writing is much neglected, in favor of convenience, but the author brings attention to the sisters' rather avant-garde ways of writing, using any material they could salvage or make a statement into, from fabric patterns to napkins. The Brontë family simply lived and breathed words and stories.
One thing that was puzzling, however, was the author's inconsistent attitude regarding the tension between femininity and masculinity, and how each manifested in the sisters. In one chapter, Charlotte's assumption of male alter egos in their worldbuilding is ambivalently compared to Anne's and Emily's embrace of female characters and femininity itself; then, Charlotte is described as being preoccupied with social expectations of women and even being "pretty". On a related note, Charlotte's and Emily's fascination with sadomasochistic and erotic themes is approached cautiously or apologetically, as if anticipating these to be contentious territory. It's ironic considering that Wuthering Heights was initially received as too "brutish"; Emily's more violent and even abusive leanings are not so much glossed over as not dwelled on too long, but this is the case for other details in the work as a whole; it may have benefited from more analysis in addition to biographical content, but perhaps that was beyond the intended scope of the book.
This Dark Night gave me a new orientation toward reading; contextualizing a work by learning and thinking about the author's life and the times they lived in makes reading that work much more immersive and fascinating. I'd love to have a look at the sources myself. I'm also eager to reread Emily's poetry now that I have more knowledge of its background; Gondal is a wide, intriguing world, even moreso with these specific details.
Since freshman year of high school, I've had a fascination with Wuthering Heights: memorizing and reciting passages, watching and endlessly critiquing film adaptations of it, reading literary criticism about it, fuming over what I perceive as misinterpretations of the text... yet somehow, I hadn't had an equivalent fixation with its author. I knew she was considered the "weirdest" of the Brontë sisters, and thus felt her to be a kindred spirit, but I never delved into biographical details.
Now, when I came across this release, I felt it was finally time to get deeper into my favorite book of all time, a book I reread at least once every year. What the book does best is situate all Brontë sisters within the context of the time period, in all its social and historical circumstances; there are times when the reader feels catapulted into the past, with its rich sensory details. The moors come to life, and make Wuthering Heights's setting feel even more organic and real--and besides that, Brussels and York, and other destinations that Emily explored with her sisters.
On the other hand, at times the speculative tone can feel intrusive or patronizing; the author frequently poses questions that the reader could ponder themselves, without her prompting or suggestion. It's written with the short attention span in mind, too, an issue that plagues much of modern media, with constant reminders of facts stated not more than a few pages before, like one of Emily's nicknames and who people such as Anne Lister were, or simply repetitive sentence structures.
Because of that, some aspects of Emily's identity weren't explored fully. One suggestion the author makes is both Charlotte's and Emily's queer proclivities, though the former's is only briefly alluded to; what might have been interesting is how they could have impacted Charlotte's later disavowal and censure/censorship of Emily's work after her death in the wake of Charlotte's growing literary success.
One of Emily's features I hadn't expected was how she literally kept house, in terms of finances and housework. The former is especially appreciated because the way that Emily is described by critics, her family, friends, and acquaintances, she can often be cast in a patronizing, even infantilizing light, surely due to her introversion and lack of regard for social conventions. The author maintains Emily's independence and agency throughout the biography, giving her full integrity, and awareness of her craft, besides.
Little details like her sense of humor, her love of doodling in her books, her preference for her own orthography... ultimately, her zeal and love of life and nature, and her observant personality, all shine through. The material and technical aspects of her craft also give more weight to the themes of her poetry and work in general; in modern times, the tactile aspect of writing is much neglected, in favor of convenience, but the author brings attention to the sisters' rather avant-garde ways of writing, using any material they could salvage or make a statement into, from fabric patterns to napkins. The Brontë family simply lived and breathed words and stories.
One thing that was puzzling, however, was the author's inconsistent attitude regarding the tension between femininity and masculinity, and how each manifested in the sisters. In one chapter, Charlotte's assumption of male alter egos in their worldbuilding is ambivalently compared to Anne's and Emily's embrace of female characters and femininity itself; then, Charlotte is described as being preoccupied with social expectations of women and even being "pretty". On a related note, Charlotte's and Emily's fascination with sadomasochistic and erotic themes is approached cautiously or apologetically, as if anticipating these to be contentious territory. It's ironic considering that Wuthering Heights was initially received as too "brutish"; Emily's more violent and even abusive leanings are not so much glossed over as not dwelled on too long, but this is the case for other details in the work as a whole; it may have benefited from more analysis in addition to biographical content, but perhaps that was beyond the intended scope of the book.
This Dark Night gave me a new orientation toward reading; contextualizing a work by learning and thinking about the author's life and the times they lived in makes reading that work much more immersive and fascinating. I'd love to have a look at the sources myself. I'm also eager to reread Emily's poetry now that I have more knowledge of its background; Gondal is a wide, intriguing world, even moreso with these specific details.
June 7, 2026
After reading THIS DARK NIGHT and having a lot of trouble putting it down between chapters, my biggest disappointment had nothing to do with how Deborah Lutz uniquely captured the essence of Emily Brontë. It was the tragic brevity of her literary subject’s life (1818-1848).
It wasn’t until she was 27 that Emily, the middle of the three surviving Brontë sisters (Charlotte being the oldest and Anne the youngest), began writing her only known complete novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and possibly another, the fate of which is a mystery. Up until then, her only published works were a few poems in an anthology with her sisters, all of whom had to adopt masculine pen names to even get their literary feet in a publisher’s door. It seemed that she was just on the verge of recognition when death came for her.
There is no shortage of biographies and semi-fictional accounts of the Brontë sisters. They include TV documentaries and feature-length films, such as the critically praised UK release, Emily (2022), directed by Frances O'Connor and starring Emma Mackey in the title role.
But Lutz, who has five substantial books on Victorian love, life and sexuality to her credit, has penned what deserves to be this generation’s definitive biography of a woman whose sensory and creative expression of life spanned the microscopic to the cosmic. Thanks to accessing formerly unavailable records, manuscripts and notebooks of the Brontë family, Lutz draws a much richer and more detailed portrait that not only shows Emily as a fully formed personality, but reveals each sibling in a distinct light.
What brings this unusual and ultimately tragic family into focus for 21st-century readers is Lutz’s consummate skill at weaving seemingly mundane details of everyday life into the fabric of their creative existence. Alongside the practical necessities of acquiring a Victorian education, maintaining a place in society, dealing with youthful emotions and romances, encountering illness and death, and keeping a motherless household running, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their only brother, Branwell, lived energetically in imaginary worlds they created and wrote about together --- not only during childhood, but also well into young adulthood.
Much of their imaginative fervor, especially Emily’s, was stirred by the climate and rugged landscape of the Yorkshire moors around their hometown of Haworth. Their intellectually liberal father, Patrick, was a local clergyman who largely homeschooled the children. He would outlive not only his wife, but all six of his offspring.
By drawing so deeply on the real and imaginary worlds that the Brontës simultaneously inhabited, Lutz adds meaning and relevance to Emily’s poetry, which spans her entire short life: her seeming obsession with death, graves, memorials, ghosts and the supernatural; her passion for the beauty of the night sky and contemplation of the infinite; her keen eye for the subtlest changes in the flora and fauna of the moors on which she wandered at every opportunity; and her passion for the welfare of animals. She also captures Emily’s sometimes-painful transition into adolescence and adulthood, times in which she could be both an acute observer and a vocal critic of human nature and relationships (platonic and erotic).
An especially endearing and often poignant element of THIS DARK NIGHT is the generous amount of correspondence that Lutz includes between Emily and her sisters, friends and relatives, which not only serves to highlight the intimacy of their connections, but also brings the larger 19th-century world into their quite isolated rural environment. An important part of that wider world was the innovation of affordable rail travel that arrived in Yorkshire in time for Emily and Charlotte to journey overseas to Belgium for additional schooling, an experience that deeply influenced their writing.
Lutz’s organization of the book into dated chapters provides a steady continuum in a life story with so many crisscrossing strands. While Emily Brontë is the main interest, her siblings (even the self-destroying Branwell) are never glossed over as mere accompaniment figures. Everyone has meaning and context, just as everything around and within Emily herself did.
Charlotte’s JANE EYRE may never be displaced as the most famous title produced among the Brontë siblings, but Lutz reveals just how much of all of their creativity flowed into each of their individual literary achievements. And that is only one of the many treasures that THIS DARK NIGHT has in store.
If only Emily had lived longer.
Reviewed by Pauline Finch
It wasn’t until she was 27 that Emily, the middle of the three surviving Brontë sisters (Charlotte being the oldest and Anne the youngest), began writing her only known complete novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and possibly another, the fate of which is a mystery. Up until then, her only published works were a few poems in an anthology with her sisters, all of whom had to adopt masculine pen names to even get their literary feet in a publisher’s door. It seemed that she was just on the verge of recognition when death came for her.
There is no shortage of biographies and semi-fictional accounts of the Brontë sisters. They include TV documentaries and feature-length films, such as the critically praised UK release, Emily (2022), directed by Frances O'Connor and starring Emma Mackey in the title role.
But Lutz, who has five substantial books on Victorian love, life and sexuality to her credit, has penned what deserves to be this generation’s definitive biography of a woman whose sensory and creative expression of life spanned the microscopic to the cosmic. Thanks to accessing formerly unavailable records, manuscripts and notebooks of the Brontë family, Lutz draws a much richer and more detailed portrait that not only shows Emily as a fully formed personality, but reveals each sibling in a distinct light.
What brings this unusual and ultimately tragic family into focus for 21st-century readers is Lutz’s consummate skill at weaving seemingly mundane details of everyday life into the fabric of their creative existence. Alongside the practical necessities of acquiring a Victorian education, maintaining a place in society, dealing with youthful emotions and romances, encountering illness and death, and keeping a motherless household running, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their only brother, Branwell, lived energetically in imaginary worlds they created and wrote about together --- not only during childhood, but also well into young adulthood.
Much of their imaginative fervor, especially Emily’s, was stirred by the climate and rugged landscape of the Yorkshire moors around their hometown of Haworth. Their intellectually liberal father, Patrick, was a local clergyman who largely homeschooled the children. He would outlive not only his wife, but all six of his offspring.
By drawing so deeply on the real and imaginary worlds that the Brontës simultaneously inhabited, Lutz adds meaning and relevance to Emily’s poetry, which spans her entire short life: her seeming obsession with death, graves, memorials, ghosts and the supernatural; her passion for the beauty of the night sky and contemplation of the infinite; her keen eye for the subtlest changes in the flora and fauna of the moors on which she wandered at every opportunity; and her passion for the welfare of animals. She also captures Emily’s sometimes-painful transition into adolescence and adulthood, times in which she could be both an acute observer and a vocal critic of human nature and relationships (platonic and erotic).
An especially endearing and often poignant element of THIS DARK NIGHT is the generous amount of correspondence that Lutz includes between Emily and her sisters, friends and relatives, which not only serves to highlight the intimacy of their connections, but also brings the larger 19th-century world into their quite isolated rural environment. An important part of that wider world was the innovation of affordable rail travel that arrived in Yorkshire in time for Emily and Charlotte to journey overseas to Belgium for additional schooling, an experience that deeply influenced their writing.
Lutz’s organization of the book into dated chapters provides a steady continuum in a life story with so many crisscrossing strands. While Emily Brontë is the main interest, her siblings (even the self-destroying Branwell) are never glossed over as mere accompaniment figures. Everyone has meaning and context, just as everything around and within Emily herself did.
Charlotte’s JANE EYRE may never be displaced as the most famous title produced among the Brontë siblings, but Lutz reveals just how much of all of their creativity flowed into each of their individual literary achievements. And that is only one of the many treasures that THIS DARK NIGHT has in store.
If only Emily had lived longer.
Reviewed by Pauline Finch
July 1, 2026
Having just read, and been entirely enraptured by, Wuthering Heights last fall, I was excited to read about this book in The New York Times. We devoted a fair portion of my fall class on the Brontës to the women themselves, not merely their literature, and Emily piqued my interest the most. I was all the more excited when I picked up a copy of this biography in a London bookshop, and read it on my train ride north to the Brontë parsonage and surrounding moors.
There is much to commend in Lutz’s new biography. It is engaging, poetic, and alive. I particularly appreciated her attention to Haworth’s weather—plumbed from local papers and almanacs—which would’ve been important to the nature-loving Emily’s daily life.
Lutz writes that, within the Lockwood-Nelly framing device, the story of Heathcliff and Catherine is “a glinting treasure the reader can never quite touch, so buried is it underneath the perspectives and prejudices” of others. To some extent, this proves true of Emily also. We have so little of her papers and correspondence, that it sometimes felt more like I was reading a biography of Charlotte with an addendum that ‘this could probably apply to Emily too.’ Lutz is often forced to speculate—“maybe,” “perhaps,” “could,” “did,” are all favorites—and sometimes does so with a little too much confidence—as when she, not infrequently, tries a “surely,” “no doubt,” or “must have.”
Lutz writes in her preface that although “twentieth- and twenty-first century ideas and identities don’t import easily into the past… with this biography I work to place Emily Brontë in the history of more modern ways of thinking.”
In many cases, this post-modern approach is a success. Lutz gives a detailed explanation of Victorian women’s menstrual care, for example, and the regularity of sexual harassment they would have faced. Likewise, she draws convincing connections between Emily’s exposure to the Yorkshire labor movement and some of her Gondal works.
In other cases, namely Lutz’s inexplicable fixation on abortion, it proves an awkward imposition. She suggests, for example, that “committing infanticide” is “a Gondal equivalent of abortion”—a patently false comparison. Exposure and abortion, as Emily would well have known, are distinct practices that have existed alongside each other throughout history. What the progressive-minded Lutz even means to suggest with this comparison is beyond me, for it almost reads like an indictment of abortion. Lutz also idly speculates over whether or not “an abortion would have prevented [Catherine’s] breakdown” in Wuthering Heights—a question that is entirely absent from the text, its world, and Emily’s preserved thoughts, rendering it almost entirely meaningless.
Perhaps the most egregious example is when Lutz takes a paragraph to imply that Charlotte Brontë ought to have had an abortion since “a termination of Charlotte’s pregnancy would have saved her life.” This despite the fact that Charlotte’s good friend Elizabeth Gaskell herself attested that, had she tried to persuade Charlotte to abort her pregnancy, Charlotte would have been reluctant to do so and, in fact, angered by the suggestion. Lutz’s implication, then, feels intrusive and like more of an imposition on Charlotte’s freedom of choice than anything else.
As I said at the beginning, I was privileged to be able to read this on my journey to the Brontës’ home and moors. I can thus confirm that Lutz speaks true, at the end of her biography, when she writes that “for readers more than a hundred years later, it’s Emily's writing and persona through which they see—and value and understand—this landscape… Ramblers setting out from Haworth discover a kinship to her.”
There is much to commend in Lutz’s new biography. It is engaging, poetic, and alive. I particularly appreciated her attention to Haworth’s weather—plumbed from local papers and almanacs—which would’ve been important to the nature-loving Emily’s daily life.
Lutz writes that, within the Lockwood-Nelly framing device, the story of Heathcliff and Catherine is “a glinting treasure the reader can never quite touch, so buried is it underneath the perspectives and prejudices” of others. To some extent, this proves true of Emily also. We have so little of her papers and correspondence, that it sometimes felt more like I was reading a biography of Charlotte with an addendum that ‘this could probably apply to Emily too.’ Lutz is often forced to speculate—“maybe,” “perhaps,” “could,” “did,” are all favorites—and sometimes does so with a little too much confidence—as when she, not infrequently, tries a “surely,” “no doubt,” or “must have.”
Lutz writes in her preface that although “twentieth- and twenty-first century ideas and identities don’t import easily into the past… with this biography I work to place Emily Brontë in the history of more modern ways of thinking.”
In many cases, this post-modern approach is a success. Lutz gives a detailed explanation of Victorian women’s menstrual care, for example, and the regularity of sexual harassment they would have faced. Likewise, she draws convincing connections between Emily’s exposure to the Yorkshire labor movement and some of her Gondal works.
In other cases, namely Lutz’s inexplicable fixation on abortion, it proves an awkward imposition. She suggests, for example, that “committing infanticide” is “a Gondal equivalent of abortion”—a patently false comparison. Exposure and abortion, as Emily would well have known, are distinct practices that have existed alongside each other throughout history. What the progressive-minded Lutz even means to suggest with this comparison is beyond me, for it almost reads like an indictment of abortion. Lutz also idly speculates over whether or not “an abortion would have prevented [Catherine’s] breakdown” in Wuthering Heights—a question that is entirely absent from the text, its world, and Emily’s preserved thoughts, rendering it almost entirely meaningless.
Perhaps the most egregious example is when Lutz takes a paragraph to imply that Charlotte Brontë ought to have had an abortion since “a termination of Charlotte’s pregnancy would have saved her life.” This despite the fact that Charlotte’s good friend Elizabeth Gaskell herself attested that, had she tried to persuade Charlotte to abort her pregnancy, Charlotte would have been reluctant to do so and, in fact, angered by the suggestion. Lutz’s implication, then, feels intrusive and like more of an imposition on Charlotte’s freedom of choice than anything else.
As I said at the beginning, I was privileged to be able to read this on my journey to the Brontës’ home and moors. I can thus confirm that Lutz speaks true, at the end of her biography, when she writes that “for readers more than a hundred years later, it’s Emily's writing and persona through which they see—and value and understand—this landscape… Ramblers setting out from Haworth discover a kinship to her.”
July 5, 2026
While Emily isn't my favorite of the Brontë sisters, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn more about the family that produced one of my absolute favorite novels of all time.
A meticulously researched account of the lives of the Brontës.
Deborah Lutz is an absolute fiend for this family. I have no idea how long it must have taken her to hunt down the type of intricate information she writes about. Scraps of paper, letters not even to and from each other, but of others speaking about them in some cases, the exact timeframe in which certain drafts and poems were written and the gift of intricate context of the times and their lives.
Occasionally this context it inferred or assumed by the author, but considering the type of meticulous research she's done, I think it's safe to trust her opinions there. It focused on Emily, as promised, but I daresay the book contains full accounts of both sisters, and a fair amount of their brother, as well.
The Brontë children were very singular. Growing up on the English moors, they lived luxuriously in their imaginations, making up characters and fantasy societies that they wrote extensively about, even lingering into their adulthood. If there was one thing that could be said to have bonded these sisters, it is their common practice of writing. They wrote, and they wrote, and they wrote, unapologetically. They wrote these little fictions, they wrote poetry, they wrote letters...they wrote. It is no wonder that is how they are remembered.
But they also struggled. The early death of their mother was formative, especially for Emily, who grew up with a strange obsession about death and the macabre that almost certainly stemmed from thoughts about her own mother's early demise. Their brother, Branwell, was troubled. Though he once played along with them in their little games, he grew up to be unsettled, fantastical in his affairs, and slowly degenerated.
The entire generation of Brontës were doomed to tragically short lives, but through these pages we are offered a glimpse into what kind of circumstances bred the minds that generated some of the best works of literature of their time.
You cannot write a book like this without a deep respect and fascination for its characters, and I felt that on every page of this volume. A work like this is an incredible accomplishment, and I would recommend it for anyone who has read and loved a Brontë novel.
{(Don't tell, but my favorite is Jane Eyre)}
Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
A meticulously researched account of the lives of the Brontës.
Deborah Lutz is an absolute fiend for this family. I have no idea how long it must have taken her to hunt down the type of intricate information she writes about. Scraps of paper, letters not even to and from each other, but of others speaking about them in some cases, the exact timeframe in which certain drafts and poems were written and the gift of intricate context of the times and their lives.
Occasionally this context it inferred or assumed by the author, but considering the type of meticulous research she's done, I think it's safe to trust her opinions there. It focused on Emily, as promised, but I daresay the book contains full accounts of both sisters, and a fair amount of their brother, as well.
The Brontë children were very singular. Growing up on the English moors, they lived luxuriously in their imaginations, making up characters and fantasy societies that they wrote extensively about, even lingering into their adulthood. If there was one thing that could be said to have bonded these sisters, it is their common practice of writing. They wrote, and they wrote, and they wrote, unapologetically. They wrote these little fictions, they wrote poetry, they wrote letters...they wrote. It is no wonder that is how they are remembered.
But they also struggled. The early death of their mother was formative, especially for Emily, who grew up with a strange obsession about death and the macabre that almost certainly stemmed from thoughts about her own mother's early demise. Their brother, Branwell, was troubled. Though he once played along with them in their little games, he grew up to be unsettled, fantastical in his affairs, and slowly degenerated.
The entire generation of Brontës were doomed to tragically short lives, but through these pages we are offered a glimpse into what kind of circumstances bred the minds that generated some of the best works of literature of their time.
You cannot write a book like this without a deep respect and fascination for its characters, and I felt that on every page of this volume. A work like this is an incredible accomplishment, and I would recommend it for anyone who has read and loved a Brontë novel.
{(Don't tell, but my favorite is Jane Eyre)}
Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
June 5, 2026
Reading This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life felt less like working through a traditional biography and more like spending time in the company of someone who has fascinated readers for generations. Deborah Lutz approaches Emily Brontë with patience and curiosity, resisting the urge to turn her into either a literary saint or an unsolvable mystery. The result is a portrait that feels thoughtful, balanced, and surprisingly intimate.
One of the challenges of writing about Emily Brontë is the scarcity of reliable material. Compared with many celebrated authors, she left behind remarkably little personal documentation. Rather than treating these gaps as obstacles, Lutz uses them as an opportunity to explore the world Emily inhabited—her family, her surroundings, her reading, and the experiences that shaped her imagination. The biography never claims to know more than the evidence allows, and that restraint gives it considerable credibility.
The book is at its strongest when describing Haworth and the Yorkshire moors. Lutz vividly captures the landscape that influenced Emily’s writing and worldview. For readers familiar with Wuthering Heights, these sections provide valuable context, revealing how deeply the natural environment was woven into her creative life. The moors are not simply scenery; they become an essential part of understanding Emily herself.
What I appreciated most was the author's refusal to reduce Brontë to her most famous novel. While Wuthering Heights naturally occupies an important place in the narrative, Lutz also pays careful attention to Emily’s poetry, her relationships with her siblings, and her fiercely independent nature. The biography presents her as a complex individual rather than a collection of literary myths.
Lutz writes with clarity and warmth, making the book accessible to both devoted Brontë enthusiasts and readers approaching Emily’s life for the first time. The pace is measured, and those looking for dramatic revelations may find it quieter than expected. Yet its strength lies precisely in that thoughtful approach. Instead of sensational discoveries, the book offers insight, atmosphere, and a deeper appreciation of a remarkable writer.
By the final pages, I felt I understood Emily Brontë better—not because every question had been answered, but because Lutz had illuminated the world that shaped her. This Dark Night is an absorbing and rewarding biography that honors its subject without diminishing her mystery, and for that reason it lingers in the mind long after it is finished.
One of the challenges of writing about Emily Brontë is the scarcity of reliable material. Compared with many celebrated authors, she left behind remarkably little personal documentation. Rather than treating these gaps as obstacles, Lutz uses them as an opportunity to explore the world Emily inhabited—her family, her surroundings, her reading, and the experiences that shaped her imagination. The biography never claims to know more than the evidence allows, and that restraint gives it considerable credibility.
The book is at its strongest when describing Haworth and the Yorkshire moors. Lutz vividly captures the landscape that influenced Emily’s writing and worldview. For readers familiar with Wuthering Heights, these sections provide valuable context, revealing how deeply the natural environment was woven into her creative life. The moors are not simply scenery; they become an essential part of understanding Emily herself.
What I appreciated most was the author's refusal to reduce Brontë to her most famous novel. While Wuthering Heights naturally occupies an important place in the narrative, Lutz also pays careful attention to Emily’s poetry, her relationships with her siblings, and her fiercely independent nature. The biography presents her as a complex individual rather than a collection of literary myths.
Lutz writes with clarity and warmth, making the book accessible to both devoted Brontë enthusiasts and readers approaching Emily’s life for the first time. The pace is measured, and those looking for dramatic revelations may find it quieter than expected. Yet its strength lies precisely in that thoughtful approach. Instead of sensational discoveries, the book offers insight, atmosphere, and a deeper appreciation of a remarkable writer.
By the final pages, I felt I understood Emily Brontë better—not because every question had been answered, but because Lutz had illuminated the world that shaped her. This Dark Night is an absorbing and rewarding biography that honors its subject without diminishing her mystery, and for that reason it lingers in the mind long after it is finished.
June 13, 2026
I’ve had an obsession with the Bronte sisters ever since Jane Eyre was assigned reading in the tenth grade. As I grew older, I preferred the works of Emily and Anne more and Emily Bronte is the focus of this biography. The brilliant author of Wuthering Heights and a gifted poet, not much is known about her as most of her writings and correspondence has been lost. The little that is known has been gleaned through her sister’s and friend’s letters. Still, author and Bronte scholar, Deborah Lutz, has managed, through extensive research, to put together a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the most mysterious Bronte.
Wuthering Heights is a dark and gloomy story of passion and obsession. Even called grotesque by one of its early reviewers, it didn’t find success until 100 years later. But who created this masterpiece? Lutz helps us find her through the background of her family of creative geniuses and we learn how one of the most important voices in literature was formed on the desolate Yorkshire moors. Here Emily and Anne created their fantasy stories about the imaginary world of Gondal which would heavily influence Emily’s future writing. Her life is put into context with what was happening around her, both in her household and abroad. And through snippets of her poetry, a singular character comes into focus- independent, freethinking, sometimes to the point of being obtuse, creative and above all, completely herself unencumbered by the opinions of others.
It has been a while since I read a biography and I have missed them. I was glued to the pages as Lutz brought Emily to life. She often inferred what Bronte might have been thinking or feeling, which I didn’t mind. When you have a subject about which little is known sometimes assumptions must be made, although they were never presented as fact. I could not put this book down- I was glued to the pages and only set it aside for the occasional google to find an image of a particular place or person. One of my favorite books I’ve read so far this year. Thank you to @w.w.norton for this gifted book.
Wuthering Heights is a dark and gloomy story of passion and obsession. Even called grotesque by one of its early reviewers, it didn’t find success until 100 years later. But who created this masterpiece? Lutz helps us find her through the background of her family of creative geniuses and we learn how one of the most important voices in literature was formed on the desolate Yorkshire moors. Here Emily and Anne created their fantasy stories about the imaginary world of Gondal which would heavily influence Emily’s future writing. Her life is put into context with what was happening around her, both in her household and abroad. And through snippets of her poetry, a singular character comes into focus- independent, freethinking, sometimes to the point of being obtuse, creative and above all, completely herself unencumbered by the opinions of others.
It has been a while since I read a biography and I have missed them. I was glued to the pages as Lutz brought Emily to life. She often inferred what Bronte might have been thinking or feeling, which I didn’t mind. When you have a subject about which little is known sometimes assumptions must be made, although they were never presented as fact. I could not put this book down- I was glued to the pages and only set it aside for the occasional google to find an image of a particular place or person. One of my favorite books I’ve read so far this year. Thank you to @w.w.norton for this gifted book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I'll admit I got a little misty towards the end of this portrait of Emily Bronte's life and family, as she neared death and eventually succumbed to her illness, leaving behind bereft sisters, one of which died 5 months later. Poor Charlotte.
The Brontes continue to mesmerize me (and obviously others) I think mostly for their March-like upbringing. One can read a book like Middlemarch or Pride & Prejudice and have a strong vision of what life was for women of the Victorian era. But then you read of the Brontes, free to read, write, learn and roam the moors without inhibition. A protofeminist upbringing similar to that of the March sisters.
Emily in particular is so fascinating because she was the middle sister, the goth sister, the black sheep. Tall, thin, lanky, and seemingly obsessed with death and the afterlife, most likely because of her mother's early death. Many try to label her as autistic, anorexic/bulimic, antisocial, weird. And with what I'm about to say it's important to understand much of Emily is unknown because most of her writings were lost or burned, but at many times I felt like I was reading a portrait of myself. A kindred spirit. Quiet and shy yet commanding and strong-willed, a deep adoration for animals, walking and observing the natural world, a fascination with death and the afterlife, and a strong desire to stay home with her loved ones, belongings, and pets.
This Dark Night provides as thorough of a fleshed out vision of Emily as I can imagine is possible. The writing itself felt "info-dumpy" at times, but I appreciated the in-depth annotations that indicate where Lutz got her information. I've already what I can from my library and Link+ to check out myself. The addition of color photos was lovely. I feel like I learned a lot about my favorite Bronte, and feel quite fascinated by the details revealed about Charlotte - many of which has caused me to like her less! Was that intentional, or is it just the facts? I don't know!!! To be continued.
The Brontes continue to mesmerize me (and obviously others) I think mostly for their March-like upbringing. One can read a book like Middlemarch or Pride & Prejudice and have a strong vision of what life was for women of the Victorian era. But then you read of the Brontes, free to read, write, learn and roam the moors without inhibition. A protofeminist upbringing similar to that of the March sisters.
Emily in particular is so fascinating because she was the middle sister, the goth sister, the black sheep. Tall, thin, lanky, and seemingly obsessed with death and the afterlife, most likely because of her mother's early death. Many try to label her as autistic, anorexic/bulimic, antisocial, weird. And with what I'm about to say it's important to understand much of Emily is unknown because most of her writings were lost or burned, but at many times I felt like I was reading a portrait of myself. A kindred spirit. Quiet and shy yet commanding and strong-willed, a deep adoration for animals, walking and observing the natural world, a fascination with death and the afterlife, and a strong desire to stay home with her loved ones, belongings, and pets.
This Dark Night provides as thorough of a fleshed out vision of Emily as I can imagine is possible. The writing itself felt "info-dumpy" at times, but I appreciated the in-depth annotations that indicate where Lutz got her information. I've already what I can from my library and Link+ to check out myself. The addition of color photos was lovely. I feel like I learned a lot about my favorite Bronte, and feel quite fascinated by the details revealed about Charlotte - many of which has caused me to like her less! Was that intentional, or is it just the facts? I don't know!!! To be continued.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Coarse, strange, disagreeable went the general consensus–too gloomy, savage, and eccentric. from This Dark Night
“It’s as if her readers hadn’t caught up with her yet,” Deborah Lutz writes, “It would take close to a hundred years for that to happen.”
Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights grew out of the Bronte siblings’ years of story spinning. The isolated children were each other’s best friends and playmates and spent years creating a make believe world. Even into adulthood, Emily lived in two worlds–the everyday filled with household chores, and the imagined world of Gondor. She wrote poems inspired by the characters and incidents in that make believe place.
Emily may have had only one year of formal schooling, but she was brilliant, and she was brave and fearless. She was drawn to nature and animals, inspired by both beauty and the power of destruction.
All of those years of world-building had finally come to fruition. from This Dark Night
Her novel of passion, obsession, and violence can still shock today.
The child Heathcliff, “dark almost as if it came from the devil”, clearly foreign, referred to as an ‘it’. His adopted father’s favorite, upon the father’s death he is relegated to low servanthood by the heir. Heathcliff and Cathy share a wildness, but Cathy is seduced into polite society and marriage to another. Heathcliff’s spurned love and rejection fuels his vengeance and retribution.
After Emily’s death, the sole surviving sibling Charlotte edited and revised Wuthering Heights, twisting it into conformity. She also changed Emily’s poems, undercutting “their doubting nature.”
Emily’s life was short, and the bulk of her work was related to the Gondor world. All of the Bronte sisters died too young, and we regret the books they may have written. Charlotte was the most popular selling of them all, but after reading this biography, it is Emily who I regret the most.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
“It’s as if her readers hadn’t caught up with her yet,” Deborah Lutz writes, “It would take close to a hundred years for that to happen.”
Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights grew out of the Bronte siblings’ years of story spinning. The isolated children were each other’s best friends and playmates and spent years creating a make believe world. Even into adulthood, Emily lived in two worlds–the everyday filled with household chores, and the imagined world of Gondor. She wrote poems inspired by the characters and incidents in that make believe place.
Emily may have had only one year of formal schooling, but she was brilliant, and she was brave and fearless. She was drawn to nature and animals, inspired by both beauty and the power of destruction.
All of those years of world-building had finally come to fruition. from This Dark Night
Her novel of passion, obsession, and violence can still shock today.
The child Heathcliff, “dark almost as if it came from the devil”, clearly foreign, referred to as an ‘it’. His adopted father’s favorite, upon the father’s death he is relegated to low servanthood by the heir. Heathcliff and Cathy share a wildness, but Cathy is seduced into polite society and marriage to another. Heathcliff’s spurned love and rejection fuels his vengeance and retribution.
After Emily’s death, the sole surviving sibling Charlotte edited and revised Wuthering Heights, twisting it into conformity. She also changed Emily’s poems, undercutting “their doubting nature.”
Emily’s life was short, and the bulk of her work was related to the Gondor world. All of the Bronte sisters died too young, and we regret the books they may have written. Charlotte was the most popular selling of them all, but after reading this biography, it is Emily who I regret the most.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
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