Wuthering Heights

About this book

Emily Jane Brontë (/¿br¿nti/, commonly /-te¿/; 30 July 1818 - 19 December 1848) 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 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. Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 to Maria Branwell and an Irish father, Patrick Brontë. The family was living on Market Street, in a house now known as the Brontë Birthplace in the village of Thornton on the outskirts of Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Emily was the second youngest of six siblings, preceded by Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Branwell. 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. in 1850, Charlotte wrote: My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word. Emily Brontë has often been characterised as a devout if somewhat unorthodox Christian, a heretic and a visionary "mystic of the moors".

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