In her introduction, Janet Gezari discusses issues of dating and authenticity that arise with Bronte's poems, and the ways in which the Gondal poems relate to the lost prose narratives on the same subject.

The poems of Emily Jane Bronte are passionate and powerful works that convey the vitality of the human spirit and of the natural world. Only twenty-one of her poems were published during her lifetime - this volume contains those and all others attributed to her. Many poems describe the mythic country of Gondal and its citizens that she imagined with Anne, and remain the only surviving record of their joint creation. Other visionary works, including 'Remembrance' and 'No coward soul is mine', boldly confront mortality and anticipate life after death. And poems such as 'Redbreast early in the morning' and 'The blue bell is the sweetest flower' evoke the wild beauties of nature she observed on the Yorkshire moors, while also examining the state of her psyche.