EMILY BRONTE This book collects together Emily Brontes finest poems. EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION EMILY BRONTE as a poet is still neglected today. Her novel Wuthering Heights, however, remains one of the great English novels. It continues to sell, continues to be adapted for radio, theatre, film and television, continues to inspire readers and be cited by critics. Wuthering Heights has entered British culture as both a serious work in academic circles and a series of cliches in popular culture. For scholars, Wuthering Heights is a superbly crafted and atmospheric piece of fiction which takes its place beside the great works of the 19th century (Tess of the dUrbervilles, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice). For feminists, Emily Bronte has been appropriated as a proto-feminist, working largely in isolation in patriarchal Yorkshire, away from the metropolitan centres of culture, yet producing fiery fiction and poetry. For the general reader, Wuthering Heights is a fabulously moody, passionate and romantic book, with a powerful sense of pace, fully rounded characters and a thrill of mystery about it. The wind whistling through the heather in Winter is indeed the atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, and also of Brontes poetry. In poem after poem we find loving evocations of the moors: we hear of the breezy moor (in The starry night shall tidings bring), the flowerless moors (in How still, how happy Those are words), and of the moors where the linnet was trilling/ Its song on the old granite stone (in Loud without the wind was roaring, the most powerful of Brontes moor-poems). The key element of the moors is the expanse of sky and the wind that rages across it: the wind is without doubt Brontes favourite element, and is the sound that accompanies the cliched adaptions of Wuthering Heights. In the poetry we hear of The wind in its glory and pride (Loud without the wind was roaring), the life-giving wind (High waving heather neath stormy blasts bending), That wind, I used to hear it swelling/ With joy divinely deep (That wind, I used to hear it swelling), the wailing wind (All hushed and still within the house), And winds shall wage a wilder war (How still, how happy ), and The wild winds coldly blow (The night is darkening round me). These simple, elemental facts - the heather, the moor, the wind, the night - are what recur in Emily Brontes poems, time after time. Dells, snow, linnets, rocky crags, greyness, darkness, graves; one can practically see her composing her lines as she sits in a darkened house at night, with the wind whistling outside.
Author
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, being younger than Charlotte Brontë and older than Anne Brontë. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell. Emily was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. In childhood, after the death of their mother, the three sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell Brontë created imaginary lands (Angria, Gondal, Gaaldine, Oceania), which were featured in stories they wrote. Little of Emily's work from this period survived, except for poems spoken by characters (The Brontës' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941). In 1842, Emily commenced work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Later, with her sister Charlotte, she attended a private school in Brussels. They later tried to open up a school at their home, but had no pupils. It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by Charlotte that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily became Ellis Bell. In 1847, she published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, as two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne). Its innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics. Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name. Like her sisters, Emily's health had been weakened by the harsh local climate at home and at school. She caught a chill during the funeral of her brother in September, and, having refused all medical help, died on December 19, 1848 of tuberculosis, possibly caught from nursing her brother. She was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family capsule, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.
