Emily Jane Brontë (Ellis Bell)

Emily Jane Brontë (1818–1848) was the most fiercely solitary and enigmatic of the Brontë sisters. Intensely attached to the wild, heather-covered moors of Haworth and her beloved mastiff Keeper, Emily cared nothing for worldly acclaim or social society, finding spiritual freedom in nature and solitary poetic contemplation.

Writing under the pseudonym *Ellis Bell*, Emily published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, in December 1847. Breaking entirely with Victorian domestic decorum, the novel unleashed an elemental storm of passion, cruelty, and transcendent love between Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff ('Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same'). Condemned by initial critics as savage and morally incomprehensible, it is now revered as one of the greatest and most singular novels in world literature. Emily caught a severe chill at her brother Branwell's funeral and died of tuberculosis at thirty, refusing all medical aid until her final hours.