Poet, teacher, and novelist Emily Brontë (1818–1848) was raised near the moors in the English village of Haworth, which became the setting for Wuthering Heights, her only novel. It is there that Emily developed her youthful fantasies and love of writing.
Due to a more guarded upbringing, less is known of the enigmatic Emily Brontë than of her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, both of whom were also published pseudonymously. Written under the pen name “Ellis Bell,” Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, alternately appalling and beguiling readers—some of whom even questioned the author’s sanity. Emily’s legacy proved so troubling that, after her death from tuberculosis, Charlotte took it upon herself to revise her sister’s poems and soften her standing among critics. Though Charlotte hoped to invent a reputation for Emily more fitting for the standards of the time, the fierce originality of Wuthering Heights endures.
Adapted for stage and screen, ballets, operas, and even anime, the story features beloved characters Heathcliff and Catherine, who are—next to Romeo and Juliet—perhaps the most famous doomed lovers in all of English literature.
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