Product Description

The poems of Emily Jane Brontë are passionate and powerful works that convey the vitality of the human spirit and of the natural world. Only twenty-one of her poems were published during her lifetime - this volume contains those and all others attributed to her. Many poems describe the mythic country of Gondal and its citizens that she imagined with Anne, and remain the only surviving record of their joint creation. Other visionary works, including ‘Remembrance’ and ‘No coward soul is mine’, boldly confront mortality and anticipate life after death. And poems such as ‘Redbreast early in the morning’ and ‘The blue bell is the sweetest flower’ evoke the wild beauties of nature she observed on the Yorkshire moors, while also examining the state of her psyche.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286565 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Emily Bronte (1818-1848) published only one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a story of doomed love and revenge. But that single work places has its place among the masterpieces of English literature. Some of her best lyrics are also rated with the best in English poetry.

Customer Reviews

A True Poet
Emily Bronte was the most poetic of the four Bronte siblings who survived their teens. "Wuthering Heights" is poetic in the intensity of its language, and her poetry is the finest of the four. Frequently melancholy in tone, the emotional content is presented both directly, and through scenic description. The language and content reflect both her upbringing in a pastor's family, and the pathos which began with the loss of her mother at a young age, followed by the loss of the two eldest daughters in their teens. Out of this comes poetry of breathtaking intensity and feeling, coupled with a true poet's skill with language. This edition is painstakingly and lovingly edited and annotated, and the introduction is excellent and the notes are informative. Most of the poems can, however, be read without recourse to the latter. Faber and Faber may rule the roost for 20 century poets, but for older works Penguin rivals Oxford UP for scholarship and Everyman for accessibility.

Wild, melancholy, elevating
When Charlotte Bronte accidentally discovered Emily's poems in 1845 she recalled that she thought them "condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music - wild, melancholy and elevating." That's still the best criticism of Emily's poetry. There are great rewards here, even though many poems belong to the lost "Gondal" saga and many more are mere fragments. The notes are informative too, but the poems survive without them. I found some of the editorial decisions odd. The poem "Often rebuked" is attributed to Charlotte as no manuscript survives of it and it is written in iambic pentameter and "Emily only wrote six poems in iambic pentameter." Which seems like a daft conclusion - is she only allowed a quota of six poems in iambic pentameter? Yet it is that poem that provides the best statement of Emily's vision: "Often rebuked, yet always back returning/To those first feelings that were born with me.." If the modern world overwhelms you and you want to return to that vision of a "purer" self you think once existed, tune in to Emily's "peculiar music" and see where it takes you.

Utterly Beautiful
Quite simply, this is one of the most beautiful things I have read. I first encountered some of these poems after reading Wuthering Heights whilst travelling (also stunning) which contained a few poems at the back. The poetry here is strikingly poignant and heartfelt. It speaks of solitude, anguish, despair, hope and is utterly romantic at almost every turn. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, I read it at a time when a relationship had ended and found immediate comfort in Emily's feelings of rejection expressed with such painfull honesty. This really is a beautiful collection of poetry.