WUTHERING HEIGHTS is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between
October 1845 and June 1846, Wuthering Heights was published in 1847
under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell"; Brontë died the following year, aged
30. Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were accepted by
publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's
novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript
of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be
published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.
Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of
English literature, contemporary reviews for the novel were deeply
polarised; it was considered controversial because its depiction of
mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged
strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy,
morality, social classes and gender inequality. The English poet and
painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to it as "A fiend of a book - an
incredible monster [...] The action is laid in hell, - only it seems
places and people have English names there."
In the second half of the 19th century, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was
considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, but following later
re-evaluation, critics began to argue that Wuthering Heights was
superior. The book has inspired adaptations, including film, radio and
television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, a ballet,
operas (by Bernard Herrmann, Carlisle Floyd, and Frédéric Chaslin), a
role-playing game, and a 1978 song by Kate Bush.
