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The Bronte Sisters: Selected Poems
Although the Bront�s have long fascinated readers of fiction and biography, their poetry was all too little known until this pioneering selection by Stevie Davies, the novelist and critic. Charlotte (1816-1855) is certainly a competent poet, and Anne (1820-1849) developed a distinctive voice, while Emily (1818-1848) is one of the great women poets in English.
Read together with their novels, the poems movingly elucidate the ideas around which the narratives revolve. And they surprise us out of our conventional notions of the sisters' personalities: Emily's rebelliousness, for example, is counterbalanced here by great tenderness.
This selection of over seventy poems gives an idea of the variety of thought and feeling within each author's work, and of the way in which the poems of these three remarkable writers parallel and reflect each other.
Read together with their novels, the poems movingly elucidate the ideas around which the narratives revolve. And they surprise us out of our conventional notions of the sisters' personalities: Emily's rebelliousness, for example, is counterbalanced here by great tenderness.
This selection of over seventy poems gives an idea of the variety of thought and feeling within each author's work, and of the way in which the poems of these three remarkable writers parallel and reflect each other.
126 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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About the author
Charlotte Brontë
1,809 books18.1k followersCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature. See also Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë.
Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell. In April 1820 the family moved a few miles to Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate. This is where the Brontë children would spend most of their lives. Maria Branwell Brontë died from what was thought to be cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her spinster sister Elizabeth Branwell, who moved to Yorkshire to help the family.
In August 1824 Charlotte, along with her sisters Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, was sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, a new school for the daughters of poor clergyman (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). The school was a horrific experience for the girls and conditions were appalling. They were regularly deprived of food, beaten by teachers and humiliated for the slightest error. The school was unheated and the pupils slept two to a bed for warmth. Seven pupils died in a typhus epidemic that swept the school and all four of the Brontë girls became very ill - Maria and Elizabeth dying of tuberculosis in 1825. Her experiences at the school deeply affected Brontë - her health never recovered and she immortalised the cruel and brutal treatment in her novel, Jane Eyre. Following the tragedy, their father withdrew his daughters from the school.
At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children — Branwell, Emily, and Anne — continued their ad-hoc education. In 1826 her father returned home with a box of toy soldiers for Branwell. They would prove the catalyst for the sisters' extraordinary creative development as they immediately set to creating lives and characters for the soldiers, inventing a world for them which the siblings called 'Angria'. The siblings became addicted to writing, creating stories, poetry and plays. Brontë later said that the reason for this burst of creativity was that:
'We were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had known from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition.'
After her father began to suffer from a lung disorder, Charlotte was again sent to school to complete her education at Roe Head school in Mirfield from 1831 to 1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. During this period (1833), she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf under the name of Wellesley. The school was extremely small with only ten pupils meaning the top floor was completely unused and believed to be supposedly haunted by the ghost of a young lady dressed in silk. This story fascinated Brontë and inspired the figure of Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre.
Brontë left the school after a few years, however she swiftly returned in 1835 to take up a position as a teacher, and used her wages to pay for Emily and Anne to be taught at the school. Teaching did not appeal to Brontë and in 1838 she left Roe Head to become a governess to the Sidgewick family -- partly from a sense of adventure and a desire to see the world, and partly from financial necessity.
Charlotte became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, according to biographer Elizabeth Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness." She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855.
Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell. In April 1820 the family moved a few miles to Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate. This is where the Brontë children would spend most of their lives. Maria Branwell Brontë died from what was thought to be cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her spinster sister Elizabeth Branwell, who moved to Yorkshire to help the family.
In August 1824 Charlotte, along with her sisters Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, was sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, a new school for the daughters of poor clergyman (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). The school was a horrific experience for the girls and conditions were appalling. They were regularly deprived of food, beaten by teachers and humiliated for the slightest error. The school was unheated and the pupils slept two to a bed for warmth. Seven pupils died in a typhus epidemic that swept the school and all four of the Brontë girls became very ill - Maria and Elizabeth dying of tuberculosis in 1825. Her experiences at the school deeply affected Brontë - her health never recovered and she immortalised the cruel and brutal treatment in her novel, Jane Eyre. Following the tragedy, their father withdrew his daughters from the school.
At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children — Branwell, Emily, and Anne — continued their ad-hoc education. In 1826 her father returned home with a box of toy soldiers for Branwell. They would prove the catalyst for the sisters' extraordinary creative development as they immediately set to creating lives and characters for the soldiers, inventing a world for them which the siblings called 'Angria'. The siblings became addicted to writing, creating stories, poetry and plays. Brontë later said that the reason for this burst of creativity was that:
'We were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had known from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition.'
After her father began to suffer from a lung disorder, Charlotte was again sent to school to complete her education at Roe Head school in Mirfield from 1831 to 1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. During this period (1833), she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf under the name of Wellesley. The school was extremely small with only ten pupils meaning the top floor was completely unused and believed to be supposedly haunted by the ghost of a young lady dressed in silk. This story fascinated Brontë and inspired the figure of Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre.
Brontë left the school after a few years, however she swiftly returned in 1835 to take up a position as a teacher, and used her wages to pay for Emily and Anne to be taught at the school. Teaching did not appeal to Brontë and in 1838 she left Roe Head to become a governess to the Sidgewick family -- partly from a sense of adventure and a desire to see the world, and partly from financial necessity.
Charlotte became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, according to biographer Elizabeth Gaskell, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness." She died, with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 15, 2013
The Brontë Sisters played an essential role during my teenage days and my early years of womanhood only to become the person I am today. Her dramatic works nurtured my capacity for daydreaming and added a vastly new dimension to the possibilities of expression through the art of writing that ignited the burning spark for my ensuing passion for romantic poetry.
Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne have earned distinction among the most famous Victorian women writers mainly because of their novels, but the fact that the sisters were also gifted poetesses has been mainly ignored and their poems unfairly underrated.
It was in 1845 that Charlotte accidentally discovered a volume of written verse in her sister Emily’s handwriting and, sensing unprecedented originality, she determined to elevate them to the public along with Anne’s and her own verses. In order to avoid prejudice they published their collection of poems naming it “Poems” under the male pseudonyms of Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë), Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) and Acton Bell (Anne Brontë).
It was difficult for poetry by unknown authors to achieve any success and, despite some favorable reviews, “Poems” sold just two copies. Encouraged by seeing their work in print, the sisters realized that novel writing was more likely to sell, resulting in them abandoning poetry.
This fact makes of this collection a unique testimony of the Brontës’ condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine, but mostly, unknown verses. A gem to treasure and to keep for posterity.
Close in age, motherless, and having suffered from traumatic experiences of loss and death during their childhood, the Brontës influenced each other deeply, both emotionally and imaginatively. This has led to many scholars to approach them as a single literary phenomenon rather than as three separate individuals.
It is obvious that the Brontë siblings share literary influences and not surprisingly they show similarities in theme and style, but I see hints of different nature in each one of them, a distinctive note that strikes a different chord in my multilayered inner being, calling out to different parts of myself.
Charlotte and the long narrative poem
Charlotte’s poems are longer than those of her sisters and they are often connected through continuing narrative lines and consistencies in character.
She usually addresses themes of loyalty to her faith and links it with romantic love, including some Gothic elements like those that made Jane Eyre so popular.
Bereavement is a common theme in most of Charlotte’s poems, becoming most palpable in the verses she wrote after the death of her sisters Emily and Anne.
“Then since thou art spared such pain
We will not with thee here again;
He that lives must mourn.
God help us through our misery
And give us rest and joy with thee
When we reach our bourne!”
On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë”
“There’s little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I’ve lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.”
On the Death of Anne Brontë
Charlotte’s dramatic and solemn poetic style and her use of archaisms, over regular metre, calls to my earthly loneliness and loss with the promise of redemption through the ideal of romantic love.
Emily, the spirit of Nature and her perception of Immortality
To my ear, Emily’s poems have a peculiar music, wild, melancholic and elevating. Rejecting conventional religion as an answer, she pursues her own mystical vision of wholeness, finding in Nature both an expression of the Divine and the Sacred place where man is reunited with his true spirit making him eternal. Immortality then can only be accomplished in the death of the body when it gradually and literally merges with the soil whence it came, becoming an indivisible and everlasting unity.
“Though Earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is no room for Death
Nor atom that might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.”
No Coward Soul Is Mine
Emily’s verses shine with musical glow transpiring melodic notes in the cadences and the subtle use of the language, but her poetry refuses easy classification. Her impassioned voice gives insight into the nature of the universe and man’s attempt at finding permanence therein, making of her poems the most appreciated of the Brontës’ collection.
Emily’s voice revives my imagination and elevates it as an alternative faculty to reason, connecting with my burning self, making me restless in breaking my spiritual yearning free from conventional frames.
Anne and lost innocence
The least notorious of the Brontë sisters, yet the one who published one of my favorite novels ever -close to Jane Eyre - the most undervalued “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall".
Anne’s simple eloquence and fervent voice could have taken a place beside Jane Austen if she hadn’t died at the tender age of 29. Her poems are primarily concerned with morality, showing preoccupation with the ethical principles which, for good or ill, govern human behavior. Her modesty and humility oozes through her quiet voice, which is tinged with a ringing melancholy for lost childhood and despair for future uncertainty.
“If Life must be so full of care,
Then call me soon to Thee;
Or give me strength enough to bear
My load of misery.”
If This Be All
Anne’s modest composure calls out to my most empathic and compassionate self, humbling me with her selfless gentleness.
The Brontë Sisters are my personal Trinity, they are all at once in me.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s soloist voices sing together creating a harmonious melody, striking the spiritual chords of the symphony buried in the depths of my being. My discordant and sharp-edged inner contradictions find soothing and reprieve in the Brontës’ stanzas while their voices arise as a miraculous merging of the souls composing the most otherworldly hymn to life, love and imagination.
Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne have earned distinction among the most famous Victorian women writers mainly because of their novels, but the fact that the sisters were also gifted poetesses has been mainly ignored and their poems unfairly underrated.
It was in 1845 that Charlotte accidentally discovered a volume of written verse in her sister Emily’s handwriting and, sensing unprecedented originality, she determined to elevate them to the public along with Anne’s and her own verses. In order to avoid prejudice they published their collection of poems naming it “Poems” under the male pseudonyms of Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë), Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) and Acton Bell (Anne Brontë).
It was difficult for poetry by unknown authors to achieve any success and, despite some favorable reviews, “Poems” sold just two copies. Encouraged by seeing their work in print, the sisters realized that novel writing was more likely to sell, resulting in them abandoning poetry.
This fact makes of this collection a unique testimony of the Brontës’ condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine, but mostly, unknown verses. A gem to treasure and to keep for posterity.
Close in age, motherless, and having suffered from traumatic experiences of loss and death during their childhood, the Brontës influenced each other deeply, both emotionally and imaginatively. This has led to many scholars to approach them as a single literary phenomenon rather than as three separate individuals.
It is obvious that the Brontë siblings share literary influences and not surprisingly they show similarities in theme and style, but I see hints of different nature in each one of them, a distinctive note that strikes a different chord in my multilayered inner being, calling out to different parts of myself.
Charlotte and the long narrative poem
Charlotte’s poems are longer than those of her sisters and they are often connected through continuing narrative lines and consistencies in character.
She usually addresses themes of loyalty to her faith and links it with romantic love, including some Gothic elements like those that made Jane Eyre so popular.
Bereavement is a common theme in most of Charlotte’s poems, becoming most palpable in the verses she wrote after the death of her sisters Emily and Anne.
“Then since thou art spared such pain
We will not with thee here again;
He that lives must mourn.
God help us through our misery
And give us rest and joy with thee
When we reach our bourne!”
On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë”
“There’s little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I’ve lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.”
On the Death of Anne Brontë
Charlotte’s dramatic and solemn poetic style and her use of archaisms, over regular metre, calls to my earthly loneliness and loss with the promise of redemption through the ideal of romantic love.
Emily, the spirit of Nature and her perception of Immortality
To my ear, Emily’s poems have a peculiar music, wild, melancholic and elevating. Rejecting conventional religion as an answer, she pursues her own mystical vision of wholeness, finding in Nature both an expression of the Divine and the Sacred place where man is reunited with his true spirit making him eternal. Immortality then can only be accomplished in the death of the body when it gradually and literally merges with the soil whence it came, becoming an indivisible and everlasting unity.
“Though Earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is no room for Death
Nor atom that might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.”
No Coward Soul Is Mine
Emily’s verses shine with musical glow transpiring melodic notes in the cadences and the subtle use of the language, but her poetry refuses easy classification. Her impassioned voice gives insight into the nature of the universe and man’s attempt at finding permanence therein, making of her poems the most appreciated of the Brontës’ collection.
Emily’s voice revives my imagination and elevates it as an alternative faculty to reason, connecting with my burning self, making me restless in breaking my spiritual yearning free from conventional frames.
Anne and lost innocence
The least notorious of the Brontë sisters, yet the one who published one of my favorite novels ever -close to Jane Eyre - the most undervalued “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall".
Anne’s simple eloquence and fervent voice could have taken a place beside Jane Austen if she hadn’t died at the tender age of 29. Her poems are primarily concerned with morality, showing preoccupation with the ethical principles which, for good or ill, govern human behavior. Her modesty and humility oozes through her quiet voice, which is tinged with a ringing melancholy for lost childhood and despair for future uncertainty.
“If Life must be so full of care,
Then call me soon to Thee;
Or give me strength enough to bear
My load of misery.”
If This Be All
Anne’s modest composure calls out to my most empathic and compassionate self, humbling me with her selfless gentleness.
The Brontë Sisters are my personal Trinity, they are all at once in me.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s soloist voices sing together creating a harmonious melody, striking the spiritual chords of the symphony buried in the depths of my being. My discordant and sharp-edged inner contradictions find soothing and reprieve in the Brontës’ stanzas while their voices arise as a miraculous merging of the souls composing the most otherworldly hymn to life, love and imagination.
March 6, 2018
I am not the most competent to judge poetry to write an objective critique of this collection, but that does not prevent me from realising that I have read something beautiful. In this collection the Brontë sisters express their poetic talent by providing the reader with beautiful melancholic moments, opening a window to their souls.
February 1, 2018
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
A really nice introduction to the Brontë sisters' poetry! Reading their poetry gave another angle of them as writers and I've always wanted (and still do) to discover and learn more about these three extraordinary women. The poems I liked best in this collection were those written by Emily and Anne. I would have liked some more background to and information about the specific poems though, since a lot of their meaning/context can be hard to understand if you're not that familiar with the sisters' lives.
A really nice introduction to the Brontë sisters' poetry! Reading their poetry gave another angle of them as writers and I've always wanted (and still do) to discover and learn more about these three extraordinary women. The poems I liked best in this collection were those written by Emily and Anne. I would have liked some more background to and information about the specific poems though, since a lot of their meaning/context can be hard to understand if you're not that familiar with the sisters' lives.
July 29, 2021
like super enjoyable but also…. damn girls you need to have some FUN
July 23, 2020
3.6/5 stars, full review to come! I think Anne’s poems may be my favorite of the three.
Writing: 4/5
Enjoyment of subject/ideas: 3/5
Aesthetic: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Enjoyment of subject/ideas: 3/5
Aesthetic: 4/5
November 14, 2020
I'm really glad the Bronte sisters didn't focus on becoming poets. As a whole, the collection is pretty meh. It was interesting (and funny) to see each sister's poetry style though. Charlotte's poems are about specific feelings/capturing an emotion, Emily's are all super emo/depressing, and Anne's read like short narratives. I would recommend reading this after you're familiar with each sister's style; some of the themes make more sense.
June 1, 2010
I enjoyed reading the poems of these three sisters, hearing the differences in their styles and also what was important to them.
Emily is definitely the best poet of the three as the editor Stevie Davies points out.
Charlotte's poems start out as mere imitations of the style of the day, but aren't bad, but by the time I reached "Retrospection" the improved greatly and were more from the heart.
I read Anne's next. If you were just to read these selected of her poems you would guess that she wanted nothing more in life than to have a sweet little family of her own (often writing of curly haired babies and handsome husbands) and to find favor with God.
Emily's started off wanting a bit, but are quite lovely. I think "Song" was my favorite.
Emily is definitely the best poet of the three as the editor Stevie Davies points out.
Charlotte's poems start out as mere imitations of the style of the day, but aren't bad, but by the time I reached "Retrospection" the improved greatly and were more from the heart.
I read Anne's next. If you were just to read these selected of her poems you would guess that she wanted nothing more in life than to have a sweet little family of her own (often writing of curly haired babies and handsome husbands) and to find favor with God.
Emily's started off wanting a bit, but are quite lovely. I think "Song" was my favorite.
September 24, 2012
While I am very fascinated by the Gondal/Angria epics, I found them sadly difficult to read. I've never read been much of a poem person, and it breaks my heart that none of the prose fiction set in these worlds have survived. The poems all follow the simple 4-line rhyming scheme (ABCB), and given that no context exists for the poems, I found them somewhat...boring, and I struggled to stay attentive. Despite all this, I am so excited by one of the worlds first examples of a fan fiction/speculative fiction/sci-fi/fantasy co-developed by an entire family that I can't help but still appreciate this work.
December 14, 2017
So all three sisters contribute poems to this collection. I found it interesting that while I prefer the other sisters as authors, it was Emily's poems that I really enjoyed in this collection.
June 27, 2020
I didn't think I was going to like this much, for I somewhat have lost my passion and love for poetry. But there was something about borrowing my sister's book, reading it in her room to the words of the Bronte sisters that were so melancholic, especially when they were written about each other's deaths.
My heart ached when I read Charlotte's poems dedicated to her younger sisters Emily and Anne who died before her. Those two were my favourites from her.
I loved Emily's poems the most, though. They were by far the most relatable to me. I particularly enjoyed Hope, Stanzas and Rememberance, in that order.
Anne's poems had more of the flavour of nature's beauty, and they reminded me of some of the poems I used to write. The Bluebell and Self-Congratulations were my favourites from her.
All three sisters typically wrote melancholic poetry and these were the words they commonly used in their art: drear, weary, woe, despair and misery. I understand why they wrote such emotional poems, but I have to say, they do speak my language.
My heart ached when I read Charlotte's poems dedicated to her younger sisters Emily and Anne who died before her. Those two were my favourites from her.
I loved Emily's poems the most, though. They were by far the most relatable to me. I particularly enjoyed Hope, Stanzas and Rememberance, in that order.
Anne's poems had more of the flavour of nature's beauty, and they reminded me of some of the poems I used to write. The Bluebell and Self-Congratulations were my favourites from her.
All three sisters typically wrote melancholic poetry and these were the words they commonly used in their art: drear, weary, woe, despair and misery. I understand why they wrote such emotional poems, but I have to say, they do speak my language.
July 21, 2022
THE BRONTE SISTERS – Selected Poems, by Stevie Davies.
Excellent insight from the editor.
“It is not only that the tiny parsonage at Haworth resounds with the footsteps of the curious – a fact that would have appalled the sisters as a nightmare incursion on their reserve.” (p9)
“Emily Bronte would have nothing to do with society, loathed strangers and withdrew into silence if unfamiliar people invaded her territory.” (p17)
“.. in poem after poem one comes upon the figure of the moral reject, at once perpetrator and victim of his own exile.” ( p18)
“‘And now the house-dog,’ prefigures Heathcliff. (p19)
“… ‘turning her dying eyes reluctantly from the pleasant sun.’” (p22)
Excellent insight from the editor.
“It is not only that the tiny parsonage at Haworth resounds with the footsteps of the curious – a fact that would have appalled the sisters as a nightmare incursion on their reserve.” (p9)
“Emily Bronte would have nothing to do with society, loathed strangers and withdrew into silence if unfamiliar people invaded her territory.” (p17)
“.. in poem after poem one comes upon the figure of the moral reject, at once perpetrator and victim of his own exile.” ( p18)
“‘And now the house-dog,’ prefigures Heathcliff. (p19)
“… ‘turning her dying eyes reluctantly from the pleasant sun.’” (p22)
February 10, 2024
What a beautiful series of poems written by the most remarkable of sisters!
Anne and Emily both wrote my favourites: Emily's Song ("O between distress and pleasure...") and Anne's Voice From The Dungeon seriously blew my mind.
I borrowed this from the Bill Bryson Library, Durham University - and found that reading this on the window seat of the Carol Carr Reading Room of the College of St Hild and St Bede made the read just that much more enjoyable.
Anne and Emily both wrote my favourites: Emily's Song ("O between distress and pleasure...") and Anne's Voice From The Dungeon seriously blew my mind.
I borrowed this from the Bill Bryson Library, Durham University - and found that reading this on the window seat of the Carol Carr Reading Room of the College of St Hild and St Bede made the read just that much more enjoyable.
February 24, 2025
The foreword was lovely, and there are some gems in here, but overall the Brontë sisters were much better novelists than poets and for whatever reason were incapable of using a different meter or rhyme scheme.
January 22, 2020
The girl's poetry was easy to read whereas Branwell's was a bit clunky lol
February 28, 2017
I struggled with some of these poems but the ones I enjoyed the most were by Anne, then Emily, then Charlotte.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews