Brontë, Emily. (1818 - 1848).
L i f e
- a sister of Branwell, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë
- educated at home by discussing poetry, history, and politics
- all the three sister writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne led a solitary life in a relative seclusion x but: possessed an informed view of the wider world
W o r k
- Branwell and Charlotte led a childhood series of book-length manuscripts about the fantasy kingdom Angria
- Emily and Anne later kept on writing separate series about the imaginary island Gondal: Gothic extravaganzas mixed with contemporary issues
P o e t r y :
- sought to transcend the mortal life through imagination or death
- deeply attached to the wild Yorkshire moors where she spent her life
Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846):
- Currer, Ellis, and Acton = genderless pseudonyms for the sisters
- sold only two copies x but: inspired each of them to write a novel
F i c t i o n :
Wuthering Heights (1847):
- a conventional Gothic novel x but: in an unconventional, diverse, and multi-layered narrative shape
- juxtaposes the Trushcross Grange x the Wuthering Heights; passive gentility x restless energy; complacency of insiders x intrusions of outsiders
Quote
"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees—my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff—he's always, always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself—but as my own being."
From Wuthering Heights (1847).
Basics
(Picture: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Emily Brontë. (1818 - 1848). British. -
Work
Novelist. Poet. Author of Wuthering Heights (1847).
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Genres
Victorian novel and poetry. Gothicism.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.