Wuthering Heights“It is as if [Brontë] could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.” —Virginia Woolf Emily Brontë (1818-1848) spent most of her life in a stone parsonage in the small village of Haworth on the wild and bleak Yorkshire moors. Despite the isolation of Haworth, the Brontë family shared a rich literary life. Deborah Lutz is the Kelly Chair in English and American Literature at Pennsylvania State University. A Guggenheim, Cullman, and NEH fellow, she is the author of The Brontë Cabinet and other works. She lives in Pennsylvania and New York City.