Emily Bronte - Couverture souple

This lucid and perceptive study subjects the Emily Bronte myth to radical scrutiny, questioning the validity of memorabilia and eye-witness accounts. Contrasting her art with the daguerreotype realism coming into vogue in the 1840's, Stevie Davies reads Emily Bronte's life in terms of her own image of landmarks buried or half-buried beneath drifting snow which disguises or betrays underlying realities. A radical reading of Wuthering Heights explores it as a poet's and musician's novel, which can be `scored' as in opera or the piano transcriptions of symphonies, which Emily Bronte possessed and played. Close study of her sheet music; her germinal Brussels essays; books and journals in her possession; and translations into European languages will demonstrate the phenomenal intellectual range, originality and acuity of an author who can be regarded as a European.

Stevie Davies was Lecturer in English Literature at Manchester University before becoming a full-time author in 1984. Her first novel, Boy Blue, won the Fawcett Book Prize in 1989, and her fourth, Closing The Book, was long-listed for the Booker. She won an Arts Council Writer's award in 1996.