The dreamiest of the talented Brontë clan, Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818. Her mother died when she was barely more than a toddler, and Emily and her younger sister, Anne, became very close. Along with their other siblings, 'Charlotte Bronte' and Branwell Bronte, they invented the make-believe kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, which occupied their lonely childhoods.
Emily never socialized well, and had few friends outside her family. In 1846 she and her sisters published a compilation of their poetry, "Poems", which was followed a year later by Emily's only novel, "Wuthering Heights". An intense and powerful novel, whose enigmatic hero Heathcliff was modeled on Emily's brother, Branwell, "Wuthering Heights" was not an immediate success like Charlotte's "Jane Eyre", but was later recognized as one of the best books of English Literature. Like her sisters, Emily published her book under a male pseudonym, Eliss Bell. In 1848, while attending the funeral of her brother Branwell, Emily caught a cold that developed quickly into the tuberculosis that would take her own life later that year.
