I wanted to write about Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights because we have a copy coming up in our next sale, but I also just want to write about it. Many people do, and have done so since its debut in 1847.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, first American edition, New York, 1848. At auction April 23. Estimate $5,000 to $7,000.

The moment of its appearance on the literary scene is notable. Between 1840 and 1855, the world saw David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Poe’s Tales and The Raven, The Scarlet Letter, and Moby Dick all written and published, an amazing time to write and read.

I also want you to read the book, and to re-read it if you haven’t lately. I give you permission to listen to an audiobook version, but only one performed by a voice actor who can render the servant Joseph’s Yorkshire dialect with fidelity. After Emily Brontë’s death, her sister Charlotte felt that the accent as written (accurately) was incomprehensible to readers not familiar with its twang and edited her sister’s work for what she perceived as better clarity. You’ll see what I mean—we could go on, but there are more seductive rabbit holes to follow.

Thomas Cautley Newby first published Wuthering Heights in London in 1847, citing its author as “Ellis Bell,” a move to conceal her gender also practiced by “Currer Bell” (Charlotte) and “Acton Bell” (Anne) when publishing. It came out as part of a three-volume set with Anne’s Agnes Grey. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre pretty much paved the publishing way for her sisters, and in its first American edition, The Heights title page stipulates that it was “written by the author of Jane Eyre,” one misattribution atop two.

When you do sit down to read it, you’re going to need a chart. Basically, everyone is some sort of intermarried cousin with a segment of a reused name in their name. Cathy Earnshaw’s daughter is Cathy Linton. Isabella Linton’s son is called Linton Heathcliff, and for the sake of everything holy, the most important male character’s name is Heathcliff Heathcliff. (A construction flagged by editing software everywhere.) Also, the couples don’t quite couple up right, and it’s hard to separate those who should be together from those who end up together. Indeed, the story is wild as the moors, presenting multi-generational violence, grudges, exquisitely crafted revenge (involving waiting patiently for the death of the weak, intentional marriage of the hated, forced marriage between minors, death by childbirth, love oaths between first cousins, kidnapping and more), and let’s not forget the haunting of unsettled spirits, and straight-up bloody violence, all carried out over three generations and roughly 30 years. I omit content that would necessitate a trigger warning; consider yourself warned and read the original.

Film Adaptations of Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights Film Posters Over the Years.

I’m excited about the new movie with Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, too, but I also need to review earlier screen renditions. The new one is being billed as a great love story, but the first film version from 1920 (now lost) was described on the poster as “Emily Brontë’s tremendous Story of Hate,” more accurate, in my opinion, but I will keep an open mind. In the meantime, I plan to re-watch the 1939 film with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. I remember it popping up as a re-run on TV when I was a child and marveling at Cathy’s cruelty in the face of Heathcliff’s naked, naïve devotion. I’ve also heard good things about the BBC mini-series from 2009 with Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley, one of the few to address anything beyond the first generation of strife born of deep devotions and tragic misunderstandings. How did I miss the Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes iteration? I will be busy catching up.

Collecting Nineteenth-Century Literature

Rarity usually follows failure and a short life, and value attaches to rarity.  Wuthering Heights has both. Emily Brontë’s only published work saw print for the first time the year before her death. Auction records for the three-volume omnibus featuring Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights begin in the 1930s, when the set sold for 20-30 British pounds, about $5,000 in today’s dollars. Somewhere around 30 copies have sold at auction over the past 100 years. Most recent values for the first London edition are reliably north of $100,000, assuming good condition. The good sales in 1847 were followed by a brief flurry of interest from printers, resulting in three editions in 1848, published in London, New York, and Boston. Including all three 1848 editions, only about 25 copies have come to auction in the last 60 years.

The book is rare in these first editions, and the best copies sell for the most. A first American edition in original publisher’s paper wrappers holds the top spot, with an auction result just over $10,000, but these results are about 20 years old. As the collecting public grasps the true rarity of Wuthering Heights, as reflected in more recent results, prices are pushed up. The most recent copies to sell in the 2020s (not in paper wrappers) have sold for between $8,000 and $10,000.

Brontë’s life was too short, but she left us this exquisite piece of rawness, a shard of pain exquisitely polished that has inspired so much else. Book collectors feel the same. I, for one, would never shun the chance to offer early editions of The Heights in one of the Fine Books auctions here at Swann, and I’m sure that bibliophiles will never cease bidding for a chance to have their own.