Bronte, Emily Books

Wuthering Heights (Twelve-Point)

Emily Bronte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 505 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

And this was voted England's favorite romance? 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I've recently had to read this book for AP Lit, like many of the other reviewers, and I don't see how this is a classic in any regard. Sure it is written in a lovely matter, but there are 15000 people with various English majors who can write beautifully as well. It's hailed as a love story, but at the core of it there isn't any love at all. Just an assortment of angry childish people all who are developed as a still birthed child.

Heathcliff and (old) Catherine love each other. But WHY, they love each other is never granted in any regard. They are in love simply for the sake of having a story a write about. That's it. Then the characters themselves aren't just underdeveloped, but they're TERRIBLE people to add on top of that. I am not one of those people who feels the need to love each and every single character, or any of them actually, but this must at least backed up with something to frame the character.

Heathcliff is a horrible person simply because, based on what was given of his character in the book, he was abused. Now this aspect of course warrants some sympathy for him. And even though he is vengeful while he is a child, this is completely understandable given how he is treated. However, as a man he does not grow at all. He degenerates to a sadist simply because he didn't get what he wants, why he wants Catherine is anybody's guest.

I'll just stop here because I honestly can't go on. The book is far too terrible for me to even go through breaking down each miserable character paragraph by paragraph. To put this book simply; it's basically like an emo's version of a Tyler Perry story. The conflicts exist simply because the characters will it to.

Editorial Review:

The story of Cathy Earnshaw and the wild Heathcliff as they fall in love on the Yorkshire moors spans three generations and is seen through the eyes of the narrators Lockwood and Nelly Dean. Emily Bronte tells of the passion between Cathy and Heathcliff with such vivid intensity that her tale of tragic love has gripped readers for over 100 years.

Wuthering Heights (Penguin Popular Classics)

Emily Bronte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This Heathcliff Is No Pussy! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

(Like the curmudgeonly CAT in the COMIC...get it?)

Great old-style classic novel. One of Henry Miller's favorites; that's what attracted me to it.

I liked the style of the narrative, largely told through the reminiscences of the housekeeper Nelly. This is one dysfunctional family!

Like many novels from this period it's all about the interpersonal relationships; there isn't anything external happening to anyone here of any particular consequence. But the masterful storytelling and imaginings of the authoress really do make this a worthwhile and rewarding literary journey.

Read it! Classics rule!

Editorial Review:

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere ...As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge - and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death. And how desire can kill.

Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)

Emily Bronte

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The text of the novel is based on the first edition of 1847. For the Fourth Edition, the editor collated the 1847 text with the two modern texts (Norton's William J. Sale collation and the Clarendon), and found a great number of variants, including accidentals. This discovery led to changes in the body of the Norton Critical Edition text that are explained in the preface. New to "Backgrounds and Contexts" are additional letters, a compositional chronology, related prose, and reviews of the 1847 text. "Criticism" collects five important assessments of Wuthering Heights, three of them new to the Fourth Edition, including Lin Haire-Sargeant's essay on film adaptations of the novel.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics)

Emily Bronte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

in a poor, if nice, dress... but it's second-to-none, perhaps the best ! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This edition is just the last aesthetic overhauling of Oxford World's Classics ones with just the same picture (by the Pre-Raphaelite master John Everett Millais) on the cover (see my reviews on them or the global vision I offer in the Norton Critical Fourth Edition review).

The cover has been the main object of redesign and looks good, even showy. The only complaint I have, with this as well as with previous editions, and Penguin and some worse ones (like Wordsworth Classics), is the very bad paper quality and the outrageous mass-market paperback with glue-only binding. The book looks like it were to be destroyed BEFORE reading. This just can't be the only format in which to get this absolute classical masterpiece of world-over novel writing, in one edition in which the best scholarly efforts have been spent to get a pure text with adequate annotation. At the very least it should be offered as a quality paperback, with flaps, acceptable paper and, of course, signature-sewn.

As far as the contents and not the vessel is concerned, and summarizing: the best 1847 reliable and authoritative Clarendon critical text (due to Hilda Marsden), even with over-conservative details for a mass-market edition, like a rather heavy and outdated punctuation and the unbelievable two-volume implied structure, with its clumsy independent chapter numbering.
Ian Jack's annotation is yet one of the very best, even if its Yorkshire dialect support is scanty and a bit difficult to follow (most good editions offer by now full
foot-of-page glosses of the dialect tirades -glosses that are sometimes wrong and misleading-). The Bibliography is very good, selected, sorted and annotated (I don't know if updated, suppose not). The long Introduction by Patsy Stoneman (30 pp) is excellent, even if a little scholarly (and, as with most of other Introductions, please don't read it BEFORE the novel but after it, just as the "Charlotte's materials" of 1850 provided at the end of the volume).

This edition is a really good buy, that should be compared to the best text-oriented editions:
A) Penguin (Pauline Nestor),
B) Routledge (Heather Glen, very hard to come by, try Amazon Canada).
You may also consider the good context-oriented editions (that is, "study" ones, rich in contextual materials and/or critical essays), namely,
C) Norton Critical Fourth Edition (Dunn), with rather scanty if good annotation and a bit eclectic and even idiosyncratic text (but with very good punctuation);
D) the NEW Broadview Press edition by Beth Newman, with scanty notes (very good as they are) and full dialectal glosses like Norton Fourth (both sets of glosses neither wrong nor misleading). Some textual foibles or little blunders are not worrisome (with the best punctuation in town). The overall selection of contextual materials is, arguably, the BEST EVER, with a very interesting document on "brain fever". The brief and original Introduction (21 pp) is excellent and thought-provoking.

Not to be forgotten in this class is
E) Longman Cultural Edition (Alison Booth), featuring good if more conventional Introduction and good annotation that includes a little blunder about Milo
in Chapter 9, with the authoritative Clarendon text (I will inform you if there is any hidden foible with this), and a too vast array of almost dis-arrayed contextual pieces (more than forty of them), interesting but too brief to be really meaningful.
I stand by what I have written, but don't forget that this is one of the very best editions available!

Oneworld Classics is a worse choice, in spite of his good paperback making, with good paper and printing quality and covers with flaps. With its good annotation it would challenge the top positions, were it not by the bad quality of the text itself, that was carefully edited but keeps many blunders and too many of Charlotte's 1850 "improvements". Wordsworth Classics edition is also a worse choice, with a reliable 1850 text (that of the Haworth Edition of 1900: that is, a reliable edition of the wrong text!), adequate notes (even if brief and not user-friendly) and a fair Introduction by John S. Whitley, in one of the worst material productions ever.

If you are looking for a beautiful hardcover volume, your choices are much more limited. You can wait for two or three years to get an used copy of the Clarendon 1976 (or 1995) Edition, or you can get the nice volume in Barnes&Noble Classics (that has the reliable Haworth Edition 1850 text, which is really a pity), or rush to get one nice copy of the Franklin Mint edition of 1978 (see my review) with the beautiful if not daring double-page lithographs by Alan Reingold and a very good pre-Clarendon 1847 text, but with no modern introduction and no annotation whatever, except for the well-done footnotes glossing correctly and in full the dialect tirades (the first edition ever to do so).

Editorial Review:

First published in 1847, Wuthering Heights is set on the bleak Yorkshire moors, where the drama of Catherine and Heathcliff, Heathcliff's cruel revenge against Edgar and Isabella Linton, and the promise of redemption through the next generation, is enacted. This edition uses the authoritative Clarendon text, and in a new introduction Patsy Stoneman considers the bewildering variety of critical interpretations to which the novel has been subject, as well as offering some provocative new insights for the modern reader.

Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics)

Emily Bronte

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights remains one of literature’s most disturbing explorations into the dark side of romantic passion. Heathcliff and Cathy believe they’re destined to love each other forever, but when cruelty and snobbery separate them, their untamed emotions literally consume them.

Set amid the wild and stormy Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights, an unpolished and devastating epic of childhood playmates who grow into soul mates, is widely regarded as the most original tale of thwarted desire and heartbreak in the English language.

 

Daphne Merkin is the author of a novel, Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant award for best new work of American-Jewish fiction, and an essay collection, Dreaming of Hitler. She has written essays and reviews for publications that include American Scholar, the New York Times, where she is a regular contributor to the Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Elle, and Vogue.

Charlotte and Emily Bronte: The Complete Novels

Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Such beautifully woven paragraghs 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

After reading classic novels on and off in school until I got out of college and in my own free time, I have to say Charlotte Bronte's writing style is the most intricately and splendidly crafted masterpiece. Her sister is quite talented as well. It's a great deal to have this collection that you can pick up and just start reading one of the shorter stories, or go over some of the most powerfully written sentences in Jane Eyre.

Not so complete 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

How could they not include Anne? It's almost as if they just threw in Emily just because Wuthering Heights happens to be so popular. They should have either put all of the sisters' works in or Charlotte's alone. The glass is half empty.

The Complete Novels of the Bronte Sisters. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I am so pleased to have the Bronte sisters novels again and am pleased with this purchase.

great buy 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

great investment in well written novels and recommend it to be a good addition to everyone library

Editorial Review:

Five classic masterpieces showcase the beauty and passionate imagination of these two extraordinary nineteenth-century novelists. Includes Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor.

Wuthering Heights, A Longman Cultural Edition (Longman Cultural Editions)

Emily Bronte, Alison Booth

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

one of the best "study" editions so far... 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

As with other Wuthering Heights editions, I will not delve into the depths of this strangest and strongest of novels, with its haunting poetical intensity, its everyday realism, its display of physical and psychical violence, its metaphysical contents and its eerie beautiful otherness. As the noted critic C. A. Swinburne put it in 1883:
"It may be true that not many will ever take it to their hearts: it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of poetry or prose".
By the way, whatever the edition you end up with (or none), don't forget to have
a try with Emily Bronté poems, or a sensible selection from them. I realize that this review is by far too long: so, if you are in a hurry, I think that you can skip safely to the last paragraph ("SO WHAT?") for practical recommendations.

The real issue that we face now is: how much does THIS PARTICULAR EDITION of Emily Brontë's novel measure up to its intended goal? How does it compare with other editions currently available?
Beginning with the bottom line, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST "STUDY" EDITIONS EVER, together with Beth Newman's one for Broadview Press and Dunn's one for Norton Critical (4th edition). By a "study" edition (in roughly the same sense as a "study" Bible), I mean one that is richly annotated, with an interesting Introduction and a variety of context-oriented documents, such as critical reviews or essays, biographical or chronological items, a selection of poems or other writings... Such an edition must be evaluated firstly by his handling (more or less scholarly or careful) of the TEXT(s) involved, then by the choice of supplementary materials (whether interesting or not, balanced or else), in third place by the quality and accuracy of the Introduction and notes, ending with very important issues of design (user-friendly, beautiful) and material production (durability, paper and print quality, binding).

IN SUMMARY, lest I get too long and formal, this is a well cared for, accurate and reliable 1847-type text, springing out of the University of Virginia electronic texts, but tightly controlled by the 1976 Clarendon Edition one (by Hilda Marsden and Ian Jack), and silently adapted as punctuation is concerned (resulting in a friendly version, which the scholarly reconstructed punctuation of Clarendon is not).
THE INTRODUCTION is short (11 pp) and well planned so that it opens ways for understanding, but can be read before the novel without spoiling anything.
It sounds a bit like run-of-the-mill material, but this is a deceiving image
(Alison Booth's command of the material is always there).
THE ANNOTATION IS VERY GOOD and extensive enough, with full and right glosses of the dialect tirades, and accurate, to-the-point information on biblical or literary references, or contextual ways and means.
In that most elusive of references, the one about Milo (of Croton) in Chapter IX, however, Alison Booth edition slips a little, like many other good ones (with Clarendon doing a little better, the ones getting the story right if not in full are Barnes&Noble, Wordsworth Classics, Penguin/Nestor, Broadview/Newman, Oneworld Classics and the excellent but ill-fated Routledge edition by Heather Glen). According to the Geography of Strabo, Book XII, which is the only source for this story, Milo in his old age tried to tear apart in two a tree half split and with a wedge to retain it open. He then exerted all his force with his hands, opening the gap wide enough for the wedge to drop off; the tree closed (it requires an ever increasing force to continue opening the trunk -this is Hooke's Law in physics-) and trapped the hands of Milo, who was then devoured by wolves.
It is regarding this story that we read in the novel:"Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo!" (who also tried unwisely and deadly to SEPARATE something). Saying in a note, as Booth does, "In the classical fable, Milo, an athlete, tried to pull a tree up by the roots" is a little misleading (not only do we lose the "separation factor", but also accuracy. Milo is neither a fable nor a myth, but a real human being with a place both in time and on earth, mentioned with consistent witness by two of the best historians of the time, other than Strabo. As to the stories connected to him, nothing is known for sure when we go into the details, and so the label "legend" is most appropriate).

The CONTEXTUAL MATERIALS are well chosen and presented. The only problem, and I think THE GREATEST PROBLEM with this otherwise excellent edition, is that there are 40+ items of this material and only 130 pages to fit them in: it looks hopelessly like a motley medley of maddening fragments, with, say, ONLY FIVE OF EMILY'S POEMS, which is both a pity and a blunder. There are interesting curios as the "Table of the average yearly wages paid to domestics... according to their rank in a household".
More important are the pages devoted to Yorkshire dialect (too scarce) and ballads (very good). There is also a fair amount of space (11 pages) allotted to "cultural dissemination", that is, works of art (songs, theatrical or musical adaptations as well as TV or movie ones, sequels...) deriving from or related with the novel.
The data included are very good and complete except for the chapter on translations in which, just as an example, only two translations into Spanish are listed, and only one in current use although it is barely acceptable: there are by now no less than TEN Spanish translations easily available; some are very good, some are rightly annotated, none is both things together and none is based on the 1847 text (but on the 1850 one).

MATERIAL PRODUCTION is... fair enough, as far as I can tell without ripping apart my copy. A not-too-bad paperback, perhaps even signature-sewn but without flaps (with cover corners and even front-edge vulnerable). Paper quality looks good (time will tell) and printing quality is excellent. Design is clear and user-friendly
(I will not comment on the typeface they use for big headlines, perhaps somebody will love it).

SO WHAT?
If an accurate and reliable text and a rich annotation are a must,
then stick to this Longman Cultural Edition (by Alison Booth).
If you can make do with a generally reliable text with a few errors, some idiosyncratic readings and inconsistencies and, besides, you don't mind a scanty annotation (but with full dialectal glosses), and you will appreciate the finest choice ever of contextual materials (but with only EIGHT OF EMILY's POEMS) as well as a MOST INTERESTING and thought-provoking INTRODUCTION (29pp), then choose the Broadview Press edition by Beth Newman (be sure not to pick their earlier one by Christopher Heywood!).
If, on the other side, you may accept a generally reliable text and a very scanty annotation (but with full dialectal glosses), and you would appreciate the best presentation ever of early reviews and similar materials (Charlotte's prefaces for 1850, and some letters by Charlotte) and you would enjoy a really good and wide enough selection of EIGHTEEN EMILY's POEMS, then don't miss the elegant and no-nonsense Fourth Edition of Norton Critical (by R.J. Dunn, with almost the same text, for good and worse, of the late and mourned William M. Sale 1963 1st edition).

Have a haunting reading!

Editorial Review:

York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

Emily Bronte: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Emily Bronte

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A collection of Tennyson's best 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best collections of Tennyson's poems I have ever read. Tennyson's wonderful poems are artfully compiled into this book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves Tennyson's poetry or just wants to see what its all about.

" Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead " 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

According to Wikipedia , Tennyson is the second most quoted author in the English language, after Shakespeare. This collection provides a surprisingly broad survey of a poetic career spanning more than sixty years. The book is portable , attractively packaged and needing you, to take it on a trip to mountain or beach.( Or a mid-winter's read by the fireside.) The selections are often stirring and profound and there is an over-arching ambience of melancholia...." Come down , o maid , from yonder mountain height "...It's all high drama I tell ye.

Editorial Review:

Many of Bronte''s poems were written for incl usion in the prose epic about the mythical land of Gondal sh e wrote with her sister Anne. Though the epic is lost, the p oems survived, and they are presented here in a pocket-size book. '

The Brontes: Three Great Novels

Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Three Brilliant Bronte Masterpieces In One Edition - Worth Its Weight In Gold! 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Three authors who greatly influenced the direction of the English novel also happened to be sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. Charlotte's "Jane Eyre," Emily's "Wuthering Heights, and Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," extraordinary novels all, comprise this Oxford University Press edition. The people, events and settings which marked these young women's lives, as well as their vivid imaginations, impacted their writing significantly.

Charlotte Brontë consciously tried to achieve financial success from the family's literary efforts. She wanted to make her living as a writer, and her goals were the most professional of the three. Her novel "Jane Eyre," a dark gothic romance, is the story of a governess and her passionate love for her Byronic employer, Mr. Rochester. It is ranked among the great English novels. There are many recurring themes here, some of which are repeated in other works by Charlotte Bronte: relationships between men and women and their different roles and limitations in society; relations between social classes; religion and morality; the need to fulfill the desires of others versus the necessity to maintain one's personal integrity; the conflict between reason and passion, and, of course, Jane's deep need to love and be loved. However, primary to the tale is the magnificent, complex character of Jane herself.

Long before the women's suffrage movement, Miss Bronte created, in the character of Jane, an intelligent, independent, strong-willed female, determined to make her place in the world. Equality between the sexes is not brought up in the novel, neither legally nor politically. What the persona of Jane addresses here is obvious in the following very famous lines: "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

Emily Bronte is said, by many literary critics, to be the undisputed genius of the family. An uncompromising, enigmatic, almost reclusive personality, she produced only one novel and a few poems, yet she is ranked among the giants of English literature. "Wuthering Heights," her masterpiece, is the wild, passionate story of the intense love between Catherine Earnshaw, another intelligent, independent, strong-willed heroine, and the gypsy-like foundling Heathcliff. This novel, however, is much more than a love story. "Wuthering Heights" is about hatred, cruelty, delusion, frustrated yearning, deep despair and vengeance. At times its very darkness is depressing and painful. Yet love and faithfulness, which endure beyond death, bring hope and much needed light to this tale; as does a second love story, born from the seeds of the first. The author also addresses the issues of social class here. Emily's powerful prose, its very beauty and energy, make the book such a literary classic. Charlotte published "A Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" in 1850, in which she explained the morbidity of Emily's work by referring to the "horror of great darkness" in her life.

Of the three extraordinarily gifted Brontë sisters, Anne has been judged the least talented. I say, look at her competition, and her short lifespan. I also think her novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," about a young woman's marriage to a dissipated, villainous rake, is brilliant. Some of the behavior described in the narrative is apparently taken from events which Anne witnessed when she worked as a governess. She openly stated that in "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" she, "wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it." This well written, extraordinary tale can most definitely hold its own against the works of her sisters, and those of other noted authors of the period. Both "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" have been wildly praised for their realism and integrity.

All three girls were born in Thornton, England in the early 1800s. Their father Patrick, was a poor Anglican clergyman. He and his wife had six children. The two oldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth died before reaching adulthood. Their brother Patrick Branwell, was just a year older than Emily. Shortly after Anne's birth their father accepted a position in Haworth, located within the Yorkshire moors, a wide, wild, vast, uninhabited wilderness which was to have a major effect on all three women's writing. Emily loved walking the moorlands with her dogs, so much so, in fact, that she became desperately unhappy when away from home. She was extremely introspective, and preferred the outdoors to the company of her peers. Thus she made few friends. Her intensity of character is evident in "Wuthering Heights."

When Mrs. Bronte died, soon after reaching Haworth, the children were cared for by their maternal aunt. Charlotte and Emily were sent to Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire but they returned within a year. The treatment at Cowan Bridge was very harsh, and Charlotte later modeled Lowood School, ("Jane Eyre"), after it. "The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity." The two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, actually died as a result of the conditions and the sickness contracted there. Charlotte's fiction is full of motherless and orphaned heroines whose loneliness is frequently the driving force behind their search for a place of belonging

For the next several years, the Bronte children were taught at home. They were extremely inventive and creative with their games and imaginary stories. Charlotte attended Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head for one year in 1831, then returned home and taught her sisters. She went back to the Wooler's school to teach in 1835, but after bouts of depression and poor health, she resigned from her position. Again, Charlotte draws material from this experience to use in Jane Eyre.

Charlotte, Emily and Jane collaborated on a book of poems, published at their own expense, entitled "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell." The pseudonyms were chosen to match the first letter of their names. In 1847 Anne's "Agnes Grey" and Emily's "Wuthering Heights" were published together in three volumes. Although her first novel, "The Professor" was rejected, Charlotte's "Jane Eyre: An Autobiography" was an immediate success. Oddly, Currer Bell was identified as the editor rather than the author. The subtitle was dropped in subsequent editions.The popularity of the Bronte novels allowed Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" to be published shortly thereafter. The sisters' identity as authors was at first unknown, even to their publishers. It was not until after the publication of Charlotte's "Shirley" in 1849 that the truth was made public. By the date of this last publication, the Bronte's family life was to be tragically destroyed.

Branwell Bronte, an unstable man with a history of alcohol and opium use died in September 1848. Emily then fell ill and died of tuberculosis December 19, 1848. Anne soon followed, contracting tuberculosis that same year and dying May 28, 1949. Charlotte continued to live virtually alone at Haworth. The three sisters are almost as famous for their short, tragic lives as for their novels.

Charlotte published "Villette" in 1853. During this period, Charlotte also accepted an offer of marriage from her father's curate Arthur Bell Nicholls and on June 29, 1854, she and Nicholls were wed. She became quite ill with toxemia during pregnancy, complicated by the Brontë susceptibility to tuberculosis. She died March 31, 1855. Her first novel "The Professor "was published posthumously in 1857, and a fragment from an unfinished work entitled "Emma" was published in 1860.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were writers destined to have a tremendous impact on English literature. I cannot recommend their novels highly enough.
JANA

Editorial Review:

Demonstrating the remarkable range of their powers, this volume of three works by the Bronte sisters offers readers the opportunity to witness their unique combination of realism and romance which places these novels among the greatest works of nineteenth century literature. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre met immediate success when it was first published in 1847 and remains a much-loved classic. Considered by the public to be rough and strange when it was originally published, Emily Bronte's only novel Wuthering Heights has become one the most popular of all English novels. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte's second novel, was a dramatic and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society. It has since become a classic, compelling in its imaginative power, the realism and range of its dialogue, and its psychological insight into the characters involved in a marital battle.