Emily Brontë grew up in the parsonage at Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, with her sisters Charlotte and Anne and her brother Branwell. Their mother died when Emily was three. The children invented whole imaginary kingdoms and wrote tiny books about them.

She hated being away from home and rarely left it for long. In 1846 the sisters paid to publish a book of poems under men's names, and Wuthering Heights followed in 1847 as the work of "Ellis Bell". Reviewers found it savage. She caught a cold at Branwell's funeral, refused all medical help, and died in December 1848, aged thirty.