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Emily Brontë

, Writer / Poet
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  • Born: 30 July 1818
  • Birthplace: Yorkshire, England
  • Died: 19 December 1848 (tuberculosis)
  • Best Known As: The author of Wuthering Heights

Brontë died at age 30, leaving the now-legendary Wuthering Heights as her only novel. Little is known about Emily's life; she was a member of the famed Brontë clan, which included her sisters Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre) and Anne (author of Agnes Grey). The three published their poetry in the 1846 book Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. (The names were pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily and Anne.) Emily began writing Wuthering Heights in 1845 and it was published late in 1847. The book's troubled lovers, Catherine Earnshaw and the stormy Heathcliff, have become famous figures in literature.

Wuthering Heights has been the basis of nearly a dozen feature films and TV movies. The most famous is the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven. A 1992 edition starred Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche as Catherine... As children the precocious Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell wrote long, intricately detailed stories about imaginary kingdoms they called Gondal and Angria.

 
 
Biography: Emily Brontë

The English novelist Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote only one novel, "Wuthering Heights." A unique achievement in its time, this work dramatizes a vision of life controlled by elemental forces which transcend conventional categories of good and evil.

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton on Aug. 20, 1818, the daughter of an Anglican minister. She grew up in Haworth in the bleak West Riding of Yorkshire. Except for an unhappy year at a charity school (described by her sister Charlotte as the Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre), her education was directed at home by her father, who let his children read freely and treated them as intellectual equals. The early death of their mother and two older sisters drove the remaining children into an intense and private intimacy.

Living in an isolated village, separated socially and intellectually from the local people, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) and their brother Branwell gave themselves wholly to fantasy worlds, which they chronicled in poems and tales and in "magazines" written in miniature script on tiny pieces of paper. As the children matured, their personalities diverged. She and Anne created the realm of Gondal. Located somewhere in the north, it was, like the West Riding, a land of wild moors. Unlike Charlotte and Branwell's emotional dreamworld Angria, Gondal's psychological and moral laws reflected those of the real world. But this did not mean that she found it any easier than her sister to submit herself to the confined life of a governess or schoolmistress to which she seemed inevitably bound. When at the age of 17 she attempted formal schooling for the second time, she broke down after 3 months, and a position as a teacher the following year proved equally insupportable despite a sincere struggle. In 1842 she accompanied Charlotte to Brussels for a year at school. During this time she impressed the master as having the finer, more powerful mind of the two.

The isolation of Haworth meant for Brontë not frustration as for her sister, but the freedom of the open moors. Here she experienced the world in terms of elemental forces outside of conventional categories of good and evil. Her vision was essentially mystical, rooted in the experience of a supernatural power, which she expressed in poems such as "To Imagination," "The Prisoner," "The Visionary," "The Old Stoic," and "No Coward Soul."

Brontë's first publication consisted of poems contributed under the pseudonym Ellis Bell to a volume of verses (1846) in which she collaborated with Anne and Charlotte. These remained unnoticed, and Wuthering Heights (1847) was unfavorably received. Set in the moors, it is the story of the effect of a foundling named Heathcliff on two neighboring families. Loving and hating with elemental intensity, he impinges on the conventions of civilization with demonic power.

Brontë died of consumption on Dec. 19, 1848. Refusing all medical attention, she struggled to perform her household tasks until the end.

Further Reading

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (2 vols., 1857), is a basic source. Charles W. Simpson, Emily Brontë (1929), is reliable and incorporates subsequently revealed material. See also Muriel Spark and Derek Stanford, Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work (1953).

 
Spotlight: Emily Brontë

From our Archives: Today's Highlights, July 30, 2005

Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights, was born on this date in 1818. Her story of the star-crossed lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff, became a classic which was made into several movie versions. Emily's older sister, Charlotte, wrote Jane Eyre, and their younger sister, Anne, wrote Agnes Grey. The three Brontës also wrote poetry, which they published under male pseudonyms. All three women died young, Emily and Anne of tuberculosis, and Charlotte of complications during her pregnancy.
 
Quotes By: Emily Bronte

Quotes:

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."

"I see heaven's glories shine and faith shines equal..."

"Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?"

"A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly."

"Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves."

"I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself."

See more famous quotes by Emily Bronte

 
Wikipedia: Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë

Portrait by her brother
Born: July 30 1818(1818--)
Flag of EnglandThornton, Yorkshire, England
Died: Flag of EnglandDecember 19 1848 (aged 30)
Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Occupation: Novelist, Poet
Influences: John Milton, Robert Burns, Walter Scott
Influenced: Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath

Emily Jane Brontë (IPA: [ˈbɹɒntɪ]; July 30, 1818December 19, 1848) was a British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, being younger than Charlotte and older than Anne. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell.

Biography

Emily was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. In childhood, after the death of their mother, the three sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell Brontë created imaginary lands (Angria, Gondal, Gaaldine, Oceania), which were featured in stories they wrote. Little of Emily's work from this period survived, except for poems spoken by characters (The Brontës' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941).

In 1842, Emily commenced work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Later, with her sister Charlotte, she attended a private school in Brussels. They later tried to open up a school at their home, but had no pupils.

It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily became Ellis Bell.

In 1847, she published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, as two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne). Its innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics. Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name.

Like her sisters, Emily's health had been weakened by the harsh local climate at home and at school. She caught a chill during the funeral of her brother in September, and, having refused all medical help, died on December 19, 1848 of tuberculosis. She was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family capsule, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.

Popular culture

Emily Brontë is popularly regarded as the epitome of the talented writer who died with a short blaze of genius, more so than either of her sisters, but allusions to her in popular works are infrequent.

In the 1967 film Week End by Jean-Luc Godard, Emily Brontë appears in a scene in which one of the main characters asks her for directions.

Kate Bush wrote a song named for and based on Emily's novel.

Further reading

  • Emily Brontë, Charles Simpson
  • In the Footsteps of the Brontës, Ellis Chadwick
  • The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith
  • Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille
  • The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller
  • Emily, Daniel Wynne.

See also

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Persondata
NAME Brontë, Emily Jane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bell, Ellis
SHORT DESCRIPTION English novelist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH July 30 1818(1818--)
PLACE OF BIRTH Thornton, Yorkshire, England
DATE OF DEATH December 19 1848
PLACE OF DEATH Haworth, Yorkshire, England

pms:Emily Brontë


 
 

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From Today's Highlights
July 30, 2005

If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.
- Emily Brontë

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