Emily continued her education at home after the disastrous time at Cowan Bridge. She was intelligent and Patrick Bronte was a well educated man who allowed his daughters to read freely... They loved books and reading and were eager to educate themselves. Then they began to make up stories about a set of toys that Patrick brought them home from a trip to town. They read the newspapers and were eager supporters of the Duke of Wellington, and they based the stories at first on what they read in the news.
Creating a private world of fiction wasn't uncommon for some literary children in the 19th century.. but the Brontes took it to great lengths. They not only wrote down and acted out their stories but they also created little magazines got up to look like printed ones. It was obvious that all four of them were going to write....
After a time, where they all joined in writing stories of Angria, the world they had created, Emily and Anne withdrew from the partnership and created their own fictional island of Gondal... All the Brontes were interested in love and heroism and they lauded the wild and free world they had created over the narrow civilised world. Most of Emily's poems from Gondal have not survived but her land was ruled by queens, and women were powerful and passionate in her fiction....
However in real life, Emily was shy and awkward and had little interest in other people outside her family. All the Brontes were shy to a degree. Branwell was the most sociable and he made male friends with whom he socialised in pubs. The girls were more restricted and met few people. Charlotte had gone to school in her teens, this time to Miss Wooler's school were she was happy and kindly treated. However Emily went there for a short time and was so unhappy that she became ill and had to go home.
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