This pathetic paucity of primary evidence has left biographers free to indulge in wild speculation. The temptation to fill the drab life of a genteel English spinster with the wild power of Wuthering Heights (1847) is certainly great, but the unadorned facts, insofar as they can be ascertained, may serve to make her imaginative achievement more impressive. Emily Jane Bronte was the fifth child and fourth daughter of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, who moved in April 1820 to the village of Haworth eight miles from Thornton, her birthplace. Emily's mother, who had given birth to her youngest daughter, Anne, on 17 January 1820, died in November 1821, having been ill for several months. Like all the Bronte novels, Wuthering Heights has more than its fair share of children who have lost one or both parents.
Faced with the care of six motherless children, Mr. Bronte made efforts to marry again, but soon invited his wife's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, to keep house for him. In July 1824 he sent his two elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, to Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge, Charlotte following in August and Emily in November.
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