This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life, Deborah Lutz [A Book Review]

While Emily isn’t my favorite of the Brontë sisters, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn more about the family that produced one of my absolute favorite novels of all time.

A meticulously researched account of the lives of the Brontës.

Deborah Lutz is an absolute fiend for this family. I have no idea how long it must have taken her to hunt down the type of intricate information she writes about. Scraps of paper, letters not even to and from each other, but of others speaking about them in some cases, the exact timeframe in which certain drafts and poems were written and the gift of intricate context of the times and their lives.

Occasionally this context it inferred or assumed by the author, but considering the type of meticulous research she’s done, I think it’s safe to trust her opinions there. It focused on Emily, as promised, but I daresay the book contains full accounts of both sisters, and a fair amount of their brother, as well.

The Brontë children were very singular. Growing up on the English moors, they lived luxuriously in their imaginations, making up characters and fantasy societies that they wrote extensively about, even lingering into their adulthood. If there was one thing that could be said to have bonded these sisters, it is their common practice of writing. They wrote, and they wrote, and they wrote, unapologetically. They wrote these little fictions, they wrote poetry, they wrote letters…they wrote. It is no wonder that is how they are remembered.

But they also struggled. The early death of their mother was formative, especially for Emily, who grew up with a strange obsession about death and the macabre that almost certainly stemmed from thoughts about her own mother’s early demise. Their brother, Branwell, was troubled. Though he once played along with them in their little games, he grew up to be unsettled, fantastical in his affairs, and slowly degenerated.

The entire generation of Brontës were doomed to tragically short lives, but through these pages we are offered a glimpse into what kind of circumstances bred the minds that generated some of the best works of literature of their time.

You cannot write a book like this without a deep respect and fascination for its characters, and I felt that on every page of this volume. A work like this is an incredible accomplishment, and I would recommend it for anyone who has read and loved a Brontë novel.

{(Don’t tell, but my favorite is Jane Eyre)}

Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Details

Title:: This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, A Life
Author:: Deborah Lutz
Genre:: Biography
Publisher:: W. W. Norton & Company
Length:: 352 pages
Published:: May 5th, 2026
The Litertarian Rating:: 5-Stars

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