Gothic Auntie

The Brontë sisters made an indelible mark on the gothic genre, creating a small library’s worth of work’s between them. While Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are ubiquitous, Ann Brontë’s and much of Charlotte’s work are significantly more obscure and harder to find – and physical copies can be expensive as a result. However, as with much classic gothic fiction, the fact that their work is well out of copyright means that most of it can be found online for free, and so I’ve created this directory to help you locate and read them for yourselves.

Though not everything the sisters wrote falls within the gothic genre I believe their other writing, including ephemera like personal correspondence, provides valuable context for their work that does and so I have included as much as possible of that here as well.

While there are a lot of helpful sites publishing out of copyright works online sometimes these websites do get taken down, either by the creator themselves or because of external challenges to the website. If any of the links are broken please let me know and I’ll try and find a replacement. Similarly if there’s anything missing off this list and you know where it can be found online then I’d love to know so I can add it.

Emily Brontë

Emily only wrote one book and it’s one of the most iconic gothic novels. Wuthering Heights is a gothic romance, one of the few categories of romance that doesn’t require a happily ever after, and Emily delivered that absence with gusto. A book whose primary relationship has been lovingly summarised as “we can make each other worse” by countless tumblr users, Wuthering Heights explores all the ways love can be selfish and cruel instead of improving, as well as the oppressive and cruel social dynamics that lead to a people becoming that way.

Wuthering Heights can be read here at Project Gutenberg or here on a dedicated website that also provides helpful notes about the novel. It can be listened to here.

Charlotte Brontë

The most prolific of the sisters, Charlotte wrote another of the iconic gothic romances, Jane Eyre, which is where most people’s knowledge of her corpus stops. However, Charlotte’s work spans genres, ranging from romance to the social novel.

Novels

Jane Eyre, the archetypal gothic governess, is a gothic romance with an ostensibly happy ending. I have questions about that myself (which you can read about here) but regardless; Jane Eyre balances supernatural elements with psychological horror with a whole heaping helping of social criticism layered in. It can be read here at Project Gutenberg, or here at standard ebooks, or listened to in audiobook form here.

Villette shares some of the base materials of Jane Eyre, a penniless young woman forced to make her way as an educator, coming up against social prejudices and the restrictions placed on women. It’s a more complex book, and one that leans more heavily on social issues than romance or the supernatural, but still has it’s own gothic thrills. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

Shirley is a social novel dealing with the impact of the Napoleonic wars and Industrial Revolution on the Northern industrial towns as well as the familiar topics of gender roles, relationships, and the precarious positions they left women in. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

The Professor is a romance novel inspired by Charlotte’s own time spent teaching in Brussels. It’s told from the perspective of a well educated but pennyless man who, despite poor treatment by wealthy family and employers, is eventually able to marry the woman he loves and build a comfortable life with her. The Professor has a lot of the same themes of classism, exploitation, and familial maltreatment as Jane Eyre, as well as some anti-Catholic sentiment, and was actually written earlier though it wasn’t published until after Charlotte’s death. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

Emma is Charlotte’s last, unfinished novel, about a child who arrives at a boarding school under a false identity. Several authors have attempted to finish the novel, however Charlotte only left us twenty pages in two chapters. It can be read here or here, or listened to here.

Short Stories and Novellas

Charlotte wrote a number of short stories and novellas in multiple genres. Unfortunately I have note been able to track down all of them, and if you know of one that I’ve missed and where it can be read online please let me know so I can include it on the list.

The Search After Happiness is an allegorical fantasy written for children, featuring two friends, discontent with their lives embarking onto a quest into the wilderness where they live in a cave. After one goes missing the other returns to society, where after a journey that allows him to reintegrate himself he finds his missing friend. It can be read here

The Twelve Adventurers is a collection of short stories written during Charlotte’s childhood about a group of men questing through a magical land. It can be read here and here.

The Green Dwarf, a short gothic fantasy in one of Brontë’s original second world settings, filled with classic gothic romance tropes against a political and military backdrop. It can be read here or here (thirty day free trial).

The Spell is set in another of those fantasy kingdoms and follows the political intrigue surrounding the death of an heir. It can be read here.

Tales of the Islanders saw Charlotte collect and collate into story form the adventures of her brother Bramwell’s twelve toy soldiers developed through play between the four of them.

Tales of Angria is a collection of short stories about the aristocracy of Charlotte and Bramwell’s imaginary kingdom Angria. It can be read here (free thirty day trial).

Mina Laury is an Angrian story exploring love and relationship dynamics through the relationship between a Duke and his mistress. It can be read here.

The Secret contains six stories (one named The Secret) set in another of Charlotte’s fantasy cities. It can be read here.

Stancliffe’s Hotel is one of the final Angrian stories, in which Charlotte rounds off a lot of the characters story arc. It can be read here.

Anne Brontë

The youngest of the sisters, Anne’s work was more sombre and less fantastical, producing social novels rather than gothic works.

Novels

Agnes Grey tells the story of a governess whose early life mirror’s Anne’s own. Considered an early feminist work Agnes Grey explores the precariousness position governesses and women in general found themselves in, as well as the abuse they often suffer as a result. It can be read here and here.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is another early feminist work, this time dealing with marital abuse and the dangerous power imbalance that marriage imposed on women. Deeply shocking for the time as it featured a heroine breaking both law and social convention to support herself independently and protect her son from his father, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall resonated with suffragists and women’s right advocates. It can be read here and here.

Poetry

Published under the same male pseudonyms, Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell, as their early fiction the Brontë sisters wrote a collection of poetry, which can be read here or here, or listened to here.

Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel by Charlotte Brontë are a pair of poems from the perspective of the captive Richard and his faithful minstrel Blondel and can be read here.

Ephemera

Charlotte Brontë’s letters can be read here.

Collected letters of the sisters and extracts from contemporary biographers can be read here.

If you want to get yourself a physical copy of any of these I have put together a reading list on bookshop.org, so you’d be helping me and an independent bookshop if you chose to purchase from there.

Similarly my Kofi is here if you found this list useful and want to feed my coffee habit.