Emily Jane Bronte

							Emily Jane Bronte


     Emily Jane Bronte remains a mystery. Very little is known
about her. There is
little information, and much of what we have is contradictory.
She is the author
of only one novel and a few bits of poetry. This gives people
little to build on.
The majority of what we know about her comes from her sister,
Charlotte, who is
another well known author. From what is known, it would appear
that Emily led an
ordinary life of a nineteenth century female. She attended
boarding school and
learned domestic skills at home. In other ways her life was
unusual and even
eccentric, contributing to the originality of her great novel.

        Emily Jane Bront was born on July 30, 1818 in Thornton,
Yorkshire. She
was the fifth child and fourth daughter of Reverend Patrick
Bront and Maria
Branwell Bront . When she was two years old, the family moved to
Haworth. This
remained her home until she passed away in December of 1848 at
the age of thirty.

        Both of Emily's parents influenced her literary
education. Her mother
published one essay, and her father published four books and a
little poetry. In
1821, Maria died of cancer, leaving Emily and her four siblings
motherless. Her
sister, Elizabeth, came to live as a housekeeper and was
responsible for
training the girls in the household arts.

        While at home doing housework, Emily secretly worked on
poetry. In 1845,
Charlotte discovered some of Emily's poems and confessed that
she, too, had
written some poetry. As it turned out, so had Anne. After much
persuading, the
poems were published in a small book entitled Poems by Currer,
Ellis, and Acton
Bell. Pseudonyms were used because the girls wanted their poetry
to be taken
seriously. Only two copies were sold. The failure led all three
to begin work on
novels: Emily on Wuthering Heights, Charlotte on Jane Eyre, and
Anne on Agnes
Grey. All three novels were successful and published in 1847 and
1848.

        During this time, their brother, Branwell, had become
addicted to
alcohol and drugs, and was dying. Emily, the one closest to him,
was the only
one tried to help, not judge him. She beat out the flames with
her bare hands
when he wrapped himself in a blanket and set it on fire while he
was drunk.
Despite all of Emily's efforts, Branwell died in September of
1848. He was only
thirty years of age. Emily caught a cold at his funeral and
never left home
again. She died on December 19, 1848 at the age of thirty. She
never knew of the
great success of her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights.