Queen of Gondal

More than fifty years ago, Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford published a reconstruction of Emily Brontë's Gondal poems in the format of a novel: Gondal's Queen, 1973. Now, Emiliano Vitali tries to do the same:

The Queen of Gondal

by Emiliano Vitali

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8269872667

2025

A visionary novel inspired by Emily Brontë’s secret poetic universe — now revealed for the first time.

Years before the publication of Wuthering Heights, a young Emily Brontë, together with her sister Anne, imagined a dark and windswept paracosm: Gondal, a northern kingdom torn by war, betrayal, and fierce passions — alongside Gaaldine, its exotic and turbulent colony.

At the heart of this gothic fantasy stand Augusta Geraldine Almeda, a fiery and indomitable queen, and Julius Brenzaida, a tormented antihero. Bound by desire, infidelity, and revenge, they echo the tragic intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Emily’s poetic manuscripts — long unpublished — sing of stormy seas, dark dungeons, and harrowing conflicts. Beneath their evocative power lies the submerged thread of an epic and unfinished saga, now reconstructed in novel form.

The Queen of Gondal transforms those fragmented verses into a novel of epic and tragic resonance, breathing life into Brontë’s poetic visions, anticipating not only the gothic and tormented atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, but, with striking modernity, the settings and themes of contemporary fantasy.

There is also an Intalian spoken language.