Emily Jane Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë (July 1818-December 1848), an English poet and novelist best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), was born in West Riding Yorkshire and the second-youngest of the four surviving siblings. The daughter of an Anglican minister, her poems were published in the collection Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), along with poems by her sisters, Charlotte and Anne. In 1842 Emily and her sister Charlotte left Yorkshire to travel to Brussels, where they attended the girls’ school Héger Pensionnat to learn French and German. This essay, “The Butterfly,” was originally written in French and is among the nine surviving essays written by Emily. It was later collected in the twenty-eight essays authored by her and her sister Charlotte and gathered in The Belgian Essays (1842-1843). Intense and withdrawn, it is a fitting, potent reflection of the author’s signature prose style.

Posts by Emily Jane Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë
Essay of the Month, Features

Essay of the Month: “The Butterfly”

Nature is an inexplicable problem; it exists on a principle of destruction. Every being must be the tireless instrument of death to others, or itself must cease to live, yet nonetheless we celebrate the day of our birth, and we praise God for having entered such a world.