The Trailer for 'Emily' Introduces Us To a Brooding Bronte Sister

The Bronte sisters are some of the most famous women in literature, who each managed to write some of the most successful and controversial fiction of the mid-nineteenth century. That they did it all while writing under assumed names and facing bleak personal and family prospects is just one of the reasons they (and their respective works) are so remarkable. But we know still comparatively little about who they really were as people, let alone what inspired their writings.

Sister of Charlotte and Anne, Emily Bronte is best known writing the heartbreaking Gothic romance Wuthering Heights and the sad fact of her very early death. She passed away in 1848 when she was just 30 years old, which means that it's very easy for us, over two hundred years after she died, to project our own ideas of who she was onto the scant facts of history she left behind. The upcoming biopic Emily fully leans into this idea, crafting an image of the author that bears little resemblance to historical fact, but that certainly appears as though it will tell a good story.

Rather than a straight historical account, this film clearly takes its inspiration from the more modern sensibilities of recent hits like Dickinson and director Autumn De Wilde's Emma. The trailer, which describes the writer as a "rebel," a "misfit" and a "genius" in block hot pink lettering, makes it clear that the film will take some liberties with the known facts of the author's life, engaging in some fairly out-there speculation about the relationships that may have inspired her to write her great work.