Brontë, Emily (1818–1848)

English novelist and member of the Brontë family. Her works include Wuthering Heights (1847) and her Poems (1846).

Emily's unusual character and intellect seem to have been unrecognized by her family until quite late in her short life. She was passionately attached to the wild countryside around her home, and always pined in any other surroundings. In her only novel, Wuthering Heights, she portrays the influence of the elements and elemental passions on human souls; the strangeness of the characters contrasts with the realistic description of the bleak moorland setting, yet the two are inseparable. She deliberately rejected the idea that her stay in Brussels (1842–43) might influence her, and chose rather to retain her originality of thought. Her sister Charlotte Brontë was astonished by her poetry and regarded her work as unparalleled. She died from tuberculosis.

Much of Emily's poetry supposedly describes events in the history of her imaginary country, Gondal, though the thoughts and feelings expressed can be assumed, at least partly, to reflect her own.