The sisters, Charlotte — , Emily — and Anne — , are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication.
Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights , Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths. Charlotte, Emily and Anne were then born within approximately four years. These three sisters and their brother, Branwell — , who was born after Charlotte and before Emily, were very close to each other.
As children, they developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play, set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set in their fictional world.
The deaths of their mother and two older sisters marked them and influenced their writing profoundly, as did their isolated upbringing. They were raised in a religious family. They were a family of hereditary scribes and literary men in Fermanagh.
The name is derived from the word pronntach or bronntach , [ 3 ] which is related to the word bronnadh , meaning "giving" or "bestowal" pronn is given as an Ulster version of bronn in O'Reilly's Irish English Dictionary. Multiple theories exist to account for the change, including that he may have wished to hide his humble origins. One view, which biographer C. Shorter proposed in , is that he adapted his name to associate himself with Admiral Horatio Nelson , who was also Duke of Bronte.
