Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she

was twenty.[19] Her always fragile health soon broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and
she returned home in April 1839.[20] Thereafter she remained at home, doing most of the cooking,
ironing, and cleaning at Haworth. She taught herself German out of books and also practised the
piano.[21]

In 1842, Emily accompanied Charlotte to the Héger Pensionnat in Brussels, Belgium, where they
attended the girls' academy run by Constantin Héger in the hope of perfecting their French and
German before opening their school. Unlike Charlotte, Emily was uncomfortable in Brussels,
and refused to adopt Belgian fashions, saying "I wish to be as God made me", which rendered
her something of an outcast.[22] Nine of Emily's French essays survive from this period. Héger
seems to have been impressed with the strength of Emily's character, writing that:

She should have been a man – a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new
spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never
have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a
head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman...
impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning
where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned.[23]

The two sisters were committed to their studies and by the end of the term had become so
competent in French that Madame Héger proposed that they both stay another half-year, even,
according to Charlotte, offering to dismiss the English master so that she could take his place.
Emily had, by this time, become a competent pianist and teacher and it was suggested that she
might stay on to teach music.[24] However, the illness and death of their aunt drove them to return
to their father and Haworth.[25] In 1844, the sisters attempted to open a school in their house, but
their plans were stymied by an inability to attract students to the remote area.[26]

In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into
two notebooks. One was labelled "Gondal Poems"; the other was unlabelled. Scholars such as
Fannie Ratchford and Derek Roper have attempted to piece together a Gondal storyline and
chronology from these poems.[27][28] In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks
and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first
refused but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed to Charlotte that
she had been writing poems in secret as well. As co-authors of Gondal stories, Anne and Emily
were accustomed to read their Gondal stories and poems to each other, while Charlotte was
excluded from their privacy.[29] Around this time she had written one of her most famous poems
"No coward soul is mine", probably as an answer to the violation of her privacy and her own
transformation into a published writer.[30] Despite Charlotte's later claim, it was not her last poem.
[31]

In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton
Bell. The Brontë sisters had adopted pseudonyms for publication, preserving their initials:
Charlotte was "Currer Bell", Emily was "Ellis Bell" and Anne was "Acton Bell".[32] Charlotte
wrote in the 'Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell' that their "ambiguous choice" was
"dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine,
while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because... we had a vague impression that
authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice".[33] Charlotte contributed 19 poems, and
Emily and Anne each contributed 21. Although the sisters were told several months after
publication that only two copies had sold,[34] they were not discouraged (of their two readers, one
was impressed enough to request their autographs).[35] The Athenaeum reviewer praised Ellis
Bell's work for its music and power, singling out his poems as the best: "Ellis possesses a fine,
quaint spirit and an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted",[36] and
The Critic reviewer recognised "the presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian
age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."[37]