British Novelist and Poet. She was one of three Bronte sisters who became renowned authors, and was probably the greatest of them. Even though she would write only one novel in her short life, she would become a major literary figure in her own right. Born Emily Jane Bronte, the fifth of six children, her father, was an Anglican priest. In 1820, her father was appointed to the perpetual curacy in the nearby town of Haworth, and the family moved into the 5-room Haworth Parsonage where they would spend the rest of their lives. At the age of three, her mother died, and her aunt (her mother's sister) moved from her home in Penzance, Cornwall to help raise the children. In 1825, her two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died from tuberculosis while attending the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, England, where she and sister Charlotte also attended. Her father brought her home and she continued to receive her basic education from her aunt. She read all of the literary classics from her father's vast library along with newspapers and magazines, which helped to shape her imagination and creativity. When she was around 13 years old, she and her sister Anne, to whom she developed a close relationship and were inseparable, created their own fantasy world called "Gondal." In 1835, she attended Roe Head School, a boarding school for girls, where her older sister, Charlotte, held a teaching job. While there, she became homesick and left after three months. In 1838, she taught in Miss Patchett's School at Law Hill, near Halifax, in West Yorkshire, England, but resigned after six months. Her sister, Charlotte, planned to start a school for girls in Haworth in an effort to keep the family together there, and, in February 1842, she and Charlotte traveled to Brussels, Belgium, to learn foreign languages and school management at the Pension Heger. When her aunt died in October of 1842, she returned to Haworth and remained there permanently. In 1845, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne were unemployed at their father's home, and without any potential job prospects they decided to publish the poems they had written over the years. Without anyone's knowledge they came up with the money to have the collection published, using the pseudonyms Currer Bell (Charlotte), Ellis Bell (Emily), and Action Bell (Anne). The collection, titled "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Action Bell" was published in May 1846 and included 21 of her poems. While it received favorable reviews, it was a complete failure. During this time she had been working on her novel "Wuthering Heights," a highly imaginative story of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors. When it was published in December 1847, it was not successful and the critics were hostile to it, calling it too savage and animal-like, and clumsy in construction. Soon after the publication, her health began to deteriorate rapidly, as she had been sick for some time and refused to abide by her doctor's orders. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 30, three months after the death of her brother, Branwell, who died from a combination of alcoholism and chronic bronchitis (most likely tuberculosis). Five months later her younger sister, Anne, would also succumb from the same disease. Only after Emily's death did "Wuthering Heights" come to be considered as one of the finest novels in the English language.