The Brontës

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë grew up at the parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, where their father was the clergyman. Isolated on the moors, the sisters invented elaborate imaginary worlds as children — and never stopped writing.

In 1847 all three published novels under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights appeared within months of each other that year and both became landmarks of English literature; Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) was a bold critique of a husband's alcoholism and a wife's right to leave.

Tragedy cut their careers short: Emily and Anne died in 1848 and 1849, Charlotte in 1855, all of tuberculosis. Their brother Branwell painted the famous group portrait of the three sisters — and painted himself out of it.