The deaths of their mother and two older sisters marked them and influenced their writing profoundly, as did their isolated upbringing. 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. These three sisters and their brother, Branwell (1817–1848), who had been born after Charlotte and before Emily, were very close to each other. Charlotte, Emily and Anne were then born within a time period of approximately four years. The first Brontë children to be born to rector Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria were Maria (1814–1825) and Elizabeth (1815–1825), who both died at young ages due to disease. 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 later.

Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The Brontës ( / ˈ b r ɒ n t i z/) were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England.

Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael