Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte wrote about the wild moors in the north of England. It is place that is grey and dark in winter and even in warmer seasons is a sombre place where tough bracken and heather cover the hills and fragments of the past linger.
Emily Bronte
The isolation of Haworth Parsonage on the wild and bleak local moors separated the Bronte children from other families and they relied on each other for companionship. This lead them to create fantasy worlds: Gondal, shared by Emily and Anne, is an island in the North Pacific; Angria, shared by Charlotte and her brother Bramwell, is nominally in Africa.
Bronte Parsonage in Haworth
Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte and is her only novel. It was published in 1847 under the pseudonym ‘Ellis Bell’. Emily Bronte died the following year, aged 30.
‘I lingered round them, under that benign sky, watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.’
~Catherine and Heathcliff.
‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed. One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house, and by a gaunt range of thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving the alms of the sun. ~ Wuthering Heights, Chapter 1.
I discovered the Brontes when I was still at school and knew straightaway I’d found magical stories. The images were wonderful: bleak moors, star-crossed lovers, solitary landscapes, valleys and streams; haunting novels.
And, of course the story of the Brontes themselves.
Remember, read books that bring magic into your life.
Elise
what elise wrote 
I always find myself stuck on landscapes when it comes to stories with some basis on reality such as location.
No matter how well described or written, it becomes undesirable to leave a story behind for fear of what has become of the location and realizing how spoiled and built upon many such places have become by the ‘march of progress’
LikeLike
Yes, this can certainly be true. I find that it often doesn’t help at all in my own writing to research a particular place because it has changed so much and as you rightly say all for ‘the march of progress’. Best wishes, Elise
LikeLike
Wuthering Heights conjures up memories of boarding school days, reading with a torch under the bed covers and in the library instead of the classroom. Catherine and Heahtcliff, the tragic lovers, the detailed passages describing the moors, all helped to furnish my somewhat overworked dramatic imagination.
LikeLike
Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Bianca. I love the Brontes and their own story. I’ll be visiting the Bronte Parsonage Museum later this year and will be writing in my notebook and taking photos for a post.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on what elise wrote and commented:
I was recently at the Bronte Parsonage and the lingering sense of the past was everywhere: in the parsonage, the graveyard, the village. I absorbed the atmosphere that was around every corner and it was certainly not all bleak and forbidding.
LikeLike