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Emily Brontë, as painted by her brother Patrick Branwell Brontë –

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as a poetic genius. 

Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell. In 1820, Emily’s younger sister Anne, the last Brontë child, was born. Shortly thereafter, the family moved eight miles away to Haworth, where Patrick was employed as perpetual curate. In Haworth, the children would have opportunities to develop their literary talents. 

Here are the top 10 fascinating facts about Emily Brontë.

1. Emily was best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws’ foster son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

2. Emily’s book Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest novels ever written in English

Emily Brontë as depicted on canvas by Branwell Brontë –

Wuthering Heights is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written in English, but contemporaneous reviews were polarized. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality and religious and societal values.

Wuthering Heights was accepted by publisher Thomas Newby along with Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey before the success of their sister Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre, but they were published later.

3. Emily’s solitary nature made her a mysterious figure and a challenge for biographers

Emily Brontë’s solitary and reclusive nature has made her a mysterious figure and a challenge for biographers to assess. Except for Ellen Nussey and Louise de Bassompierre, Emily’s fellow student in Brussels, she does not seem to have made any friends outside her family. 

Her closest friend was her sister Anne. Together they shared their own fantasy world, Gondal, and, according to Ellen Nussey, in childhood, they were like twins, inseparable companions and in the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption.

4. Emily published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë’s signatures from when they wrote under their Bell pseudonyms –

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was a volume of poetry published jointly by the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne in 1846, and their first work in print. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the sisters adopted masculine first names. 

All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily became Ellis Bell. The book was printed by Aylott and Jones, from London. The first edition failed to attract interest, with only two copies being sold. However, the sisters decided to continue writing for publication and began work on their first novels, which became commercial successes.

5. Emily’s love of nature has been the subject of many anecdotes

A newspaper dated 31 December 1899, gives the folksy account that with bird and beast, Emily had the most intimate relations, and from her walks she often came with fledgling or young rabbit in hand, talking softly to it, quite sure, too, that it understood.

Elizabeth Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte, told the story of Emily’s punishing her pet dog Keeper for lying on the delicate white counterpane that covered one of the beds in the Parsonage.

6. Emily’s real name did not appear when Wuthering Heights was first published

Title page of original edition of Wuthering Heights by ElinorD –

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby, appearing as the first two volumes of a three-volume set that included Anne Brontë’s, Agnes Grey. 

The authors were printed as Ellis and Acton Bell; Emily’s real name did not appear until 1850 when it was printed on the title page of an edited commercial edition. The novel’s innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics.

7. Emily’s manuscript of her second book was never found

Although a letter from her publisher indicates that Emily had begun to write a second novel, the manuscript has never been found. Perhaps Emily or a member of her family eventually destroyed the manuscript, if it existed, when she was prevented by illness from completing it. 

It has also been suggested that, though less likely, the letter could have been intended for Anne Brontë, who was already writing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, her second novel.

8. Emily died a year after the publication of her only novel

Emily Bronte still in Waterstone’s Bookshop, Bradford by Tim Green –

Emily’s health was probably weakened by the harsh local climate and by unsanitary conditions at home, where water was contaminated by runoff from the church’s graveyard. Emily caught a severe cold that quickly developed into inflammation of the lungs and led to tuberculosis.

Emily Brontë never knew the extent of fame she achieved with her only novel, as she died a year after its publication, aged 30.

9. The Unthanks released Lines which are translations of Emily’s poems to music

The English folk group The Unthanks released Lines, a trilogy of short albums, which includes settings of Brontë’s poems to music and was recorded at the Brontës’ parsonage home, using their own Regency era piano, played by Adrian McNally.

Lines Parts One, Two & Three, a trilogy of albums about the Hull triple trawler tragedy in 1968, the First World War and the poems of Emily Brontë, the principal link between them being their focus on female perspectives across time, was released in February 2019.

10. A 2022 film named Emily was released depicting her life

In the 2022 film Emily, written and directed by Frances O’Connor, Emma Mackey plays Emily before the publication of Wuthering Heights. The film mixes known biographical details with imagined situations and relationships.

Emily premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival before being theatrically released in the United Kingdom by Warner Bros. Pictures on 14 October 2022, and in the United States by Bleecker Street on 17 February 2023.