Emily Brontë
Spine number 01
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
The three Brontë sisters bring together dramatic scenes, meditations on faith and loss, and poems shaped by their imagined worlds. Emily’s contributions include Remembrance, The Prisoner and The Old Stoic, with voices that move between grief and defiance. Published at the sisters’ expense in 1846 under their Bell pseudonyms, this entry covers the whole shared volume; its mixture of invented speakers and reflective verse accounts for its mixed classification.
1846 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 02
Wuthering Heights
When Mr Earnshaw brings Heathcliff into his Yorkshire household, the boy’s bond with Catherine Earnshaw unsettles the family’s loyalties and hierarchies. A visiting tenant hears their history through the housekeeper Nelly Dean, in a story where affection, cruelty and possession are difficult to disentangle. Brontë’s only novel was published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell.
1847 · book · Fiction
Spine number 03
The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë
Brontë’s imagined Gondal characters inhabit a world of captivity, separation and political conflict, beside lyrics that question death, belief and the powers of the imagination. The collection combines fictional dramatic voices with reflective poetry rather than presenting every speaker as Brontë herself. Edited by Clement Shorter and published posthumously in 1908, this edition gathers poems printed in 1846 and 1850 alongside verse recovered from manuscripts.
1908 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction · Posthumous
Begin with Brontë’s only novel for a sustained encounter with her storytelling, or approach her poetry in shorter sessions before exploring the wider collection.
Where to begin
Start here
Wuthering Heights
The novel offers the fullest introduction to Brontë’s interest in belonging, power and emotions that resist restraint. Take time to keep track of the two generations and the narrators who describe them: the tension between a voice and the events it reports is part of the reading experience.
In the collection About 7 hr 44 min at 250 words/min
For shorter reading sessions
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
Begin with Emily’s poems, credited to Ellis Bell, to hear her compressed movement between grief, imagination and defiance. Remembrance and The Old Stoic offer contrasting entry points; the shared volume also lets you compare her voice with Charlotte’s and Anne’s.
Not yet in our collection
Read next
The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë
Move to this wider collection when you want to follow the poetry beyond the small selection published during Brontë’s lifetime. Read the Gondal pieces as dramatic moments in an imagined world, allowing their voices and recurring conflicts to emerge without expecting a continuous story.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1846
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
collection · Collaboration
The three Brontë sisters bring together dramatic scenes, meditations on faith and loss, and poems shaped by their imagined worlds. Emily’s contributions include Remembrance, The Prisoner and The Old Stoic, with voices that move between grief and defiance. Published at the sisters’ expense in 1846 under their Bell pseudonyms, this entry covers the whole shared volume; its mixture of invented speakers and reflective verse accounts for its mixed classification.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1847
Wuthering Heights
book
When Mr Earnshaw brings Heathcliff into his Yorkshire household, the boy’s bond with Catherine Earnshaw unsettles the family’s loyalties and hierarchies. A visiting tenant hears their history through the housekeeper Nelly Dean, in a story where affection, cruelty and possession are difficult to disentangle. Brontë’s only novel was published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell.
In the collection
Published 1908
The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë
collection · Posthumous
Brontë’s imagined Gondal characters inhabit a world of captivity, separation and political conflict, beside lyrics that question death, belief and the powers of the imagination. The collection combines fictional dramatic voices with reflective poetry rather than presenting every speaker as Brontë herself. Edited by Clement Shorter and published posthumously in 1908, this edition gathers poems printed in 1846 and 1850 alongside verse recovered from manuscripts.
Not yet in our collection
Emily Brontë was an English poet and novelist whose writing explores fierce attachments, solitude and the wish for freedom. Her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), follows two Yorkshire families through love, resentment and struggles over property. Its shifting narrators leave readers to weigh competing accounts, while the moorland setting gives the story a physical force that also runs through her poetry.
Born at Thornton in Yorkshire on 30 July 1818, Brontë grew up at Haworth Parsonage. She and her younger sister Anne developed the imaginary world of Gondal, which provided characters and situations for many of her poems. In 1846 she published verse alongside Charlotte and Anne in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the name Ellis Bell; her novel appeared under the same name the following year. She died at Haworth on 19 December 1848, aged thirty. Much of her poetry reached readers only after her death.