Emily Bronte

BIO Emily Jane Bronte was born July 30, 1818, at Thornton in Yorkshire, the fifth of six children of Patrick and Maria Bronte (nee Branwell). Two years after her birth, her father was appointed curate of Haworth, an isolated village on the moors. Both of Emily's parents had literary leanings; her mother published one essay, and her father wrote four books and dabbled in poetry. In 1821, shortly after Emily's third birthday, Maria died of cancer. Maria's sister, Elizabeth, came to live as a housekeeper and was responsible for training the girls in the household arts. Although Emilydid spend a few short times away from Haworth, it was her primary residence and the rectory where she resided now serves as a Bronte Museum. Emily's only close friends were her brother Branwell and her sisters Charlotte and Anne. In 1824, the four eldest daughters were sent to Cowan Bridge School, a school for daughters of impoverished clergymen. The conditions were harsh and an epidemic soon broke out, taking the lives of Maria and Elizabeth. Charlotte becames very ill as well, and she and Emily were sent home to Haworth. About this time, Branwell, the only boy in the family, received a box of twelve wooden soldiers. The children began to write stories about them called the "Young Men" plays. In 1835, Charlotte became a teacher at Roe Head school and Emily joined her as a student. Emily, however, could not stand being away from her beloved moors, and became violently homesick. She returned home and her younger sister, Anne, took her place. Emily began writing poems at an early age and published twenty-one of them, together with poems by Anne and Charlotte, in 1846. The slim volume was titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold, and the failure led all three to begin work on novels: Emily on Wuthering Heights, Charlotte on Jane Eyre, and Anne on Agnes Grey. At an even earlier age, she collaborated with Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne on the plays and tales that developed into the "Glass Town" saga. By 1834, Emily and Anne were thoroughly engrossed in writing their own saga involving two imaginary islands in the north and south Pacific, Gondal and Gaaldine. No early prose narratives survive, but several poems by Emily and Anne refer to Gondal places and characters. In 1848, Branwell became addicted to both drugs and alcohol and it soon became clear that he was dying. Emily had always counted Branwell among her closest friends and was the only one of her siblings who allowed that friendship to triumph over the urge to judge; she went as far as beating out the flames with her bare hands when he, in a drunken stupor, wrapped himself in a blanket and lit it on fire. Despite all of her efforts, Branwell died in September 1848 at the age of thirty. Emily caught a cold at his funeral and never left home again. She died of tuberculosis on December 19, 1848, also at the age of thirty, and never knew the great success of her only novel WUTHERING HEIGHTS, which was published almost exactly a year before her death on December 19, 1848. From the opinions of those who knew her well, Emily emerges as a reserved, courageous woman with a commanding will and manner. In the biographical note to the 1850 edition of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Charlotte Bronte attributes to her sister "a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero."

Encyclopedia of World Biography on Emily Bront The English novelist Emily Bront (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 Bront 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 Bront 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 Bront 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." Bront'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. Bront died of consumption on Dec. 19, 1848. Refusing all medical attention, she struggled to perform her household tasks until the end.

Name: Emily Bront Birth Date: August 20, 1818 Death Date: December 19, 1848 Place of Birth: Thornton, Yorkshire, England Place of Death: England Nationality: English Gender: Female Occupations: novelist

An Emily Bronte Chronology

1818 July 30, Emily Jane Bronte born at Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire. 1820 April, the Bronte family moves to Haworth. 1821 September, Mrs. Bronte dies. 1824 November, Emily Bronte enrolls at the Cowan Bridge School. 1825 May 6, Maria Bronte dies; June 1, Charlotte and Emily leave Cowan Bridge; June 15 Elizabeth Bronte dies. 1826 June, Mr. Bronte brings home twelve wooden soldiers for Branwell--the start of the Btontes' oral literature and imaginative games. 1831 Emily and Anne begin the Gondal saga. 1834 November 24, the earliest dated Emily Bronte manuscript--mentions the Gondals discovering Caaldine. 1835 July--Octobet, a pupil in Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head; is sent home after alarming Charlotte with her physical decline. 1836 July 12, the earliest dated poem. 1837 September, goes to teach at Law Hill School, near Halifax; remains there for about six months--the exact dates of the Law Hill period are disputed. 1838-1842 Over half of Bronte's surviving poems written. 1842 February--November, at school in Brussels with Charlotte to study music and foreign languages; writes the essays in French; returns to Haworth after the death of Aunt Branwell. 1843 Alone at Haworth with her father; a time of creativity and freedom. 1844 Begins to arrange her poems into two notebooks, dividing the Gondalan from the non-Gondalan material. 1845

The Brontes give up hopes for a school of their own; Branwell, working on a novel, tells his sisters of the profitable possibilities of novel writing; Emily's birthday note shows her hearty and content, reunited with Anne and as enthusiastic as ever about the Gondalans; October, Charlotte discovers Emily's poems and convinces her sister to collaborate on a volume of poems; December, Wuthering Heights begun. 1846 May, Poems by Currer Ellis, and Acton Bell published, with the Brontes paying for costs; July, Wuthering Heights finished and begins to make the round of publishers, along with Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte and The Profrssor by Charlotte; September 14, last dated complete poem. 1847 July, T. C. Newby accepts Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey but delays publishing until the success of Jane Eyre arouses interest in the "Bells"; December, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey published. 1848 Confusion in the literary world over the identity and number of the Bells; Anne publishes The Tenant of Wildftll Hall; Emily withdraws more resolutely into herself; September 24, Branwell dies; October 1, Emily leaves home for the last time to attend Branwell's funeral service--catches a severe cold which develops into inflammation of the lungs; December 19, Emily Bronte dies. 1850 Wuthering Heights reissued, with a selection of poems, and a biographical notice by Charlotte. 1893 The Bronte Society established. 1941 Hatfield's edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte published. Emily Bront (1818 - 1848) - pseudonym Ellis Bell

Perhaps the greatest writer of the three Bront sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Emily Bront published only one novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847), a story of the doomed love and revenge. The sisters also published jointly a volume of verse, POEMS BY CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL. Only two copies of the book was sold.
--'Heatcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down. --"I wish I could hold you," she continued bitterly, "till we were both death! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, 'That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them! Will you say so, Heatcliff?" --"Don't torture me till I am as mad as yourself," cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth."' (from Wuthering Heights)

Emily Bront was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England. Her father, the Rev. Patrick Bront, had moved from Ireland to Weatherfield, in Essex, where he taught in Sunday school. Eventually he settled in Yorkshire, the centre of his life's work. In 1812 he married Maria Branwell of Penzance. Patrick Bront loved poetry, he published several books of prose and verse and wrote to local newspapers. In 1820 he moved to Hawort, a poverty-stricken little town at the edge of a large tract of moorland, where he served as a rector and chairman of the parish committee. The lonely purple moors became one of the most important shaping forces in the life of the Bront sisters. Their parsonage home, a small house, was of grey stone, two stories high. The front door opened almost directly on to the churchyard. In the upstairs was two bedrooms and a third room, scarcely bigger than a closet, in which the sisters played their games. After their mother died in 1821, the children spent most of their time in reading and composition. To escape their unhappy childhood, Anne, Emily, Charlotte, and their brother Branwell (1817-1848) created imaginary worlds - perhaps inspired by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Emily and Anne created their own Gondal saga, and Bramwell and Charlotte recorded their stories about the kingdom of Angria in minute notebooks. After failing as a paiter and writer, Branwell took to drink and opium, worked then as a tutor and assistant clerk to a railway company. In 1842 he was dismissed and joined his sister Anne at Thorp Green Hall as a tutor. His affair with his employer's wife ended disastrously. He returned to Haworth in 1845, where he rapidly declined and died three years later. Between the years 1824 and 1825 Emily attended the school at Cowan Bridge with Charlotte, and then was largely educated at home. Her father's bookshelf offered a variety of reading: the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. The children also read enthusiastically articles on current affairs and intellectual disputes in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, and Edinburgh Review. In 1835 Emily Bront was at Roe Head. There she suffered from homesickness and returned after a few months to the moorland scenery of home. In 1837 she became a governess at Law Hill, near Halifax, where she spent six months. Emily worked at Miss Patchet's shdoll - according to Charlotte - "from six in the morning until near eleven at night, with only one half-hour of exercise between" and called it slavery. To facilitate their plan to keep school for girls, Emily and Charlotte Bront went in 1842 to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management. Emily returned on the same year to Haworth. In 1842 Aunt Branwell died. When she was no longer taking care of the house and her brother-in-law, Emily agreed to stay with her father. Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters and was interested in mysticism. Her first novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a story-within-a-story, did not gain immediate success as Charlotte's Jane Eyre, but it has acclaimed later fame as one of the most intense novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood. He constantly misinterprets the reactions and interactions of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. More

reliable is Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, who has lived for two generations with the novel's two principal families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Lockwood is a gentleman visiting the Yorkshire moors where the novel is set. At night Lockwood dreams of hearing a fell-fire sermon and then, awakening, he records taps on the window of his room. "... I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window - terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!" and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear." The hands belong to Catherine Linton, whose eerie appearance echo the violent turns of the plot. In a series of flashbacks and time shifts, Bront draws a powerful picture of the enigmatic Heathcliff, who is brought to Heights from the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. Heathcliff is treated as Earnshaw's own children, Catherine and Hindley. After Mr. Earnshaw's death Heathcliff is bullied by Hindley and he leaves the house, returning three years later. Meanwhile Catherine marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff 's destructive force is unleashed. Catherine dies giving birth to a girl, another Catherine. Heathcliff curses his true love: "... Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you - haunt me then!" Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, who flees to the south from her loveless marriage. Their son Linton and Catherine are married, but the always sickly Linton dies. Hareton, Hindley's son, and the young widow became close. Increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine. Wuthering Heights has been filmed several times. William Wyler's version from 1939, starring Merle Oberon as Cathy and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, is considered on of the screen's classic romances. However, the English writer Graham Greene criticized the reconstructing of the Yorkshire moors in the Conejo Hills in California. "How much better they would have made Wuthering Heights in France," wrote Greene. "They know there how to shoot sexual passion, but in this Californian-constructed Yorkshire, among the sensitive neurotic English voices, sex is cellophaned; there is no egotism, no obsession.... So a lot of reverence has gone into a picture which should have been as coarse as a sewer." (Spectator, May 5, 1939) Luis Bunuel set the events of the amour fou in an arid Mexican landscape. The music was based on melodies from Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner.
"Sleep not, dream not; this bright day Will not, cannot last for aye; Bliss like thine is bought by years Dark with torment and with tears." (from 'Sleep not', 1846)

Emily Bront died of tuberculosis in the late 1848. She had caught cold at her brother Branwell's funeral in September. After the appearance of Wuthering Heighs, some skeptics maintained that the book was written by Branwell, on the grounds that no woman from such circumscribed life, could have written such passionate story. In 1848 Charlotte and Anne visited George Smith to reveal their identity and to help quell rumors

that a single author lay behind the pseudonyms. After her sisters' deaths, Charlotte edited a second edition of their novels, with prefatory commentary aimed at correcting what she saw as the reviewers' misunderstanding of Wuthering Heights. The complex time scheme of the novel had been taken as evidence by the critics, that Emily had not achieved full formal control over her narrative materials. However, her model in layering narrative within narrative may have been Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Emily's refusal to reduce ambiguity to simplistic clarity did not have any immediate influence on the novel form until Wilkie Collins experimented with multivocal first-person narratives in such works as The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868).
For further reading: The Bront's Web of Childhood by Fannie Ratchford (1941); The Genesis of Wuthering Heights by Mary Visick (1965); Their Proper Sphere by Inga-Stina Ewbank (1966); The Artist as Free Woman by S. Davies; The Bronts and Their Background by Tom Winnifrith (1973); Myths of Power by Terry Eagleton (1975); The Art of Emily Bront, ed. by A. Smith (1976); Bronts of Haworth by Brian Wilks (1986); Emily Bront by Stevie Davies (1988); Emily Bront: Wuthering Heights by U.C. Knoepflmacher (1989); The Bronts by Juliet Barker (1994), Wuthering Heights by Maggie Berg (1996); Critical Essays on Emily Bront, ed. by Tom Winnifrith (1997); The Birth of Wuthering Heights by E. Chitman (1998); Emily Bront by S. Vine (1998) - see also biographies by Lyn Pykett (1990) and W. Grin (1971) - Museums and places to visit: Bront Society and Bront Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Keighley; Bront Way - a forty mile walk in four section to sites associated with the Bronts; Oakwell Hall County Park, Nutter Lane, Birstall - house features as "Fieldhead" in Charlotte's Shirley; The Red House Museum, Oxford Rd, Gomersal, Cleckheaton - House appears as "Briarmains in Charlotte's Shirley; Wuthering Heights Walk, a six mile walk to Top Withins, the setting for Wuthering Heights.

SELECTED WORKS:

POEMS BY CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL, 1846 WUTHERING HEIGHTS, 1847 - Humiseva harju - films: 1939, dir. by William
Wyler, written by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur; 1953: (Abismos de pasin / Cumbras borrascosas), dir. by Luis Buuel; 1970: dir. by Robert Fuest; 1992: dir. by Peter Kosminsky, starring Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer, Sophie Ward, Simon Shepherd

LEGENDS OF ANGRIA, 1933 (collection, with Anne and Charlotte Bront) GONDAL'S QUEEN, 1955

History of Emily's Life

"Emily Jane Bronte was born at Thornton in Yorkshire on 30 July 1818, the fifth of six children of Patrick and Maria Bronte (nee Branwell). Two years later, her father was appointed perpetual curate of Haworth, a small, isolated hill village surrounded by moors. Her mother died shortly after her third birthday and she and her sisters and brother were brought up by their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Apart from a few short periods, she remained in Haworth. Her only close friendships were those with her brother Branwell and
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her sisters Charlotte and Anne; only three perfunctory letters by her survive. "From accounts by those who knew Emily Jane Bronte, there emerges a consistent portrait of a reserved, courageous woman with a commanding will and manner. In the biographical note to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte attributes to her sister 'a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero', while Monsignor Heger, who taught her in Brussels, was impressed by her 'powerful reason' and 'strong, imperious will'. "Emily Jane Bronte began writing poems at an early age and published twenty-one of them, together with poems by Anne and Charlotte, in 1846 in a slim volume titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. At an even earlier age, she collaborated with Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne on the 'plays' and tales that developed into the Glass Town saga. By 1834, Emily and Anne were thoroughly engaged in writing their own saga involving two imaginary islands in the north and south Pacific, Gondal and Gaaldine. No early prose narratives survive, but several poems by Emily and Anne refer to Gondal places and characters. Emily Jane Bronte is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, published under her pseudonym of Ellis Bell in 1847, almost exactly a year before her death on 19 December 1848. She became ill after attending Branwell's funeral, and died of tuberculosis after an illness of about three months." -from Emily Jane Bronte: The Complete Poems 1992, Penguin Books

Emily's Poetry
The following are a minor sampling of Emily's works. More will be added as time permits. "I am the only being whose doom..." "Methinks this heart..." "She dried her tears..." "Love is like the wild rose briar..." Last Words Faith and Despondency\

The Bronte Sisters; Anne (1820-1849) Charlotte (1816-1855) Emily (1818-1848)

Anne Bronte

Charlotte Bronte

Emily Bronte

They were born at Thornton & lived in Haworth W. Yorkshire. Patrick Bronte their father was a Yorkshire clergyman with Irish origins, and brought his family to the parsonage at the top of the hill of Haworth village on the edge of the moor in 1820. Mrs Bronte died the next year and the six children were cared for by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell. This was the children's home up to their short lived lives. Charlotte and Emily were sent to Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, but they returned within a year. The treatment at Cowan Bridge was considered harsh, and Charlotte later modelled Lowood School (Jane Eyre) after it.

For the next few years, the Bronte children were taught at home. They invented games and told imaginary stories to each other. Charlotte attended Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head for one year in 1831, then returned home and taught her sisters. Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher in 1835, but after suffering from depression and ill health, she resigned from her position. It was at Roe Head that Charlotte met her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey. Her many letters to Nussey have served as the best documentation of her life. The Bronte sisters worked in various schools during the next few years. Anne worked briefly as a governess in 1839 and from 1841-1845. Emily spent several months teaching at Miss Patchett's school at Law Hill. Charlotte and Emily had plans to open their own school at Haworth, and in 1842, they travelled to Brussels at their aunt's expense to learn German and improve their French. When their aunt died 8 months later, the sisters returned for the funeral. Emily never returned to Brussels, but Charlotte returned as a pupil-teacher. Her time in Belgium was not happy, in part because of her attraction to her married employer. Charlotte returned to Haworth the next year. The dream of opening a school was never realised. In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered some poems written by Emily. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne soon realised they had all been secretly writing verse. The next year, they published a book of poems at their own expense entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The pseudonyms were chosen to match the first letter of their names. They only sold two copies of the book, but each sister already had additional writing plans in the works. Charlotte's first attempt at the novel was entitled The Professor, but the story was rejected by publishers. Her second attempt was published in October, 1847. Jane Eyre: an autobiography, it was an immediate success. Several months later Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights were published together in three volumes. The popularity of the Bronte novels allowed Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be published shortly thereafter. The next year was one of tragedy for the Bronte sisters. Their brother Branwell, an unstable man with a history of drunkenness and opium use died in September 1848. Emily then fell ill and died of tuberculosis December 19, 1848. Anne soon followed, contracting tuberculosis that same year and died May 28, 1849 in Scarborough. She was buried in St. Marty's churchyard Scarborough, Yorkshire and was visited by Charlotte in 1852. Charlotte was left alone with her father, but later married in Haworth Church, her father's curate Arthur Bell Nicholls. They enjoyed a brief happiness. Charlotte fell ill during pregnancy and died March 31, 1855. What a loss to literature that such gifted children should all die before their father. They were geniuses; with a fantastic imagination, a robust melodramatic view of what a good story ought to be, and an understanding of the darker side of the human soul.

Emily Bronte

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Emily Bronte (1818-1849), English author and one of the famed Bronte sisters wrote Wuthering Heights (1847); Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believeI know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me alwaystake any formdrive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! First published under Emilys pseudonym Ellis Bell, the combination of its structure and elements of passion, mystery and doomed love as well as social commentary have made Wuthering Heights an enduring masterpiece. Set in 18th Century England when social and economic values were changing and land ownership did not always the man make, it is a world of patriarchal values juxtaposed with the natural elements. Bronte explores themes of revenge, religion, class and prejudice while plumbing the depths of the metaphysical and human psyche. Brontes own home in the bleak Yorkshire moors provides the setting for the at-times other-worldly passions of the Byronic Heathcliff and Catherine. Also having written much poetry, Emily Brontes works did not receive wide acclaim until after her death at the age of thirty. Wuthering Heights is still in print today and has inspired numerous television and feature film adaptations. As with most of the Bronte sisters popular novels, people have tried to find biographical parallels in them. Emily has been characterised to mythic proportions as deeply spiritual, free-spirited and reclusive as well as intensely creative and passionate, an icon to tortured genius. Emily Bronte was born on 30 July 1818 at 74 Market Street in Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England. She was the fourth daughter of Maria Branwell (1783-1821), who died of cancer when Emily was just three years old, and Irish clergyman Patrick Bronte (1777-1861). After her youngest sister Anne (1820-1849) was born the Brontes moved to the village of Haworth where Patrick had been appointed rector. Emily had four older siblings; Maria (1814-1825), Elizabeth (1815-1825), Charlotte (1816-1855) and Patrick Branwell Branwell (1817-1848). Emilys Aunt [Elizabeth] Branwell (1776-1842) had moved in to the Parsonage after her sister Marias death to help nursemaids Nancy and Sarah Gars raise the six young children. In 1824, Emily, with her four sisters entered the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Kirkby Lonsdale. When Maria and Elizabeth died there a year later of tuberculosis, she and Charlotte returned home to Haworth. Their father was a quiet man and often spent his spare time alone, so, the motherless children entertained themselves reading the works of William Shakespeare, Virgil, John Milton, and the Bible and played the piano, did needlepoint, and told each other stories. The four often paired up; Charlotte and Branwell started writing of their imaginary world Angria, Emily and Anne writing of its rival, Gondal. Penning their kingdoms histories and developing characters to populate them, the young Bronte girls found a creative outlet in writing stories and poetry. Emily was becoming an independent and opinionated young woman as her poem The Old Stoic reveals;

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And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty! In 1835 Emily enrolled at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield where Charlotte was teaching, but she soon returned home when she became profoundly homesick and ill. After a few years as governess at Law Hill Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Emily and her sisters Charlotte and Anne travelled to Brussels, Belgium in 1842. There at the Pensionnat Heger under teacher Constantin Heger they immersed themselves in the study of French, German and literature with the aim of starting their own school someday. When their Aunt Branwell died Emily alone returned to Haworth for her funeral and stayed on there, just her and her father. She helped around the home and continued writing and editing her poems. By 1845 her sisters had given up their dream of starting their own school and the three were together at Haworth again. It was Charlottes idea to publish the poems of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846. The following year Wuthering Heights was published to mixed reviews, although it was soon lauded as an original and innovative tragic romance. Tragedy loomed large in Emilys life as well: her brother Branwell had become an alcoholic and addicted to opium and the family were constantly dealing with his depressions and at times mad ravings. He died in 1848 and while at his funeral Emily caught a cold and died soon after, on 19 December 1848. She now rests with her mother and father and sisters Charlotte, Maria, and Elizabeth and brother Branwell in the family vault at the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Yet, still, in evenings quiet hour, With never-failing thankfulness, I welcome thee, Benignant Power; Sure solacer of human cares, And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!To Imagination

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