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
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
By 1912 VW had published on Margaret Cavendish (as Duchess of Newcastle), Ann, Lady Fanshawe , Elizabeth Carter , Anna Seward , Elizabeth, Lady Holland , Maria Edgeworth , Lady Hester Stanhope , theBrontë
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Virginia Woolf
The book's contents consisted largely of already published journalism, carefully revised for the collection.
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. ix - xv.
x
Woolf had put detailed consideration into the idea of making a structure for the book, but she ended by rejecting...
Publishing Romer Wilson
RW published a biography, All Alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë, for which she had been commissioned the previous year.
Selincourt, Ernest De. “The Brontës: Review of <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>All Alone</span> by Romer Wilson”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1376, p. 446.
446
Seymour-Smith, Martin, and Andrew C. Kimmens, editors. World Authors, 1900-1950. H. W. Wilson.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Literary responses Romer Wilson
The Times Literary Supplement reviewed this novel harshly. It judged the story fairly dull and pointless, and took issue with Jill's girlish narrative tone: Miss Wilson's slangy unsophistication is not simplicity; it is merely an...
Textual Features Eudora Welty
The word regional, said Welty, is careless, condescending, and an outsider's term; it has no meaning for the insider who is doing the writing.Jane Austen , theBrontësisters , and the writers...
Literary responses Mary Webb
This exemplifies the double-edged nature of MW 's reputation. On the one hand she has become almost synonymous in the public mind with the genre she made famous: the romantic, earthy, rural novel. Her early...
Textual Production Rosamund Marriott Watson
RMW was by this time establishing a name for herself as an poet. In 1890 Elizabeth A. Sharp included three of her poems in Women Poets of the Victorian Era. The anthology also features...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
As a child SW loved writing poems and stories, all entirely derivative from her reading of popular books like the Dr Who novelizations. In the sixth form at school she began to find the study...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
SW puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...
Textual Production Mary Augusta Ward
MAW produced a series of introductions to the Haworth edition of works by Charlotte , Emily , and Anne Brontë .
Sutherland, John. Mrs. Humphry Ward. Clarendon Press.
231
Reception Mary Augusta Ward
Understanding the difficulties of dealing in detail with Victorian religious perplexity, MAW herself placed the book in the tradition of religious or social propaganda
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers.
229
shared by Froude 's The Nemesis of Faith, Newman
Literary responses Doreen Wallace
Gina and Alistair Wisker , in a literary note on DW , liken her poetry to that of Emily Brontë , Christina Rossetti , and Charlotte Mew .
Wisker, Alistair et al. “Introduction: A Literary Appreciation”. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner, Edwin Mellen Press, p. xvii - xxi.
xviii
Reception Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT , whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Reception Flora Thompson
In further Ladies Companion competitions the same year, FT went on to win joint second prize for her essay on Emily Brontë (which, again, the magazine printed) and another first prize for her essay on...
Textual Production Flora Thompson
In 1923 The Catholic Fireside launched FT 's column entitled the Fireside Reading Circle. As well as competitions for readers, with her critiques on their efforts, it included her own essays on literary topics...

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.