1818 30 July: Emily Jane Brontë born, fifth child of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. Older siblings: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell. Younger sibling: Anne.
1820 17 January: Anne Brontë born.
April: Family moves to Haworth Parsonage.
1821 15 September: Mother dies.
1824 25 November: Emily joins her sisters Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte at Cowan Bridge school for daughters of the clergy (portrayed by Charlotte as Lowood school in Jane Eyre).
1825 14 February: Maria sent home ill from school. Dies 6 May. 31 May: Elizabeth sent home ill from school. Charlotte and Emily removed the following day. Elizabeth dies 15 June.
1826 The four surviving children collaborate in writing ‘plays’ inspired originally by Branwell’s receipt of toy soldiers.
1831 Emily and Anne begin to create their own stories known as the Gondal saga.
1835 29 July: Emily attends Roe Head school. Suffers from homesickness and returns to Haworth after only three months, her health ‘broken’. Anne takes Emily’s place at Roe Head.
1836 12 July: Emily’s first extant poem, ‘Will the day be bright or cloudy?’.
1837 Writes a further nineteen poems.
1838 Emily takes position as junior teacher at Law Hill girls’ school. Once again health breaks down. Returns home March/April 1839. Writes a further twenty-one poems.
1838–42 Over half the surviving poems written.
1841 30 July: Emily’s diary paper reports: ‘A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own’.
1842 February: Accompanies Charlotte to Brussels to M. Heger’s school for girls.
29 October: Aunt Elizabeth Branwell dies. Charlotte and Emily return from Brussels on the news of their aunt’s death. Emily refuses to return with Charlotte for a second year.
December: The three Brontë sisters (and a female cousin) each inherit approximately £300 from Aunt Branwell.
1844 Emily copies poetry into two books titled ‘Gondal Poems’ and ‘EJB’.
1845 30 June: Emily and Anne take a three-day trip to York – a rare excursion away from home for Emily: ‘our first long journey by ourselves’.
Autumn: Charlotte discovers Emily’s MS volume of verse and persuades her sisters to seek publication for an anthology of their poetry.
1846 May: poems published pseudonymously as Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell at the sisters’ expense.
4 July: Charlotte writes to London publisher Henry Colburn offering ‘three tales, each occupying a volume and capable of being published together or separately’ (i.e. Charlotte’s The Professor, Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey).
1847 October: Charlotte publishes Jane Eyre to critical acclaim after her first effort, The Professor, was rejected by a string of publishers.
December: Wuthering Heights published in a single edition with Anne’s
Agnes Grey.
1848 24 September: Branwell dies.
19 December: Emily dies.
1849 28 May: Anne dies.
1850 December: Charlotte edits a new edition of Wuthering Heights (with
Agnes Grey, a Biographical Notice [see below], and selected poetry of
Emily and Anne), regularizing Emily’s idiosyncratic style and censoring her more vigorous expression.
1854 29 June: Charlotte marries Arthur Nicholls.
1855 31 March: Charlotte dies.
