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...
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...
CB
had begun creating plays with her siblings: both secret Bed plays produced under the covers with Emily
in their shared bed, and daytime plays involving Branwell
and Anne
as well.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
151
Reception
Charlotte Brontë
CB
travelled to London with her sister Anne
to refute the claim that Currer
, Ellis
, and Acton Bell
were a single author.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
557
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...
