On 19 december 1848, english novelist and poet Emily Brontë died in Haworth, Yorkshire, England (aged 30).
"I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy."
Wuthering Heights's violence and passion led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man. Even though the novel received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was often condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion, the book subsequently became an English literary classic with a timeless and unique appeal. But Emily never knew the extent of fame she achieved with her only novel, as she died a year after its publication.
Emily Brontë remains a mysterious figure and a challenge to biographers because there is limited information about her, due to her solitary and reclusive nature. Her closest friend was her sister Anne. Together they shared their own fantasy world, Gondal, in childhood they were "like twins", "inseparable companions" and "in the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption". Charlotte Brontë as the elder sister had incentivized Emily's writing, seeing in her a great talent, and she remains nowadays the primary source of information about Emily's life.
In the Preface to the Second Edition of Wuthering Heights, in 1850, Charlotte wrote:
"My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word."
Emily's health was probably weakened by the harsh local climate. Her brother, Branwell, died suddenly on 24 September 1848. Despite her health problems, she was determined to go to her brother's funeral but there Emily caught a severe cold which quickly developed into inflammation of the lungs and led to tuberculosis. Though her condition worsened steadily, she rejected medical help and all offered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her. On the morning of 19 December 1848, Charlotte, fearing for her sister, wrote:
"She grows daily weaker. The physician's opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of use – he sent some medicine which she would not take. Moments so dark as these I have never known – I pray for God's support to us all."
At noon, Emily was worse; she could only whisper in gasps. With her last audible words she said to Charlotte, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now", but it was too late. She died that same day at about two in the afternoon, and in a Charlotte's letter to William Smith Williams she mentions Emily's dog lying at the side of her dying-bed.
Emily had grown so thin that her coffin measured only 16 inches wide. The carpenter said he had never made a narrower one for an adult.
Now she rests in the family vault in St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth.
[Portrait by Branwell Bronte at National Portrait Gallery, 1833]
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