This new book on the Brontes concentrates on the way in which the literary interests and expressions of Charlotte and Emily were built up. It makes use of recent research into background and reading matter to investigate the development of the authors' poetry and novels.

This new book on the Brontes concentrates on the way in which the literary interests and expressions of Charlotte and Emily were built up. It makes use of recent research into background and reading matter to investigate the development of the authors' poetry and novels.

Biographical material on Emily Bronte is scarce. In the past, biographers have taken this as an excuse to portray intuition as fact, creating a confused and inaccurate image of the author who wrote Wuthering Heights. In A Life of Emily Bronte, Edward Chitham rejects wholeheartedly the temptation to validate speculation. He describes his book as an 'investigative biography', delving into Emily's childhood, her relationships with her family, her father's Irish roots, and the influences conveyed by friends and acquaintances. Using material neglected by other biographers, Chitham makes an illuminating and scholarly study of the events and characters that shaped Emily's inspiration; a puzzle that has confounded many and made her, up to this point, an enigmatic and misrepresented figure.

The Irish heritage of the Bronte family has long been overlooked, partly because both Charlotte and her father Patrick did their very best to ensure that this was the case and partly because there was a strong understanding at the end of the nineteenth century that the Brontes were Yorkshire regional novelists. Yet their ideas and attitudes, and perhaps even their storylines, can be traced to Ireland. This book, which develops ideas originally published in The Brontes' Irish Heritage in 1986, sets the record straight. By re-evaluating the sources available, it traces Patrick's Irish ancestry and shows how it prevented him from achieving his ambitions; it shows how that heritage influenced his children's writings, particularly Emily; and it sheds further light on the genesis of Wuthering Heights.

This book provides a rounded account of the history of Dudley, starting before the Norman Conquest. It traces the development of industry in the town, and shows how the lack of utilities, including water, hampered the nineteenth-century town and forced a section of the population into desperate poverty. Major historical treasures remain from this era, however, giving the opportunity for the growth of tourism in the present. The Story of Dudley, compiled by an expert in the area's history, weaves these events together into an accessible, interesting and in-depth history of the town that is sure to delight residents and visitors alike.

The Poems of Emily Brontë is the first edition to appear with full scholarly apparatus, and to preserve the writer's original (sometimes unorthodox) presentation and revisions. With no manuscript of Wuthering Heights extant, this edition of the often under-valued poetry gives the reader the rare chance of seeing the writer's creative mind at work. Recreating the literary context of the poems, this edition also takes into account recent critical insights.