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Portrait of Emily Brontë

Literature · Novelists

Emily Brontë

1818–1848 · English

Victorian novel; Romanticism and Gothic

Emily Brontë, the most reclusive of the Haworth sisters, wrote a single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Its tale of the obsessive love of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw on the Yorkshire moors puzzled early reviewers but is now considered one of the greatest English novels; she was also a powerful poet.

How to spot them

  • ▸Pseudonym Ellis Bell
  • ▸Heathcliff and Cathy; Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange
  • ▸'I am Heathcliff'; narrators Lockwood and Nelly Dean
  • ▸Poems 'No coward soul is mine' and 'Remembrance' ('Cold in the earth')
  • ▸The imaginary kingdom of Gondal, shared with Anne

Key works

Wuthering Heights (1847)

Foundling Heathcliff's love for Catherine Earnshaw and revenge on two families across two generations

No coward soul is mine (1846 (published 1850))

Defiant poem of faith, published by Charlotte after Emily's death

Remembrance (1846)

Elegy beginning 'Cold in the earth', spoken by a Gondal character

The Old Stoic (1846)

Poem asking only for 'a chainless soul'

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)

Joint collection with Charlotte and Anne

Key ideas

  • A layered, nested narrative: the outsider Lockwood hears the story from the housekeeper Nelly Dean
  • Wild nature, the moors and elemental passion against the settled gentility of the Grange

Quick-fire facts

  • •Wuthering Heights opens with the date '1801.' followed by 'I have just returned from a visit to my landlord'
  • •Catherine declares 'I am Heathcliff!' to Nelly Dean
  • •Other characters include Edgar and Isabella Linton, Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw, and the servant Joseph
  • •Published by Thomas Newby in December 1847 together with Anne's Agnes Grey
  • •'Wuthering' is a Yorkshire word describing turbulent, stormy weather
  • •Born in Thornton, Yorkshire; died of tuberculosis at Haworth in December 1848, three months after her brother Branwell
  • •Her dog Keeper followed her funeral procession
  • •Kate Bush's debut single 'Wuthering Heights' reached No. 1 in the UK in 1978

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources