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    Taras Shevchenko

    Emily Brontë
    The only undisputed portrait of Brontë, from a group portrait by her brother Branwell, c. 1834[1]
    The only undisputed portrait of Brontë, from a group portrait by her brother Branwell, c. 1834[1]
    BornEmily Jane Brontë
    (1818-07-30)30 July 1818
    Thornton, Yorkshire, England
    Died19 December 1848(1848-12-19) (aged 30)
    Haworth, Yorkshire, England
    Resting placeSt Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth, Yorkshire
    Pen nameEllis Bell
    Occupation
    EducationCowan Bridge School
    Period1846–48
    Genre
    • Fiction
    • poetry
    Literary movementRomantic Period
    Notable worksWuthering Heights
    ParentsPatrick Brontë
    Maria Branwell
    RelativesBrontë family
    Signature

    Emily Jane Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /-teɪ/;[2] 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848)[3] was an English novelist and poet best known for her 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. She also co-authored a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

    Emily was the fifth of six Brontë siblings, four of whom survived into adulthood. Her mother died when she was three, leaving the children in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, and apart from brief intervals at school, she was mostly taught at home by her father, Patrick Brontë, who was the curate of Haworth. She was very close to her siblings, especially to her younger sister Anne, and together they wrote little books and journals depicting imaginary worlds. She is described by her sister Charlotte as very shy, but also strong-willed and nonconforming, with a keen love of nature and animals. Some biographers believe that she may have had some form of autism.

    Her work was originally published under the pen name Ellis Bell. It was not generally admired at the time, and many critics felt that the characters in Wuthering Heights were wicked and immoral. However, the novel is now considered to be a classic of English literature. Emily Brontë died in 1848, aged 30, a year after its publication.

    Early life

    The three Brontë sisters, in an 1834 painting by their brother Branwell Brontë. From left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. (Branwell used to be between Emily and Charlotte, but subsequently painted himself out.)

    Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 to merchant's daughter Maria Branwell and Irish curate Patrick Brontë. The family lived on Market Street, in Thornton, a village on the outskirts of Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Their house is now known as the Brontë Birthplace.

    Emily was the fifth of six siblings, preceded by Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Branwell. In 1820, Anne, the last Brontë child, was born. Soon after Anne's birth, the family moved 8 miles (13 km) away to the village of Haworth, in the Pennines, where Patrick Brontë took employment as perpetual curate.[4]

    Haworth

    Haworth was a small community with an unusually high early mortality rate. In 1850, Benjamin Herschel Babbage reported deeply unsanitary conditions, including contamination to the village water supply from the overcrowded graveyard nearby. This is believed to have had a serious impact on the health of Emily and her siblings.[5]

    Cowan Bridge

    A view of the village from above, with narrow tall houses in typically blackened Yorkshire stone.
    Haworth, photographed by Tim Green.

    On 15 September 1821, Maria Branwell died of cancer, leaving the three-year-old Emily and her siblings in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell.[6] Emily's three elder sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte were sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. On 25 November 1824, Emily, then nearly six, was sent to join her sisters at school.[7] The school register of the Clergy Daughters' School mentions her, saying [she] "reads very prettily, and works a little."[8]

    The children suffered abuse and privations at the school, including poor food and harsh, unsanitary conditions. When an epidemic of typhoid swept the school, Maria and Elizabeth both fell ill. In 1825, Maria, who may have been suffering from tuberculosis, was sent home, where she died. Elizabeth, too, died shortly after. At this point, the four surviving Brontë children were still all under ten years of age.[9] After this, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school.[10]

    Early influences

    The four remaining siblings were thereafter educated at home by their father and their aunt Elizabeth. Girls were not allowed access to the public library,[5] but all the children were encouraged by their father to develop their literary talents and to take an interest in politics and current affairs. Despite their lack of formal education, Emily and her siblings had access to a wide range of published material. Favourites included: Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Blackwood's Magazine.[11]The Brontë children were also tutored in drawing and painting. They were familiar with the work of Thomas Bewick and John Martin, the engravings of William Finden, and illustrations from The Literary Souvenir. 29 drawings and paintings by Emily are known to have survived, including a watercolour painting of her dog, Keeper.[12]

    The dog's head is resting on his paws.
    Watercolour painting of Keeper, dated 1838.

    In spite of his desire for his children to receive as comprehensive an education as possible, Patrick Brontë himself was cold and emotionally distant,[4][13]carrying a loaded gun at all times and imposing a number of idiosyncratic personal rules on the household, such as not allowing his children to eat meat in case it made them "soft."[14] He had retained an Irish accent, which the siblings shared as children, and this contributed to the perception that the family were outsiders, never quite fitting into the Yorkshire community.[15] Left to their own devices, the siblings were unusually close, and remained so, especially Emily and Anne, who were described by a family friend, Ellen Nussey, as being "like twins."[16]

    Juvenilia

    Emily's Gondal poems

    Inspired by a box of toy soldiers Branwell had received as a gift from his father,[17] the children began to write stories, which they set in the complex imaginary worlds of Glass Town and Angria. These stories, which became increasingly detailed, were initially populated by their soldiers as well as their real-life heroes, the Duke of Wellington and his sons, Charles and Arthur Wellesley. The siblings created tiny books for the soldiers to "read", some of which are on display at the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth,[18] and, in December 1827 they produced a novel, Glass Town. However, little of Emily's work from this period survives, except for poems spoken by characters.[19][20]

    When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a fictional island whose myths and legends were to preoccupy the two sisters throughout their lives. With the exception of their Gondal poems and Anne's lists of Gondal's characters and placenames, Emily and Anne's Gondal writings were largely not preserved. Among those that did survive are some "diary papers", written by Emily in her twenties, which describe current events in Gondal.[21] The heroes of Gondal tended to resemble the popular image of the Scottish Highlander, a sort of British version of the "noble savage".[22] The tales of Gondal also feature a queen called Augusta Geraldine Almeda, whose character may resemble that of Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights.[23] Similar themes of romanticism and noble savagery are apparent across the Brontës' juvenilia, including in Branwell's The Life of Alexander Percy, which tells the story of an all-consuming, death-defying, and ultimately self-destructive love, and which some believe may have been one of the inspirations for Wuthering Heights.[24]

    Roe Head

    At 17, Emily joined the Roe Head Girls' School, where Charlotte was a teacher. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own. However, Emily suffered from extreme homesickness, and left after only a few months, with Anne taking her place.[25][a] Later, Charlotte was to describe Emily's resistance to the routine and discipline of the school, stating that she feared Emily would have died if she had not been allowed home.[26]

    Adulthood

    Constantin Heger, teacher of Charlotte and Emily during their stay in Brussels, on a daguerreotype dated c. 1865

    Teaching

    In September 1838, when she was 20, Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax.[27] However, her health suffered under the stress of the 17-hour workday,[28] and she did not warm to her pupils, stating that she preferred the company of the house dog.[29] She returned home in April 1839,[28] and thereafter remained at home, helping the family's servant with the cooking, ironing, and cleaning at Haworth. She taught herself German from books and also played the piano,[30] becoming an accomplished pianist.[31]

    Brussels

    In 1842, when she was 24, Emily accompanied Charlotte to Brussels to the Heger Pensionnat, a girls' boarding school, in the hope of perfecting their French and German before opening their own school. Nine of Emily's French essays survive from this period. Emily was a student teacher, and earned her board and tuition by teaching music to the younger girls, although unlike Charlotte, Emily was not happy in Brussels and refused to fit in or to adopt Belgian fashions.[32][33] A student, Laetitia Wheelwright, says of her:[34]

    I simply disliked her from the first; her tallish, ungainly, ill-dressed figure ... always answering our jokes with ‘I wish to be as God made me’.

    However, Constantin Heger, who was in charge of the academy, thought highly of Emily, writing:[35]

    She should have been a man – a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman... impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned.

    The two sisters were committed to their studies and by the end of the term had become so competent in French that Madame Heger, the wife of Constantin Heger, proposed that they both stay another half-year. According to Charlotte, she even offered to dismiss the English master so that Charlotte could take his place. By this time, Emily had become a competent pianist and teacher, and it was suggested that she might stay on to teach music.[36] However, the sudden illness and death of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, necessitated their return to Haworth.[37] In 1844, the sisters attempted to open a school at the Parsonage, but their plans were stymied by an inability to attract students to the remote area.[38]

    Poetry

    In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into two notebooks.[39] One was labelled "Gondal Poems"; the other was unlabelled. Scholars such as Fannie Ratchford and Derek Roper have attempted to piece together a Gondal storyline and chronology from these poems.[40][41] In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused but, according to Charlotte, relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed to Charlotte that she too had been writing poems in secret. Around this time Emily wrote one of her most famous poems, "No coward soul is mine". Some literary critics have speculated that it is a poem about Anne Brontë, while others see it as an answer to the violation of her privacy on her path to publication.[42] Charlotte later claimed that it was Emily's final poem, but this is factually inaccurate.[43]

    In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The Brontë sisters adopted pseudonyms for publication, preserving their initials: Charlotte was "Currer Bell", Emily was "Ellis Bell" and Anne was "Acton Bell".[44] Charlotte wrote in the 'Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell' that their "ambiguous choice" was "dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because... we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice".[45] Charlotte contributed 19 poems, and Emily and Anne each contributed 21. Although the sisters were told several months after publication that only two copies of the book had sold,[46] they were not discouraged (of their two readers, one was impressed enough to request their autographs).[47] The Athenaeum reviewer praised Ellis Bell's work for its music and power, singling out those poems as the best in the book: "Ellis possesses a fine, quaint spirit and an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted",[48] and The Critic reviewer recognised "the presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."[49]

    Wuthering Heights

    Main article: Wuthering Heights
    Title page of the original edition of Wuthering Heights (1847)

    Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby, appearing as the first two volumes of a three-volume set that also included Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey. The authors were named as Ellis and Acton Bell; Emily's real name did not appear until 1850, when it was printed on the title page of an edited commercial edition.[50]

    A ruined farmhouse on the moors.
    Top Withens farm, believed by many to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights.

    The novel's innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics. Its violence and passion led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to assume that it had been written by a man.[51] According to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers."[52] Literary critic Thomas Joudrey further contextualizes this reaction: "Expecting in the wake of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to be swept up in an earnest Bildungsroman, they were instead shocked and confounded by a tale of unchecked primal passions, replete with savage cruelty and outright barbarism."[53] One of the novel's first critics, writing in January 1848 for the periodical Atlas, described all the characters in the novel as being: "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".[54]

    Although a letter from her publisher indicates that Emily had begun to write a second novel, the manuscript has never been found. It has been suggested either that it was destroyed, or that the letter was intended for Anne Brontë, who was already writing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.[55]

    Personality and character

    Portrait painted by Branwell Brontë in 1833; sources are in disagreement over whether this image is of Emily or Anne.[1]

    Emily Brontë's solitary nature has made her a mysterious figure and a challenge for biographers to assess.[56][57][58] Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë describes Emily as unusually tall and slim, often wearing a purple dress, and exercising an ‘unconscious tyranny’ over her sisters,[59] who nicknamed her "the Major."[60]

    Reserved to the point of eccentricity, she appeared to some to be disconnected from the real world, taking refuge in her own fantasy. Juliet Barker writes in her biography of the Brontës, that: "Emily...was so absorbed in herself and her literary creations that she had little time for the genuine suffering of her family."[61] Biographer Claire Harman has speculated that Emily's adherence to routine, along with her anger management issues, her aversion to social situations and her attachment to her home may all indicate that she had a form of autism.[62] Although she seemingly enjoyed cooking and helping out in the kitchen, John Sutherland mentions her 'obstinate fasting', and biographer Katherine Frank suggests that Emily may have suffered from anorexia.

    With the exception of Ellen Nussey and Louise de Bassompierre, a fellow student in Brussels, Emily had few social connections outside her family. Although there are many theories, there is no evidence that the passionate relationships depicted in Wuthering Heights are based on personal experience.[63]Emily's closest friend was her sister Anne. Together they shared their own fantasy world, Gondal, right up into adulthood, and, according to Ellen Nussey, in childhood they were inseparable.[16][64] In 1845 Anne took Emily to visit some of the places she had come to know and love in the five years she spent as governess. The sisters went to York together, where Anne showed Emily York Minster. During the trip the sisters acted out scenes featuring some of their Gondal characters.[65]

    Charlotte Brontë remains the primary source of information about Emily, although she is not considered by certain scholars to be a neutral witness. Stevie Davies writes about what she calls "Charlotte's smoke-screen", and argues that Charlotte was shocked by Emily, and may even have doubted her sister's sanity.[66] She was in awe of Emily’s genius – at one point referring to her as “a giant” and “a baby god”, but seems never to have fully understood her work.[67]

    After Emily's death, Charlotte rewrote her character, history and even some of her poems, in a way that seemed more acceptable to her and to the reading public.[66] Biographer Claire O'Callaghan suggests that the trajectory of Brontë's legacy was altered significantly by Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, not only because Gaskell did not visit Haworth until after Emily's death, but also because Gaskell admits to disliking what she did know of Emily.[68] As O'Callaghan and others have noted, Charlotte was Gaskell's primary source of information on Emily's life and may have exaggerated or fabricated Emily's frailty and shyness to cast herself in the role of maternal saviour.[69][70] Winifred Gerin's biography of Emily Brontë describes her as a physically intrepid woman who carried a gun and who once, when bitten by a rabid dog, cauterized the wound herself with a hot iron, to avoid worrying her sisters.[60]

    Emily Brontë has often been characterised as a devout if somewhat unorthodox Christian, a heretic and a visionary "mystic of the moors".[71] Charlotte presented Emily as someone whose love of nature had become exaggerated owing to her shyness, portraying her as a kind of noble savage of the Yorkshire moors,[72] "stronger than a man, simpler than a child".[33] According to Lucasta Miller, in her analysis of Brontë biographies, "Charlotte took on the role of Emily's first mythographer."[73] In the Preface to the Second Edition of Wuthering Heights, in 1850, Charlotte wrote:[74]

    My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word.

    Emily's shyness and unsociability have subsequently been reported many times.[75][76][77] According to Norma Crandall, her "warm, human aspect" was "usually revealed only in her love of nature and of animals".[78] In a similar description, The Literary News (1883) states: "[Emily] loved the solemn moors, she loved all wild, free creatures and things",[79] and critics attest that her love of the moors is manifest in Wuthering Heights.[80] Over the years, Emily's love of nature has been the subject of many anecdotes. A newspaper dated 31 December 1899, gives the account that "with bird and beast [Emily] had the most intimate relations, and from her walks she often came with fledgling or young rabbit in hand, talking softly to it, quite sure, too, that it understood".[81] Elizabeth Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte, tells the story of Emily's punishing her dog Keeper for climbing with muddy paws on one of the beds in the Parsonage. According to Gaskell, she struck him with her fists until he was "half-blind" with his eyes "swelled up", after which she comforted and bathed him.[26] This story has been called into question by some biographers and scholars, including Janet Gezari, Lucasta Miller and Claire O'Callaghan.[69][82][b] Fraser's biography of Emily Brontë says this about Emily's relationship with her dog:[84]

    Poor old Keeper, Emily's faithful friend and worshipper, seemed to understand her like a human being. One evening, when the four friends were sitting closely round the fire in the sitting-room, Keeper forced himself in between Charlotte and Emily and mounted himself on Emily's lap; finding the space too limited for his comfort he pressed himself forward on to the guest's knees, making himself quite comfortable. Emily's heart was won by the unresisting endurance of the visitor, little guessing that she herself, being in close contact, was the inspiring cause of submission to Keeper's preference. Sometimes Emily would delight in showing off Keeper—make him frantic in action, and roar with the voice of a lion. It was a terrifying exhibition within the walls of an ordinary sitting-room. Keeper was a solemn mourner at Emily's funeral and never recovered his cheerfulness.

    In Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era (1886), Eva Hope summarises Emily's character as "a peculiar mixture of timidity and Spartan-like courage", and goes on to state:[85]

    She was painfully shy, but physically she was brave to a surprising degree. She loved few persons, but those few with a passion of self-sacrificing tenderness and devotion. To other people's failings she was understanding and forgiving, but over herself she kept a continual and most austere watch, never allowing herself to deviate for one instant from what she considered her duty.

    Death

    Brass plaque on family vault of Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë at St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth

    Emily's brother Branwell died suddenly, on Sunday, 24 September 1848. At his funeral, a week later, Emily caught a severe cold that quickly developed into inflammation of the lungs and may have accelerated an existing condition such as tuberculosis.[86][c] It has been suggested that Emily's health had been weakened by unsanitary conditions at home,[88] where water was contaminated by runoff from the church's graveyard. Though her condition worsened steadily, Emily rejected medical help, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her.[89] On the morning of 19 December 1848, Charlotte, fearing for her sister, wrote:[90]

    She grows daily weaker. The physician's opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of use – he sent some medicine which she would not take. Moments so dark as these I have never known – I pray for God's support to us all.

    At noon, Emily was worse; she could only whisper in gasps. With her last audible words, she said to Charlotte, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now",[91] but it was too late. She died that same day at about two in the afternoon. According to Mary Robinson, an early biographer of Emily, it happened while she was on the sofa.[92] However, Charlotte's letter to William Smith Williams, in which she mentions Emily's dog, Keeper, lying by her deathbed, seem to contradict this.[93] Emily died less than three months after Branwell's death, which led Martha Brown, a housemaid, to declare that "Miss Emily died of a broken heart for love of her brother".[94] Emily had grown so thin that her coffin measured only 16 inches (40 centimetres) wide. The carpenter said he had never made a narrower one for an adult.[95] Her remains were interred in the family vault in St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth.

    Legacy

    Although Emily's work was not widely appreciated at the time of its publication, Wuthering Heights has subsequently become an English literary classic,[96] and is described in John Sutherland's Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction as the "twentieth century’s favourite nineteenth-century novel".[54] Emily's poems, too, have reached a global audience. The opening line of "No coward soul is mine", is popular on mugs and key rings, and even as a tattoo.[54]

    Authors

    Authors who have been inspired by Emily Brontë include: Sylvia Plath,[33] Jacqueline Wilson,[18] Joanne Harris,[97] Margaret Atwood, Kate Mosse, Dorothy Koomson[98] and Lucy Powrie.[99] In 2018, to celebrate Emily Brontë's centenary year, The Borough Press published a collection of short stories entitled I Am Heathcliff, edited by Kate Mosse, and featuring stories by Leila Aboulela, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Joanna Cannon, Alison Case, Juno Dawson, Louise Doughty, Sophie Hannah, Anna James, Erin Kelly, Dorothy Koomson, Grace McCleen, Lisa McInerney, Laurie Penny, Nikesh Shukla, Michael Stewart and Louisa Young.[100]

    Adaptations

    Wuthering Heights has been adapted many times for film, stage and television, as have the lives of the sisters. The 1946 film Devotion was a highly fictionalized account of the lives of the Brontë sisters.[101][102] In the 2019 film How to Build a Girl, Emily and Charlotte Brontë are among the historical figures in Johanna's wall collage.[103]In the 2022 film Emily, written and directed by Frances O'Connor, Emma Mackey plays Emily before the publication of Wuthering Heights. The film mixes known biographical details with imagined situations and relationships.

    Music

    A 1967 BBC adaptation of Emily's novel was the original inspiration for the debut single, "Wuthering Heights", by UK singer-songwriter Kate Bush, released in January 1978.[104] In 1996, singer-songwriter Cliff Richard brought out Heathcliff, a stage musical based on the character, in which he himself played the lead.[105]In 2019 the English folk group The Unthanks released Lines, three short albums, which include settings of Brontë's poems to music. Recording took place at the Brontës' home, using their own Regency era piano played by Adrian McNally.[106]Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo set selected Emily Brontë poems to music with SATB chorus, string orchestra, and piano, a work commissioned and premiered by the San Francisco Choral Society in a series of concerts in Oakland and San Francisco.[107]

    Glass House adaptations

    The Brontës' juvenilia has also inspired writers. In 2017, Catherynne Valente wrote The Glass House Game, which reimagines the Brontë siblings as characters in their own version of C. S. Lewis' Narnia books.[108][109] In 2020, graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg adapted Glass Town into a graphic novel that combines the Brontës' early fiction with memoir.[110]

    Memorabilia

    In May 2021, the contents of the Honresfield library, a collection of rare books and manuscripts assembled by Rochdale mill owners Alfred and William Law, was rediscovered after nearly a century. In the collection were handwritten poems by Emily Brontë, as well as the Brontë family edition of Bewick's 'History of British Birds.' The collection was to be auctioned off at Sotheby's and was estimated to sell for £1 million.[111][112]

    In 2024, the memorial at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey was finally altered to correct the misspelling of the family name (from Bronte to Brontë).[113]

    Works

    Electronic editions

    Library resources
    By Emily Brontë

    See also

    References

    Notes

    1. ^ At Roe Head and Blake Hall with pictures of the school then and now, and descriptions of Anne's time there.
    2. ^ Brontë's servant Martha Brown could not recall anything like this when asked about the episode in 1858. However, she remembered Emily extracting Keeper from fights with other dogs.[83]
    3. ^ Though many of her contemporaries believed otherwise, "consumption", or tuberculosis does not originate from "catching a cold". Tuberculosis is a communicable disease, transmitted through the inhalation of airborne droplets of mucus or saliva carrying Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and anyone living in close proximity with an infected person would be at increased risk of contracting it. However, it is also a disease that can remain asymptomatic for long periods of time after initial infection, and developing only later when the immune system becomes weak.[87]

    Citations

    1. ^ a b "The Bronte Sisters – A True Likeness? – The Profile Portrait – Emily or Anne". brontesisters.co.uk.
    2. ^ As given by Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature (Merriam-Webster, incorporated, Publishers: Springfield, Massachusetts, 1995), p viii: "When our research shows that an author's pronunciation of his or her name differs from common usage, the author's pronunciation is listed first, and the descriptor commonly precedes the more familiar pronunciation." See also entries on Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, pp 175–176.
    3. ^ The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 2. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1992. p. 546.
    4. ^ a b Fraser, The Brontës, p. 16
    5. ^ a b "How troubled mill town shaped the Brontes". Bradford Telegraph and Argus. 31 July 2022. Retrieved 11 June 2025.
    6. ^ Fraser, The Brontës, p. 28
    7. ^ Fraser, The Brontës, p. 35
    8. ^ Flood, Alison (30 July 2014). "School reports on writers deliver very bad reviews". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
    9. ^ Fraser, The Brontës, p. 31
    10. ^ Fraser, Charlotte Bronte: A Writer's Life, pp. 12–13
    11. ^ Fraser, The Brontës, pp. 44–45
    12. ^ "A dog's life – Emily Brontë's furry friend | The Arts Society". theartssociety.org. Retrieved 12 June 2025.
    13. ^ Cain, Sian (29 August 2016). "Emily Brontë may have had Asperger syndrome, says biographer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
    14. ^ Anderson, Hephzibah. "The family tragedy that inspired the Brontës' greatest books". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 9 June 2025.
    15. ^ "The Brontës' very real and raw Irish roots". The Irish Times. Retrieved 11 June 2025.
    16. ^ a b Fraser, A Life of Anne Brontë, p. 39
    17. ^ Mezo, Richard E. A Student's Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (2002), p. 1
    18. ^ a b "'I write the sort of stories I wanted to read' - Jacqueline Wilson, the Brontës and childhood imagination". BBC Bitesize. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
    19. ^ The Brontës' Web of Childhood, by Fannie Ratchford, 1941
    20. ^ An analysis of Emily's use of paracosm play as a response to the deaths of her sisters is found in Delmont C. Morrison's Memories of Loss and Dreams of Perfection (Baywood, 2005), ISBN 0-89503-309-7.
    21. ^ "Emily Brontë's Letters and Diary Papers", City University of New York
    22. ^ Austin 2002, p. 578.
    23. ^ Manzoor, Sohana (21 December 2019). "Gondal: The Fanciful World of Emily Brontë". The Daily Star.
    24. ^ Paddock & Rollyson The Brontës A to Z p. 199.
    25. ^ Fraser, The Brontës, p. 84
    26. ^ a b Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, p. 149
    27. ^ Vine, Emily Brontë (1998), p. 11
    28. ^ a b Krueger, Christine L. Encyclopedia of British writers, 19th century (2009), p. 41
    29. ^ "John Sutherland - She Called It a Puny Town". Literary Review. 9 June 2025. Retrieved 9 June 2025.
    30. ^ Wallace, Robert K. (2008). Emily Brontë and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music. University of Georgia Press. p. 223.
    31. ^ Hennessy, John (2018). Emily Jane Brontë and Her Music. WK Publishing. p. 1.
    32. ^ Paddock & Rollyson The Brontës A to Z p. 21.
    33. ^ a b c Hughes, Kathryn (21 July 2018). "The strange cult of Emily Brontë and the 'hot mess' of Wuthering Heights". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
    34. ^ Letters (27 July 2018). "In defence of Emily Brontë". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
    35. ^ Heger, Constantin, 1842, referring to Emily Brontë, as quoted in The Oxford History of the Novel in English (2011), Volume 3, p. 208
    36. ^ Crandall, Norma (1957). Emily Brontë, a Psychological Portrait. R. R. Smith Publisher. p. 85.
    37. ^ "Emily Brontë". Biography. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
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    39. ^ O'Callaghan, Claire (2018). Emily Brontë Reappraised. Saraband. p. 146.
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