Emily Brontë Books in Order: Complete Reading Guide
Emily Brontë published one novel — Wuthering Heights. Reading guide covering the novel, her poetry, and what to read after.
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) died at thirty of tuberculosis, having published one novel and a handful of poems. That novel — Wuthering Heights — is among the half-dozen most important in the English language.
Emily Brontë’s Published Works
1. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell — 1846
A self-published collection of poems by the three Brontë sisters, published under their male pseudonyms. Emily’s contributions are now recognised as among the finest lyric poems in English — particularly “No coward soul is mine” and “Cold in the earth.” Sold two copies on publication.
2. Wuthering Heights — 1847
Her only novel. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, the foundling her father brought home from Liverpool, are bound together by an obsession that destroys everyone around them across two generations. Narrated indirectly through a frame story, set on the Yorkshire moors in weather that is never simply weather.
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What to Read After Wuthering Heights
The other Brontës: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) were published alongside or just after Wuthering Heights and give the context of what three sisters were simultaneously producing in the same house. Anne’s novel is the most underrated of the three.
Hardy’s moorland novels: The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd share the elemental landscape of Wuthering Heights — the natural world as active participant in human fate.
Contemporary reworkings: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys rewrites Jane Eyre from the perspective of the first Mrs. Rochester. Nothing directly rewrites Wuthering Heights as successfully, but Nelly Dean by Alison Case (2019) retells the story from the housekeeper’s point of view.
Emily Brontë and the Critics
Wuthering Heights was poorly received on publication — it was considered too violent and morally incoherent. Charlotte, in her preface to the 1850 edition, felt obliged to explain and somewhat apologise for her sister’s work. The novel’s rehabilitation to its current canonical status took most of the twentieth century and is one of the great reversals in literary criticism.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Did Emily Brontë write more than one book?
Emily Brontë published one novel — Wuthering Heights (1847) — and a collection of poetry (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, published with her sisters in 1846). She died at thirty in 1848, before she could complete a second novel.
Should I read Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre first?
Most readers start with Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) as it is more conventionally narrated and accessible. Wuthering Heights is the more challenging and arguably more extraordinary novel — its narrative structure is complex and its central characters are largely unsympathetic. Read whichever calls to you first.
Why is Wuthering Heights considered a masterpiece if Heathcliff is so unpleasant?
Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece precisely because its central characters are not conventionally sympathetic. Heathcliff is destructive, obsessive, and cruel; Catherine is self-deluding and careless with other people. Brontë's achievement is to make their relationship feel not romantic but inevitable — and to question the difference between love and destruction.
