The four surviving Brontë children were thrown together back at Haworth, where their widowed father imposed some eccentric rules, like not allowing them to eat meat lest it make them soft. An aunt had come to live with them after their mother’s death, but they were left largely to their own devices, with plenty of time to pursue elaborate role-playing games featuring figures from military history such as the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon.

“The sisters never really seem to have thought about getting married,” notes biographer Claire Harman, whose Charlotte Brontë: A Life was published in 2015. “They all were very interested in battles and statistics and geography – things that girls weren’t traditionally encouraged to think about. They were horribly oppressed by the idea of having to work but at no point did they think ‘I have to be a governess, but hey, I might get married’.”

The boring Brontë?

It was Charlotte’s experience as a governess in Brussels, in a school run by Constantin Heger and his wife, that would sharpen her creative desires. Charlotte developed feelings for Monsieur Heger – feelings that were not reciprocated – and she wanted to be read by him. From Haworth, she wrote him four long letters, which Heger tore up only for his wife to fish out of the bin and piece them back together. These letters were initially hushed up by Charlotte’s friend (the anachronistic term ‘frenemy’ might be more apt) and biographer, Mrs Gaskell. Their steaminess countered the saintly image of Charlotte that she was intent on portraying. For Harman, however, they tell a vivid story of human nature and female experience. As she puts it, they’re “fuelled by hormones, eroticism, youthful anger and all sorts of amazing stuff”.

Scholars have often questioned whether Anne would have been published had it not been for her famous siblings. According to Harman, the same could be asked of Emily. “She clearly is a genius but I think she was very controlling, probably slightly autistic. Wuthering Heights is such a strange book, full of violence and peculiarity. People say it’s their favourite romantic novel but it’s hardly a model for romantic love; there’s a load of anger and energy, and people get thumped across rooms all the time. Whether that book would ever have been published – or finished – is really doubtful if they hadn’t all been together.