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Wuthering Heights (Modern Library Classics)

by Emily Bronte

ISBN13: 9780375756443
ISBN10: 0375756442
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. The epic story of Catherine and Heathcliff plays out against the dramatic backdrop of the wild English moors, and presents an astonishing metaphysical vision of fate and obsession, passion and revenge. "Only Emily Brontë," V. S. Pritchett said, "exposes her imagination to the dark spirit." And Virginia Woolf wrote, "Hers...is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts...by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar." This edition also includes Charlotte Brontë's original Introduction.

Review:

"It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they

transcend reality."

--Virginia Woolf

Synopsis:

The strikingly original and intensely romantic "Wuthering Heights" was one of the forerunners of today's romance novels, but this is a novel that transcends genre. The epic story of Catherine, the daughter of the house, and the foundling Heathcliff whom her father brings home, played out against the equally dramatic backdrop of the wild English moors, presents an astonishing, metaphysical vision of fate and obsession, passion and revenge.

About the Author

Emily Jane Brontë was the most solitary member of a unique, tightly-knit, English provincial family. Born in 1818, she shared the parsonage of the town of Haworth, Yorkshire, with her older sister, Charlotte, her brother, Branwell, her younger sister, Anne, and her father, The Reverend Patrick Brontë. All five were poets and writers; all but Branwell would publish at least one book.

Fantasy was the Brontë children’s one relief from the rigors of religion and the bleakness of life in an impoverished region. They invented a series of imaginary kingdoms and constructed a whole library of journals, stories, poems, and plays around their inhabitants. Emily’s special province was a kingdom she called Gondal, whose romantic heroes and exiles owed much to the poems of Byron.

Brief stays at several boarding schools were the sum of her experiences outside Haworth until 1842, when she entered a school in Brussels with her sister Charlotte. After a year of study and teaching there, they felt qualified to announce the opening of a school in their own home, but could not attract a single pupil.

In 1845 Charlotte Brontë came across a manuscript volume of her sister’s poems. She knew at once, she later wrote, that they were “not at all like poetry women generally write…they had a peculiar music–wild, melancholy, and elevating.” At her sister’s urging, Emily’s poems, along with Anne’s and Charlotte’s, were published pseudonymously in 1846. An almost complete silence greeted this volume, but the three sisters, buoyed by the fact of publication, immediately began to write novels. Emily’s effort was Wuthering Heights; appearing in 1847 it was treated at first as a lesser work by Charlotte, whose Jane Eyre had already been published to great acclaim. Emily Brontë’s name did not emerge from behind her pseudonym of Ellis Bell until the second edition of her novel appeared in 1850.

In the meantime, tragedy had struck the Brontë family. In September of 1848 Branwell had succumbed to a life of dissipation. By December, after a brief illness, Emily too was dead; her sister Anne would die the next year. Wuthering Heights, Emily’s only novel, was just beginning to be understood as the wild and singular work of genius that it is. “Stronger than a man,” wrote Charlotte, “Simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.”

From the Paperback edition.

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: chocochic53, January 2, 2008 (view all comments by chocochic53)
This classic is a unique treasure. Bronte has written a story full of passion, love, and tragedy. I read this book as a high schooler and found myself absorbed by the characters in this plot. This is a book that you can truly think over and that does not tell you how you should feel about it. I also, will not tell you how you should feel about it, but I will tell you that throughout all of its twists and turns it really is worth your time.
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780375756443
Introduction:: Johnson, Diane
Publisher:: Modern Library
Introduction:: Johnson, Diane
Author:: Bronte, Emily
Location:: New York
Subject:: Literary
Subject:: Fiction
Subject:: Classics
Subject:: Country life
Subject:: Orphans
Subject:: Psychological fiction
Subject:: Love stories
Subject:: Rejection (Psychology)
Subject:: Rural families
Subject:: Domestic fiction
Subject:: Yorkshire
Edition Description:: Paperback
Series:: Modern Library Classics
Series Volume:: 105-418
Publication Date:: November 2000
Binding:: Paperback
Language:: English
Pages:: 464
Dimensions:: 8.04x5.16x1.01 in. .82 lbs.

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