Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emily Brontë
-
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.
Carrington attempted to give herself a miscarriage by riding a horse violently, and when this did not work she became depressed to a nearly suicidal degree.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray.
She produced a pen-and-ink drawing for an edition of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
, but this was never used.
Hill, Jane, and Michael Holroyd. The Art of Dora Carrington. Herbert Press.
44-5
Intertextuality and Influence
A. S. Byatt
Charlotte Brontë
's poem We wove a web in childhood appears as epigraph, along with a sentence from Coleridge
about the serpent as emblem of the imagination.
Byatt, A. S. The Game. Chatto and Windus.
4
Both web and serpent are ominous. This...
Family and Intimate relationships
Emma Frances Brooke
It appears that EFB
had at least two sisters, and that they may have both been writers. An article written after EFB revealed her authorship of A Superfluous Woman quotes her still undiscovered biographer: There...
Textual Production
Emma Frances Brooke
It seems that EFB
began writing seriously for financial reasons after her sudden loss of fortune and her move south to Hampstead in London in 1879.
Edwards, Joseph, editor. The First Labour Annual 1895: A Year Book of Industrial Progress and Social Welfare. No. 1, The Harvester Press.
163
Daniels, Kay. “Emma Brooke: Fabian, feminist and writer”. Women’s History Review, Vol.
12
, No. 2, pp. 153-68.
156-7
She officially adopted authorship as her profession...
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
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Brontë
AB
's elder sisters were Maria
(born in 1814), Elizabeth
, (1815), Charlotte
, (1816), and Emily
(1818).
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
59, 61, 71, 78
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Brontë
The close of the year 1848 was terrible for AB
. Her sister Emily
died of consumption on 19 December, as had Branwell
in September.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
576
Textual Production
Anne Brontë
Although some of the collaboratively produced juvenilia of the Brontë children is still extant, none has survived that was individually authored by AB
.
Chitham, Edward. A Life of Anne Brontë. B. Blackwell.
5
In their childhood play which developed into the fantasy worlds...
Textual Production
Anne Brontë
Charlotte
, Emily
, and Anne published a collection, Poems, under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Bell was the middle name of their father's curate.
Gérin, Winifred. Emily Brontë: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
185
They received their first copies on...
Literary responses
Anne Brontë
On 4 July 1846 two anonymous reviews of Poems by Currer
, Ellis
and Acton Bell
appeared, one mildly positive by Sydney Dobell
in the Athenæum, and one enthusiastic in the Critic. A...
Publishing
Anne Brontë
The novel was accepted for publication by the London publisher Thomas Cautley Newby
along with Emily
's Wuthering Heights. The sisters had to underwrite the publication by paying £50, to be refunded if sales...
Reception
Anne Brontë
An anonymous reviewer of Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights in The Spectator for 18 December 1847 commented that the work of all three Charlotte BrontëEmily BrontëBrontë
s suffered from injudicious selection of the theme and matter.
Allott, Miriam, editor. The Brontës. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
218
Literary responses
Anne Brontë
The novel was reviewed immediately by The Spectator and the Athenæum. The former accused the author of a morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal, and objected to the coarseness of...
