The Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily and Charlotte, aged about 15, 17 and 19 respectively) painted by Branwell in 1834

Emily only wrote the one novel, Wuthering Heights, although she was working on a second when she died. However, no trace of this book remains. We only know she was writing it because her publisher, T C Newby, sent her a letter dated 15 February 1848 which said:

I am much obliged by your kind note and shall have great pleasure in making arrangements for your next novel. I would not hurry its completion, for I think you are quite right not to let it go before the world until well satisfied with it, for much depends on your new work. If it be an improvement on your first, you will have established yourself as a first rate novelist, but if it fall short the Critics will be too apt to say that you have expended your talent in your first novel. I shall therefore have pleasure in accepting it upon the understanding that its completion be in your own time.