Emily Jane Brontë was a British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, being younger than Charlotte Brontë and older than Anne Brontë. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell.
In 1842, Emily commenced work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Later, with her sister Charlotte, she attended a private school in Brussels. They later tried to open up a school at their home, but had no pupils.
It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by Charlotte that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names.
Like her brother, Branwell, and sisters, Charlotte and Anne, Emily Brontë was a competent artist. She received some formal tuition from John Bradley, a local artist in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in the 1830s, but largely Emily was self-taught, learning to draw by copying images from manuals and popular prints of the day.
Despite Elizabeth Gaskell’s sensational and mythic story about Emily beating her dog [recounted in Gaskell’s 1857 biography of Emily’s sister The Life of Charlotte Brontë], Emily Brontë was, in fact, a big animal lover. Indeed, the family’s pets – particularly Emily’s bullmastiff, Keeper, and Anne’s spaniel, Flossy – were regular muses for Emily’s art. As well as accompanying her for daily walks on the moors, Keeper, in particular, was often seen lying next to Emily on the carpet while she read. Apparently, Emily often had to adjust her own position to reciprocate his affection, manoeuvring herself to get her arm around his neck.
Emily’s father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, taught Emily to use a pistol in the 1840s. He discharged a weapon on a daily basis from a top floor window in the parsonage as a preventative measure against civil unrest by Luddites, a group which had rioted against technology replacing skilled craftsmen in the early 19th-century. When his eyesight began to fail, Patrick gave Emily the responsibility of discharging the weapon daily because, as the Haworth stationer John Greenwood put it in his diary, Patrick “had such unbounded confidence in his daughter Emily, knowing, as he did, her unparalleled intrepidity and firmness.”
It’s said that Emily Brontë made the best bread in Haworth – a skill she developed when Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Akyroyd, the housekeeper at the parsonage, slipped and broke her leg on the ice in Haworth’s main street, making it difficult for her to complete her domestic duties. Emily and her sisters resisted the suggestion that Tabby should leave her post and instead collectively took on Tabby’s responsibilities. As a result, Emily quickly mastered the art of bread-making.
Although Emily is largely known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), the majority of her creative energy was put into the construction of Gondal – a sprawling imaginary island located in the Pacific Ocean that was led by women.
Although we think of Emily Brontë as a great writer, she was also an accomplished pianist. The Brontës’ family friend Ellen Nussey, who was a regular visitor to their home in Haworth, said that Emily played the family piano “with precision and brilliancy”.
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