An aura of mystery has surrounded all the Brontë sisters ever since "Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell" had a volume of poetry published in 1846, followed the next year by Jane Eyre,Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, but Emily has always been the most enigmatic of the three. Despite the research and critical attention she has received, she remains a remote figure. As Mrs. Humphry Ward says in her preface to the Haworth edition of Wuthering Heights: "The artist remains hidden and self-contained.... She has the highest power ... the power which gives life, intensest life, to the creatures of the imagination, and, in doing so, endows them with an independence behind which the maker is forgotten." Emily was an extremely private individual both as an artist and as a person. She was, according to Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey, a "law unto herself, and a heroine...