July 30th, 2009

It’s Emily Brontë’s birthday today. The Wuthering Heights author was born in Yorkshire, England in 1818, a playmate for brother Branwell, ill-fated oldest sisters Maria and Elizabeth, and toddler Charlotte. 
Precocious baby of the family Anne came along shortly thereafter.

After the first publication of her only novel, Emily went on to fake a death by tuberculosis at the age of thirty, plausible enough for the late nineteenth century. Today she is one hundred and ninety-one years old and resides peacefully in Wellington, New Zealand.