Sisters Brontë
Sisters Brontë A family of British novelists, Charlotte (1816-55), Emily Jane (1818-48), and Anne (1820-49). The daughters of a clergyman, they had a lonely upbringing at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors, with their brother Branwell (1817-48). As children they wrote stories set in the fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal, which influenced their later work, notably that of Emily. Charlotte went to Brussels in 1842 to train as a teacher. In 1845 she discovered some poems secretly written by Emily and in 1846 the three sisters published a book of poetry under the pseudonyms of Curren Ellis, and Acton Bell. Charlotte’s masterpiece is the novel Jane Eyre, a powerful love story. In 1854 she married her father’s curate but her tragic death the following year cut short their happy married life. Although Emily was one of the most original Romantic poets, she is best remembered for her novel Wuthering Heights (1847), dealing with the violent and unfulfilled love of the elemental Heathcliff for Catherine Earnshaw. Anne published two rather less dramatic novels, Agnes Grey (1845) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Branwell wasted his literary talents; he was dismissed from his railway clerkship for negligence and became an opium addict. Branwell, Emily, and Anne all died of consumption within two years of each other.
