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.
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
Reception
Caroline Clive
Hailed by many as the first sensation novel, Paul Ferroll also marks the beginning of the popularization of a modern breed of villainous hero,
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
although Emily Brontë
's Heathcliff, along with a whole older breed...
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.
The Poems of Emily Brontë, CM
's article reclaiming the neglected poems of that great genius,
Mew, Charlotte. Collected Poems and Prose. Editor Warner, Val, Carcanet and Virago.
356
was published in Temple Bar.
Mew, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Collected Poems and Prose, edited by Val Warner, Carcanet and Virago, p. ix - xxii.
viii
Publishing
Jessie Fothergill
A fan of the Brontë sisters, JF
published a glowing appraisal of Emily Brontë
's Wuthering Heights in the December 1887 edition of Temple Bar, participating in the late Victorian recuperation of Brontë's literary reputation.
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
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...
Author summary
A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR
's long career occupied the late decades of nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. It spanned two countries, England and France, and two languages, English and French. Robinson was generally...
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...
While best remembered for writing spasmodic poetry, STD
also worked as a reviewer. In the Palladium and the Athenæum he gave positive reviews to works by Anne
, Emily
, and Charlotte Brontë
.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press.
745
Literary Setting
Olive Schreiner
Cherry Clayton
believes the novel's fictional English setting, Greenwood, was influenced by the English landscapes in the works of Hardy
, George Eliot
, and the BrontësEmily BrontëAnne Brontë
. Schreiner herself had not yet been to...
Literary Setting
Elizabeth Gaskell
Towards the close of the book, EG
declines to pronounce on her subject: I cannot measure or judge of such a character as hers.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin.
