Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848) is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. Her novel, Wuthering Heights, is considered an essential part of Gothic literature. At the same time, Brontë was also a very prolific poet whose dark and mysterious work prefigured the writings of poets like Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. However, the only poetry that was published in her lifetime was included in an 1846 edition with poems by her and her sisters titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The book sold only two copies and garnered three reviews, all of which singled out Emily's contributions to the book as being a highlight. One reviewer said that Emily Brontë had "things to speak that men will be glad to hear,—and an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted." Ultimately, only 21 of Brontë's more than 200 poems were collected in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Virtually all of her poems, however, were eventually compiled into a volume called The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë. Her work often showed a preoccupation with the passage of time, loss, and memory. While her poetry did not achieve the mainstream success of her prose, and her work went through rounds of heavy alterations after her death, it is just as important to her writing as a whole.
Brontë was born in the small village of Thornton, near the town of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Following the birth of Brontë's youngest sister Anne, the family relocated to Haworth where Brontë's father, Patrick, worked as a parish priest. At a very young age, Brontë suffered the loss of multiple family members. Her mother, Maria died from cancer when she was three, and her sisters Maria and Elizabeth died in a typhoid epidemic when she was six. In the aftermath of these tragedies, Brontë's father pulled all of the children from school and educated them at home with the help of their aunt, Elizabeth Bramwell, their mother's sister. All four children—Brontë, her brother Bramwell, and her sisters Charlotte and Anne—showed early academic promise and an interest in writing. Brontë in particular also demonstrated an aptitude for music, becoming a proficient pianist.
At thirteen, Brontë and Anne began writing about the fictional world of Gondal, which they populated with romantic figures resembling outlaws and heroes of Scottish mythology. These themes and images would form the bedrock of many of Brontë's interests across her poetry and prose. Brontë went on to become a teacher, first at the Roe's Head Girl's School and later at Law Hill School. However, her persistent health issues forced her to return home for three years. Eventually, Brontë followed Charlotte to a girls' school in Belgium to work on their French and German, in preparation to open their own school. This dream, however, did not come to fruition, as they struggled to get adequate enrollment.
In 1844, Brontë started to rewrite her old poems in two different notebooks, one unlabelled and one titled "Gondal Poems." The following year, Charlotte came upon these notebooks, and, after reading through them, told Brontë that the poems had to be published. At first, Brontë was enraged about this violation of her trust. However, she eventually came around when Anne told her that she too had been composing poems privately. Brontë, having forged a closer bond with Anne in childhood from their secret collaboration on the Gondal stories, was ultimately won over, and the three sisters began to prepare a volume of their work for publication. The collection, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, was released in 1846. The sisters adopted masculine pen names to conform to the gender restrictions in the literary culture of the time. While it did not sell well, it did receive some critical praise from The Athenaeum and The Critic, which, while highlighting Brontë's contributions, noted "the presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."
In 1847, Brontë published Wuthering Heights under the same pseudonym, Ellis Bell. The novel received a mixed reception at the time of its publication, but is now recognized as an essential work of the period. Unfortunately, Brontë would not live to see this acclaim, as she died from tuberculosis the following year, partially the result of health issues she had been suffering from for years. In her relatively brief life, Brontë would fundamentally reshape literature and have a significant impact on poets and fiction writers for generations. Her intense explorations of death, divinity, and loss showed an emotional nuance and depth.
