Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

Emily Jane Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/; 30 July 1818 -- 19 December 1848) was an English writer and writer, best remembered for her solitary novel, Wuthering high, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four living Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë. She was the jr. sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family affected to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual minister of religion, and it was in these surroundings that their literary gifts flourished.

After the death of their mother in 1821, when Emily was three years old, the older sisters Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte were sent to the priesthood Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, where they encountered abuse and privations later delineated by Charlotte in Jane Eyre. Emily joined the school for a brief period. When a typhus fever epidemic sweptback the school, Maria and Elizabeth caught it. Maria, who may actually have had TB, was sent home, where she died. Emily was later reaffected from the school on with Charlotte and Elizabeth. Elizabeth died shortly after their return home.

The three leftover sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell were thenceforth educated at home by their father and auntie Elizabeth Branwell, their mother's sister. In their leisure time the children created a number of fantasy worlds, which were featured in stories they wrote and enacted about the imaginary adventures of their toy soldiers on with the Duke of Wellington and his sons, Charles and Arthur Wellesley. Little of Emily's work from this period survives, except for poems expressed by characters (The Brontës' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941). When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. With the exception of Emily's Gondal poems and Anne's lists of Gondal's characters and place-names, their Hagiographa on Gondal were not preserved. Some "diary papers" of Emily's have survived in which she describes current events in Gondal, some of which were written, others enacted with Anne. One dates from 1841, when Emily was twenty-three: some other from 1845, when she was twenty-seven.

At seventeen, Emily attended the Roe Head girls' school, where Charlotte was a teacher, but managed to stay only three months before being overcome by extreme nostalgia. She returned home and Anne took her place. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain adequate education to open a small school of their own.

Wuthering high is the only published novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846 and published in July of the following year. It was not written until December 1847 under the anonym Ellis Bell, after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. A late second edition was emended by Charlotte in 1850.

The title of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors of the story. The narrative centres on the across-the-board, ablaze, but finally doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and the people around them.

Today considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering high met with mixed reviews and contention when it first appeared, chiefly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Although Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was generally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works during most of the nineteenth century, galore consequent critics of Wuthering high argued that it was a superior accomplishment. Wuthering high has besides given rise to galore adaptations and divine works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, a ballet, three operas (by Bernard Herrmann, Carlisle Floyd, and Frédéric Chaslin), a role-playing game, and the 1978 chart-topping song by Kate Bush.

This audio collection contains a treasury of 100 classic books and includes information on the life and times of the author, the theme of the book, the characters, the story outline, a aphoristic yet elaborate condensation of the story and a discussion of the belief that make each book one of the great classical works of literature.

© ''IntelliQuest World's 100 sterling Books'' 1995

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