Emily Jane Bronte (1818-1848) was an English novelist and poet, now best remembered for her single novel, Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. She was the second eldest of the three surviving Bronte sisters, between Charlotte and Anne, and grew up in the parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors that so vividly shaped her imagination.
The Bronte children created elaborate imaginary worlds in childhood, and Emily continued to write poetry of striking intensity into adulthood. She and her sisters first appeared in print in a joint collection of poems published under the androgynous pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; Emily wrote as Ellis Bell.
Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, tells the turbulent story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw across two generations. Its passionate, violent emotion and unconventional structure puzzled many early readers but is now recognized as a work of extraordinary power and originality.
Emily died of tuberculosis at thirty, the year after her novel appeared, leaving behind a small but enduring body of work that secured her place among the great figures of English literature.
