Wuthering Heights

Emily Jane Brontë was the most solitary member of a unique, tightly-knit, English provincial family. Born in 1818, she shared the parsonage of the town of Haworth, Yorkshire, with her older sister, Charlotte; her brother, Branwell; her younger sister, Anne; and her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë. All five were poets and writers, and all but Branwell would publish at least one book. Fantasy was the Brontë children’s one relief from the rigors of religion and the bleakness of life in an impoverished region. In 1845, Charlotte Brontë came across a manuscript volume of her sister’s poems. At her sister’s urging, Emily’s poems, along with Anne’s and Charlotte’s, were published pseudonymously in 1846. An almost complete silence greeted this volume, but the three sisters, buoyed by the fact of publication, immediately began to write novels. Emily’s effort was Wuthering Heights; appearing in 1847, it was treated at first as a lesser work by Charlotte, whose Jane Eyre had already been published to great acclaim. Emily Brontë’s name did not emerge from behind her pseudonym of Ellis Bell until the second edition of her novel appeared in 1850. More by Emily Bronte

S. E. Hinton wrote her first novel, The Outsiders, when she was 16. She was the recipient of the American Library Association’s first Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors authors “whose books have provided young adults with a window through which they can view their world and which will help them to grow and to understand themselves and their role in society.” The author lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. More by S. E. Hinton