Biography
this dark night
by Deborah Lutz
In her lyrical new biography, Lutz sheds light on the most mysterious literary, solitary Brontë sister: Emily. She was described as introverted, awkward, guarded to the point of reticence, and her “extreme restraint seemed impenetrable”, said her friend Ellen Nussey. “Except to go to church or for a walk on the hills,” wrote her sister Charlotte, “she rarely crossed the threshold of the house.” Lutz writes that Emily was indeed an embattled character of “diabolical cruelty”, but she was informed, engaged, even cosmopolitan in her reading and outlook. Read our review.
