Brontë, Emily Jane

Brontë, Emily Jane (1818–48), sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, briefly attended the school at Cowan Bridge with Charlotte in 1824–5, and was then educated largely at home, where she was particularly close to Anne, with whom she created the imaginary world of Gondal, the setting for many of her finest narrative and lyric poems. She was even more intensely attached than her sisters to the moorland scenery of home. She was for a time, probably in 1838, governess at Law Hill, near Halifax, and in 1842 went to Brussels with Charlotte to study languages, but returned on her aunt's death at the end of the year to Haworth, where she spent the rest of her brief life. In 1845 Charlotte ‘discovered’ Emily's poems, and projected a joint publication, Poems, by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846). Wuthering Heights was written between Oct. 1845 and June 1846, and published by T. C. Newby in Dec. 1847. Unlike Charlotte's Jane Eyre, it met with more incomprehension than recognition, and it was only after Emily's death (of consumption) that it became widely acknowledged as a masterpiece. The vein of violence, of stoicism, and of mysticism in Emily's personality have given rise to many legends but few certainties. She is now established as much the most considerable poet of the three sisters, and one of the most original poets of the century, remembered for her lyrics (e.g. ‘The night is darkening round me’), for her passionate invocations from the world of Gondal (‘Remembrance’, ‘The Prisoner’), and her apparently more personal visionary moments (‘No coward soul is mine’).