Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë was born in 1818 in Yorkshire, England, the fifth of six children. Her father was a clergyman. Her mother died when Emily was three. She spent most of her short life close to home, close to the moors, and largely away from the social world that would eventually consume her work. She was the quietest of the Brontë sisters, more private than Charlotte, less interested in being witnessed.

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell, because a woman's name on a novel was still a liability worth avoiding. The reviews were baffled. Readers found it too dark, too morally ambiguous, too strange to categorise. It didn't fit the novels they were used to. Some critics assumed it must have been written by a man.

Emily died of tuberculosis in December 1848, at thirty. She refused medical treatment until the last day of her life, which is either stubbornness or a kind of dignity depending on how you read it. She never saw the novel become what it became. She wrote one book. It was this one.