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Wuthering Heights; an authoritative text with essays in criticism. Edited by William M. Sale, Jr
Small navy hardback edition
Paperback
Published January 1, 1963
About the author
Emily Brontë
1,770 books14.5k followersEmily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, storytelling, and emotional intensity.
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 30, 2025
[Review of the 1st ed. of the Norton Critical ed.; there are at least five different editions, with different critical material.]
Preparing to read Maryse Condé’s La Migration des Coeurs, a retelling of Wuthering Heights, I decided to re-familiarize myself with Emily Bronte’s classic novel, which I hadn’t read for a half-century. I remembered little about it except for the basic plot, and I am sure back then I didn’t really understand it at anything beyond a simple plot level; certainly I had not read enough other English novels from that time period to realize how different Wuthering Heights actually was. In fact, I don’t think I really liked the book, as far as I can recall. This time around, with a lot more experience, I got somewhat more out of it, especially aided by the critical articles in the back (it was a Norton Critical edition) and another book of critical articles. If it still doesn’t impress me as much as her sister’s Jane Eyre, it is certainly better than, say, anything by Charles Dickens.
With a book that most people have read, either in High School English or in college, there isn’t much point in summarizing the plot, and I’m not enough of a literary expert to give an original interpretation, so I will limit myself to commenting on it by way of the critical material. Between the two books, and taking account of three duplicated articles, there were twenty-five articles. Given that both books were published in the early sixties, there were happily no examples of post-modernist literary theory jargon; most of the articles were helpful, although there were a few that seemed to miss the point of the book entirely.
The three articles that were in both books were C.P. Sanger’s 1926 article on “The Structure of Wuthering Heights”, which worked out the chronology of the events, Carl Woodrings’s “The Narrators of Wuthering Heights”, and one of the two best articles, John K. Matthison’s “Nelly Dean and the Power of Wuthering Heights”, which dared to describe Nelly Dean as a negative character and unreliable narrator, who by her own narrative is constantly lying, spying, and betraying both the children and her employers – my own impression of the book. He makes the good point that our constant disagreement with the narrator forces the reader to actively think about the novel rather than simply reading for the story.
There were articles on all the major and minor characters, with one exception: Mr. Earnshaw; which I thought was a curious exception, since he is the “protagonist” of the novel in the literal sense – the character whose decisions initiate the entire action of the book.
Preparing to read Maryse Condé’s La Migration des Coeurs, a retelling of Wuthering Heights, I decided to re-familiarize myself with Emily Bronte’s classic novel, which I hadn’t read for a half-century. I remembered little about it except for the basic plot, and I am sure back then I didn’t really understand it at anything beyond a simple plot level; certainly I had not read enough other English novels from that time period to realize how different Wuthering Heights actually was. In fact, I don’t think I really liked the book, as far as I can recall. This time around, with a lot more experience, I got somewhat more out of it, especially aided by the critical articles in the back (it was a Norton Critical edition) and another book of critical articles. If it still doesn’t impress me as much as her sister’s Jane Eyre, it is certainly better than, say, anything by Charles Dickens.
With a book that most people have read, either in High School English or in college, there isn’t much point in summarizing the plot, and I’m not enough of a literary expert to give an original interpretation, so I will limit myself to commenting on it by way of the critical material. Between the two books, and taking account of three duplicated articles, there were twenty-five articles. Given that both books were published in the early sixties, there were happily no examples of post-modernist literary theory jargon; most of the articles were helpful, although there were a few that seemed to miss the point of the book entirely.
The three articles that were in both books were C.P. Sanger’s 1926 article on “The Structure of Wuthering Heights”, which worked out the chronology of the events, Carl Woodrings’s “The Narrators of Wuthering Heights”, and one of the two best articles, John K. Matthison’s “Nelly Dean and the Power of Wuthering Heights”, which dared to describe Nelly Dean as a negative character and unreliable narrator, who by her own narrative is constantly lying, spying, and betraying both the children and her employers – my own impression of the book. He makes the good point that our constant disagreement with the narrator forces the reader to actively think about the novel rather than simply reading for the story.
There were articles on all the major and minor characters, with one exception: Mr. Earnshaw; which I thought was a curious exception, since he is the “protagonist” of the novel in the literal sense – the character whose decisions initiate the entire action of the book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review