Emily Brontë

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Standard Name: Brontë, Emily
Birth Name: Emily Brontë
Pseudonym: Ellis Bell
Used Form: Emily Bronte
Used Form: Two
Emily Brontë collaborated with her siblings on a body of juvenilia, and by herself wrote a small number of poems and a single surviving novel. Wuthering Heights is established as one of the most original and disturbing novels of the mid-nineteenth century. Its compelling imagery, sophisticated narrative technique, and powerful, indeed violent, story—part ghost story, part romance, part anatomy of social hierarchies and cultural conflict—details the enmity between two families on the Yorkshire moors that erupts when a strange child is adopted into one of them, and which is only resolved in the subsequent generation.
Charlotte Brontë painted with her sisters Emily and Anne by their brother Branwell, c. 1834 (said by Elizabeth Gaskell to have captured excellent likenesses despite its lack of artistic skill). National Portrait Gallery.
Painting of Emily Brontë in a green dress with large collar, cropped from the group portrait by her brother Branwell, c. 1834, of all three sisters (and of himself, painted over). The picture was long lost to view, and has crease marks from being folded. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Laurence Alma-Tadema
Amy Levy , who was deeply impressed by LAT 's appearance and presence, paid Love's Martyr a back-handed compliment: I think more of her book now that I have seen her.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
261 and n4
The...
Textual Production Phyllis Bentley
PB published her first of five critical texts about the lives and works of the threeBrontësisters , The Brontës.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
TLS Archive (19 July 1947): 362
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research.
27
Author summary Phyllis Bentley
Phyllis Bentley was a prolific and successful novelist, literary critic, short-story writer, children's writer, and journalist, who was productive over a broad span of the twentieth century. Almost all her twenty-eight novels and numerous short...
Intertextuality and Influence Phyllis Bentley
PB was deeply influenced by the Brontës , whose home at Haworth was close to where she herself grew up in Halifax. As a daydreaming child she strongly identified with the Brontës ' imaginary worlds...
Textual Production Phyllis Bentley
In 1949 PB both arranged and introduced the six-volume Heather Edition of the Brontës' works, and supplied an introduction for an edition of Charlotte Brontë 's The Professor, which was published with poems and...
Reception Enid Blyton
On the other hand for the future free-speech activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali , growing up as an Islamic Somali girl in 1980s Kenya, subjected to genital mutilation and pressured constantly to obey and submit...
Literary responses Marjorie Bowen
Although MB was commended for the accuracy of her historical settings in her crime novels, Mary Jean deMarr points out that she was also faulted for unbelievable reversals and obstrusive symbolism. However, deMarr finds her...
Textual Features Marjorie Bowen
Bowen argues that art pays everlasting tribute to the everlasting energy and aspiration of the human spirit, and every artist must increase the ethical content of the civilization in which he works.
Bowen, Marjorie. Ethics in Modern Art. Watts and Company.
19
She points...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Admirers of Lady Audley included Thackeray , according to his daughter Anne .
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland.
9
Arnold Bennett gave it very high praise. Of the passage in which Lucy Audley decides to try to murder Robert, he...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Bridge
At about twelve Mary Anne Sanders (later AB ) was meeting eminent scholars at dinner, because her businessman father, who had to leave the house early in the morning, insisted against convention on even his...
Textual Production Charlotte Brontë
Emily , Anne , and CB published a collection, Poems, under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
The pseudonym of Currer Bell may have been based on the name of Miss Currer of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Charlotte Brontë
The novel focuses on the Luddite riots in Yorkshire in the Napoleonic era. Shirley Keeldar, an heiress with a man's name who revels in her unconventionality (and who was, according to conversation Elizabeth Gaskell had...
Textual Production Anne Brontë
Anne and Emily Brontë's first novels, Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights respectively, were published together in three volumes.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
539
Literary responses Anne Brontë
A review of Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights in the Athenæum characterized the work of the Emily BrontëBrontës in terms of painful and exceptional subjects:—the misdeeds and oppressions of tyranny—the eccentricities of woman's fantasy
Allott, Miriam, editor. The Brontës. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
218
and...
Publishing Anne Brontë
After AB 's death, Agnes Grey was reprinted with Wuthering Heights, some of the sisters ' poetry, and a biographical preface by Charlotte , who considered this novel more suitable than The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
654-6
Brontë, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë. “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell; Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Wuthering Heights</span>; Extract from the Prefatory Note to ’Selections from Poems by Ellis Bell’”. Wuthering Heights, edited by Professor Ian Jack and Professor Ian Jack, Oxford University Press, pp. 359 - 65; 365.
365
Brontë, Anne, and Charles William Hatfield. The Complete Poems of Anne Brontë. Editor Shorter, Clement, Hodder and Stoughton.
ix
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
594

Timeline

14 September 1767: Midwife Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged at...

Building item

14 September 1767

Midwife Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged at Tyburn (in London near the present Marble Arch) for the murder of Mary Clifford , a workhouse apprentice.

1840: Thomas Cautley Newby established himself...

Writing climate item

1840

Thomas Cautley Newby established himself as a publisher in London; he earned notoriety for failing to honour contracts, especially with new writers.

1880: Sabine Baring-Gould's novel Mehalah, published...

Writing climate item

1880

Sabine Baring-Gould 's novelMehalah, published this year, was compared by Swinburne to Emily Brontë 's Wuthering Heights.

April 1972: Daffodils in Ice, first of three volumes...

Women writers item

April 1972

Daffodils in Ice, first of three volumes of poetry by Sister Mary Agnes , was published with a foreword by novelist Elizabeth Goudge .

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.

December 2004: An early nineteenth-century flintlock box-lock...

Building item

December 2004

An early nineteenth-century flintlock box-lock pocket pistol . . . with a spring bayonet below the barrel, once owned by the Rev. Patrick Brontë fetched £24,000 at auction.

Texts

Brontë, Emily. A Selection of Poems by Emily Brontë. Editor Spark, Muriel, Grey Walls Press, 1952.
Brontë, Anne, and Emily Brontë. Agnes Grey. T. C. Newby, 1847.
Brontë, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë. “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell; Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Wuthering Heights</span>; Extract from the Prefatory Note to ’Selections from Poems by Ellis Bell’”. Wuthering Heights, edited by Professor Ian Jack and Professor Ian Jack, Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 359 - 65; 365.
Sinclair, May, and Emily Brontë. “Introduction”. Wuthering Heights, Dent; Dutton, 1907.
Brontë, Emily. “Introduction”. The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë, edited by Charles William Hatfield, Columbia University Press, 1941, pp. 3-13.
Brontë, Emily. “Introduction”. Gondal’s Queen, edited by Fannie E. Ratchford, University of Texas Press, 1955, pp. 11-38.
Brontë, Emily. “Introduction”. The Poems of Emily Brontë, edited by Barbara Lloyd-Evans, Batsford, 1992, pp. 7-13.
Brontë, Emily. “Introduction”. The Poems of Emily Brontë, edited by Derek Roper, Clarendon, 1995, pp. 1-29.
Brontë, Charlotte et al. Poems. Aylott and Jones, 1846.
Brontë, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë. Editor Hatfield, Charles William, Columbia University Press, 1941.
Brontë, Emily. The Poems of Emily Brontë. Editors Roper, Derek and Edward Chitham, Clarendon, 1995.
Brontë, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Wuthering Heights. T. C. Newby, 1847.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Editor Jack, Professor Ian, Oxford University Press, 1981.
Brontë, Emily et al. Wuthering Heights; and, Agnes Grey. Smith, Elder, 1850.