Emily Brontë’s Signature: A Working Census

Current scope: Two surviving objects are catalogued as signed, a third is reported in scholarship as signed, and a British Library notebook supplies confirmed initials and a large body of comparative handwriting. A surviving letter remains to be inspected.

Finding the real examples

Images of Emily Brontë’s name circulate as crops, facsimiles, decorative marks, and modern reconstructions. A convincing-looking image is not enough. It must lead back to a surviving document, a holding institution, and a catalogue or publication record.

This census records that trail. Where the original image has not yet been examined, it says so. Where a catalogue describes an item as signed, it reports the catalogue’s wording without pretending to have seen more than the record allows.

Signed forms

EB-SIG-004: “Ellis Bell,” 23 July 1846

The clearest available image is also the name under which Wuthering Heights first appeared. A single sheet carries the autograph pseudonyms “Currer Bell,” “Ellis Bell,” and “Acton Bell,” written by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The physical sheet is catalogued at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and dated 23 July 1846. Emily’s “Ellis Bell” occupies the middle row.¹

Wikimedia Commons supplies the isolated public-domain reproduction above rather than a photograph of the complete sheet. Its file record names the Brontës and the three pseudonyms but supplies only the broad source description “Letters from the Brontë Sisters.” The object, date, medium, and present holding can be independently matched to the museum’s sheet through the Bridgeman catalogue; the precise publication from which the Commons pixels were lifted has not yet been recovered.¹

EB-SIG-001: “The Night of Storms Has Past”

• Document: autograph manuscript of the poem, with an earlier unsigned poem on the verso.
• Date: 10 June 1837.
• Holding: Morgan Library & Museum, MA 2696.48.
• What is confirmed: the Morgan catalogues it as an autograph manuscript signed.
• Image status: the Morgan supplies a downloadable image, but its terms require the low-resolution file to remain unaltered and limit its use to personal, educational, or noncommercial contexts. It is therefore linked while publication status is clarified.²

The Morgan describes the leaf as a two-page item measuring 12.2 by 7.4 centimetres. The recto contains “The Night of Storms Has Past”; the verso contains the unsigned “I saw thee child one summer’s day,” dated July 1834. Only the 1837 manuscript is catalogued as signed.²

Current census

Initials and handwriting

EB-SIG-002: Initials in the fair-copy poetry notebook

• Document: notebook containing thirty-one poems.
• Date range: poems dated from 11 November 1838 to 2 January 1846; notebook transcription begun by February 1844.
• Holding: British Library, Add MS 89488.
• What is confirmed: “EJB” appears on folio 4 recto.
• Why it is here: it supplies a confirmed example of Emily identifying her own manuscript and can be compared with disputed or unsourced images.³

The initials appear on the first page with the words “Transcribed February 1844.” The notebook also contains Emily’s ink revisions and later pencil revisions by Charlotte.³

This is not a detached signature crop. It preserves the initials in relation to the dated transcription note, the opening poem, the ruled page, and the later pencil annotation. The Library’s image manifest marks the digitisation with a Public Domain Mark and exposes the full scan at 6,077 by 9,429 pixels.³

Two identifying marks, enlarged

These are different kinds of mark. “Ellis Bell” is a flowing pseudonymous autograph on the three-sister sheet; “EJB” is a compact set of block initials inside a working poetry notebook. The panels are enlarged independently and are not scale-matched. Their value is documentary: together they show two ways Emily attached an identifying name to written work.¹³

EB-SIG-003: The 1837 diary paper

• Document: illustrated diary paper written by Emily, including a sketch of Emily and Anne at the dining-room table.
• Date: 26 June 1837.
• Holding: Brontë Parsonage Museum, BS 105.
• What is confirmed: the object and its location are documented; Brontë Society Transactions describes Emily as signing it for herself and Anne.
• What remains: inspect the exact mark on an institutional image and establish publication terms.⁴

The National Manuscripts Conservation Trust identifies BS 105 as Emily’s illustrated diary paper and records its conservation by the Brontë Society. A 1951 article describes the paper as signed by Emily on behalf of both sisters. Until the original or a traceable facsimile is checked, that description remains the most precise available account.⁴

The complete paper belongs here even before the reported signing can be read with certainty. It records Emily’s ordinary documentary hand alongside her drawn and written identification of the two sisters, and it is shown whole so that no isolated mark acquires more authority than the source page supports.⁴

Handwriting in 1837 and 1844

The diary paper is crowded and uneven; the poetry notebook is ruled and more deliberately spaced. The two details are useful for seeing the movement and density of Emily’s ordinary hand across different documents. They do not share a physical scale, ink calibration, lighting setup, or reproduction history, so differences in stroke weight and size should not be read as exact changes in her handwriting.³⁴

Awaiting inspection

EB-SIG-P01: Letter to Ellen Nussey

• Document: letter from Emily Brontë to Ellen Nussey.
• Date: approximately 22 May 1843, with the date supplied by Nussey.
• Holding: British Library, Ashley MS 177.
• Present status: autograph letter confirmed; signature unconfirmed.⁵

The catalogue identifies a single octavo item and records its publication in The Shakespeare Head Brontë. It does not describe the letter as signed and offers no digitised content. The letter belongs in the search, although it cannot yet receive a confirmed EB-SIG number.⁵

What the current records establish

The “Ellis Bell” sheet supplies a visible autograph pseudonym, and the Morgan catalogues a second manuscript as signed. The British Library notebook supplies visible initials in a full-page institutional scan. The 1837 diary paper is also included: its holding record identifies the object, and named scholarship describes Emily as signing for herself and Anne. The exact mark still needs direct inspection.

Ashley MS 177 is certainly Emily’s letter, but its catalogue does not establish that she signed it. Unsourced crops and repeated reproductions remain outside the census until they can be tied to an identifiable original.

What remains unresolved

Further entries depend on image-level examination: the exact signed form on MA 2696.48, the mark on BS 105, and the ending of Ashley MS 177 all remain to be read from an original or a traceable facsimile. The publication source behind the Commons “Bell” reproduction also remains to be recovered. Other poem manuscripts must be checked for full names and initials without confusing them with Gondal personae.

The private research record also preserves the archive correspondence behind that search.

Notes and sources

Footnotes

1. Wikimedia Commons, “Brontë Sisters signatures (as Bell)”, checked 26 August 2026, Public Domain Mark; and Bridgeman Images, “Autograph signatures of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, 23 July 1846”, identifying the physical sheet, date, medium, and Brontë Parsonage Museum holding. Evidence status: autograph object identified; Commons file’s immediate publication source remains incomplete. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Morgan Library & Museum, “The night of storms has passed: autograph manuscript signed”, MA 2696.48, checked 26 August 2026; Morgan Library & Museum, “Terms and Conditions”, checked 26 August 2026. Evidence status: institutional item record; exact signature transcription pending image review; image not reproduced while site-use status is clarified. ↩ ↩²

3. British Library, “Emily Brontë’s notebook of poems”, Add MS 89488, and IIIF Presentation manifest, checked 26 August 2026. Evidence status: institutional catalogue identifies “EJB” on f. 4r; manifest supplies the full-resolution scan and a Public Domain Mark. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, “Conservation of the manuscripts of Emily Brontë”, identifying the 26 June 1837 diary paper as BS 105, checked 26 August 2026; “The Significance of the Diary Paper,” Brontë Society Transactions 12.1 (1951), abstract checked 22 August 2026; Wikimedia Commons, public-domain diary-paper reproduction, checked 24 August 2026. Evidence status: holding and description documented; exact reported signature awaiting direct inspection. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. British Library, “Letter from Emily Brontë to Ellen Nussey”, Ashley MS 177, checked 22 August 2026. Evidence status: autograph document verified; presence and form of signature unconfirmed. ↩ ↩²