Emily Brontë.

Of all the writing sisters of Haworth, Emily remains the most elusive, and any life of her must work by inference and sympathy to reach the mind that produced one of the strangest novels in the language.

What it's about

This biography sets out to illuminate the life of Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights and of poetry of remarkable intensity. It follows what can be known of her upbringing on the Yorkshire moors, her family and the celebrated household of literary sisters, her reserve and her fierce independence, and the brief course of a life that ended young. From these fragments it attempts to reconstruct the temperament and imagination behind her work.

Themes

The book dwells on solitude, genius and the relationship between a writer's guarded life and her unguarded art. It considers the moors as landscape and as inner geography, the intense bond and rivalry of the Brontë siblings, and the puzzle of how so sheltered an existence could yield so wild and passionate a novel. The elusiveness of its subject becomes part of its story.

Why it still matters

Emily Brontë's single novel has never lost its grip on readers, and the fascination with the woman behind it endures. A biography that attends carefully to her life and circumstances deepens our reading of Wuthering Heights and enriches our sense of the extraordinary family that produced it, while honouring the privacy its subject so fiercely kept.

Who it's for

For admirers of the Brontës and of Wuthering Heights, for readers of literary biography, and for anyone drawn to the mystery of where a singular imagination comes from.