1812 The Reverend Patrick Brontë marries Maria Branwell.
1814 Maria Brontë, their first child, born.
1815 Elizabeth Brontë born.
1816 Charlotte Brontë born.
1817 Patrick Branwell Brontë, the only son, born.
1818 Emily Jane Brontë born.
1820 Anne Brontë born. The Brontë family moves to Haworth, near Bradford, Yorkshire.
1821 Mrs. Brontë dies of cancer in September. Her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moves in with the family.
1824 Emily Brontë and sisters enroll at the at the infamous Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire, which is depicted in Jane Eyre.
1825 The two oldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth, contract tuberculosis at school. Maria dies on May 6; Elizabeth dies on June 15. Charlotte and Emily are withdrawn from the school on June 1. They do not return to school until they are in their teens; in the meantime they are educated at home.
1826 Mr. Brontë brings home twelve wooden soldiers for Branwell; this is the catalyst for the creation of the Brontës’ juvenile fantasy worlds and writings. Charlotte and Branwell begin the “Angrian” stories and magazines; Emily and Anne work on the “Gondal” saga.
1831 Charlotte goes to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, but leaves seven months later to tend to her sisters’ education.
1835 Charlotte returns to Miss Wooler’s school as governess, accompanied by Emily. After three months, Emily leaves school because of homesickness.
1837 Emily becomes a governess at Miss Patchett’s school, near Halifax; remains there for about six months.
1838–1842 Over half of Brontë’s surviving poems written.
1840 All three sisters live at Haworth.
1842 Charlotte and Emily travel to Brussels to study music and foreign languages at Pensionnat Héger. Upon the death of their aunt, they return to Haworth.
1843 Branwell joins Anne in York as tutor to the Robinson family. Charlotte returns to Brussels. Emily alone at Haworth with her father; a time of creativity and freedom.
1844 Emily begins to arrange her poems into two notebooks, dividing the Gondalan from the non-Gondalan material.
1845 Charlotte discovers Emily’s poems and convinces her sister to collaborate on a volume of poems; Emily also begins writing Wuthering Heights.
1846 Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell published, with the Brontë’s paying for costs. Two copies are sold. Charlotte’s The Professor, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey are all completed. The latter two are accepted by T.C. Newby, but The Professor is rejected. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre is begun and accepted by Smith, Elder & Co. upon its completion in 1847.
1847 Jane Eyre published. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey published by T.C. Newby.
1848 Confusion in the literary world over the identity and number of the Bells; Anne publishes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Emily withdraws more resolutely into herself; September 24, Branwell dies of tuberculosis; October 1, Emily leaves home for the last time to attend Branwell’s funeral service—she catches a severe cold which develops into inflammation of the lungs; December 19, Emily Brontë dies of tuberculosis.
1849 Anne dies of tuberculosis, May 28.
1850 Wuthering Heights reissued, with a selection of poems, and a biographical notice of her sisters’ lives by Charlotte.
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