The biographer of Emily Brontë faces considerable problems. Her slender output of one great novel and some impressive but baffling poems does not give one a great deal upon which to build. Unlike her sister Charlotte, whose works do have an autobiographical streak, Emily did not seem to draw upon her own rather humdrum experiences in creating her masterpiece. Attempts to find a real-life Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Irish forebears or Yorkshire neighbors seem highly speculative. Because Charlotte Brontë won instant fame while she was still alive, far more is known about her life than about Emily's; and it is largely through Charlotte's eyes that Emily is seen: either in incidental references among her correspondence to Ellen Nussey when Emily was alive, or in pious memories when she was dead. Emily Brontë's surviving correspondence is limited to a handful of brief notes...