Emily Jane Brontë
was born in 1818 and died in 1848 of
tuberculosis.
She had four sisters (including
Anne and
Charlotte) and a brother Branwell. Emily's life was filled
with
tragedy. Her mother died when she yas only three
and her two older sisters died in a
typhus epidemic three years later
when the sisters were sent away to school. The sisters returned home
after this and Emily was very close to her remaining siblings.
Emily's father
Patrick, a clergyman with literary inclinations,
encouraged all the sisters not to be limited by
traditional female roles and to think for themselves.
Emily lived in Haworth a small village in Yorkshire at the parsonage
next to the bleak yet beautiful moorland that was
the setting for her only novel
Wuthering Heights published in 1847.
This book was pseudonymously written under the name
Ellis Bell because of prejudice against women writers.
Before this she wrote some poetry with her sisters that was published
under the title Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell in 1846.
Emily's final illness began at his funeral of Branwell in 1848
who died after becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol.
These are Emily's poems.