On this day in 1818 Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, the fifth of six children. When she was two years old, Emily's father became curate in nearby Haworth; when she was three, her mother died; and three years after that, her two oldest sisters died. These factors -- the isolated Pennine village, the burdened single parent, the three surviving girls and their brother (too shy Charlotte, shyer Anne, shyest Emily, and way too wild Branwell) left to go their own imaginative ways -- have anchored almost every account of this most famous of literary families ... FULL STORY »
