Novel
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë · 1847
Opening lines
1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country!
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
At the end of November 1801, Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, visits his landlord, Heathcliff, who receives him badly in his farm on the moor. Caught by the snow on his second visit, he spends the night there, then falls ill and has the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, tell him the story of the two houses. Years earlier, Mr Earnshaw had brought back from Liverpool a foundling, baptised with the name of a dead son. Hindley hated him, Catherine grew attached to him, and the day she says that it would degrade her to marry him, the boy, who was listening, goes away.
Context
The publisher, Thomas Newby, demanded fifty pounds to print the book, promised a print run of three hundred and fifty copies, printed only two hundred and fifty and never returned the sum. Accepted before the elder sister's novel, the book appeared after it, in December 1847: the publisher had dragged his feet, then hurried the release after the success of the other. It filled the first two volumes of a set whose third carried the younger sister's novel. The printing was full of errors, wrongly numbered pages, missing punctuation, and the word of the title misspelt three times.
Who it is for
A novel with two narrators and two generations, translated into French since 1892 and retranslated again in 2026.
Prizes and reception
Judged strange and brutal on its publication, even by the critics who acknowledged its power.
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