On this date in English literary history - July 30, 1818,
novelist Emily Bronte was born. The Bronte family lived in the remote village
of Haworth on the bleak Yorkshire moors and were largely left to their own
devices after the death of their mother when Emily was an infant. A shy,
reclusive child, Emily suffered intensely from homesickness whenever she left
the parsonage. She joined her three older sisters at a school for clergymen's
children when she was six, but the two oldest died, partly because of the
school's harsh and unhealthy conditions. She and Charlotte returned home. The
girls, along with their sister Anne and brother Branwell, read voraciously and
created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands. Many of Emily's poems
were written about these imaginary realms.
Bronte worked several short, unhappy stints as a
governess and schoolteacher. In 1842, Emily and Charlotte traveled to Brussels
to study school administration, hoping to open their own school in Haworth one
day, which they never accomplished. In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems
Emily and Anne had written and revealed that she too had secretly been writing
verse. They published the work, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,
in 1846. Although the book sold poorly, the sisters continued writing. Emily
published Wuthering Heights in 1847. She died of tuberculosis a year
later, on December 19, 1848. A second edition of Wuthering Heights,
published in 1850, included a preface by Charlotte, explaining that the book
was superior to her own Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights is now
considered a classic.
