Wuthering Heights: Classics Illustrated #59

by Emily Brontë, William B. Jones (Introduction), William B. ,Jr. Jones (Introduction)

Overview

Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights, her only novel, between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister, Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre. It was finally printed under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by Charlotte. Follow Catherine and Heathcliff through the harrowing story of Wuthering Heights.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620280096
Publisher:	First Classics
Publication date:	07/11/2013
Series:	Classics Illustrated , #59
Sold by:	De Marque
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	9 - 14 Years

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.”

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     viii
About Longman Cultural Editions     ix
About This Edition     xi
Introduction     xv
Table of Dates: The Life of Emily Bronte     xxvi
The Chronology of Wuthering Heights     xxx
Wuthering Heights     1
Volume 1     3
Volume 2     141
Contexts     299
Biographical     303
Biographical Sketch     303
Emily Bronte in Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)     308
Writings   Emily Bronte     313
from "Diary Papers" (1834-1845)     313
"The Cat" (translation) (1842)     319
Charlotte Bronte's Selection of Poems by Ellis Bell (1850)     320
Charlotte Bronte on Ellis Bell     329
from "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" (1850)     330
from "Editor's Preface" (1850)     335
Historical, Social, and Legal     339
Heathcliff and the Unsettled Classes     339
Nomads of City and Country     341
Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor (1861)     341
Self-Made Men and Luddites     343
Samuel Smiles, from Self-Help (1859)     343
Women's Rights and Roles     348
Ellis Bell and Sarah Stickney Ellis     348
Sarah Stickney Ellis, from The Women of England, Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits (1839)     349
Harriet Martineau, from "On Female Education" (1823)     352
Wills, Women, and Property     355
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, from A Brief Summary, in Plain Language, of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women (1854)     355
A Tale of Two Houses: Interiors and Servants     357
Interiors     358
John Ruskin, from "The Nature of Gothic," The Stones of Venice (1851-1853)     359
Domestic Servants     361
Isabella Beeton, from The Book of Household Management (1861)     362
Regional and Popular     366
Where Are the Brontes From?     366
Ireland, Heathcliff, and the Brontes     367
William Wright, from The Brontes in Ireland (1893)     368
Yorkshire: Regionalism, Dialect, and Ballads     374
Regionalism     374
Elizabeth Gaskell, from The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)     375
Dialect     377
Richard Blakeborough, from Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire (1898)     377
Ballads      380
Anonymous, "The Ghaist's Warning" (1812)     382
Pilgrims to Haworth     387
Matthew Arnold, from "Haworth Churchyard, April 1855" (1877)     387
Claude Meeker, from "Haworth; Home of the Brontes" (1895)     390
Virginia Woolf, from "Haworth, November 1904" (1904)     393
Shifting Literary Honors and the Beaten Track     395
Critical and Artful     398
Reviews of Wuthering Heights, 1848-1851     399
from Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper (January 1848)     399
from Atlas (January 1848)     400
G. W. P[eck], from "Wuthering Heights," The American Review (June 1848)     401
[E. P. Whipple], from "Novels of the Season," North American Review (October 1848)     403
[George Henry Lewes], from The Leader (December 1850)     404
[Sydney Dobell], from Eclectic Review (February 1851)     405
Early Criticism     406
Algernon Charles Swinburne, from "Emily Bronte" (1883)     406
Angus M. MacKay, from The Brontes: Fact and Fiction (1897)     407
Mary A. Ward [Mrs. Humphry Ward], from "Introduction," Wuthering Heights, Haworth Edition (1900)     409
May Sinclair, from The Three Brontes (1912)     410
Virginia Woolf, from "Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights" (1916)      412
Sites and Resources on the Brontes     413
Exhibits     413
Selected Web sites     415
Adaptations and Translations     415
Performances     415
Film/Television Adaptations     417
Some Translations     418
Some Sequels, Pendants, and Biographical Fiction     422
Further Reading     425
General Resources and Biographical Studies     425
Popular Reception and Travels to Bronte Country     430
Selected Criticism Since 1995     430

What People are Saying About This

Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials... And there it stands colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock; in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot.

Reading Group Guide

1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?

2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?

3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?

4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?

5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.

6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?

7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?

8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victim of it?How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?

Foreword

1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?

2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?

3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?

4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?

5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.

6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?

7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?

8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victimof it? How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?

Editorial Reviews

This abridged presentation of a classic brings to life Bronte's gothic romance and provides a powerful reading by Martin Shaw, whose voice perfectly captures this dark story of the moors. Those reluctant to read the full classic will find this audio version compelling and hard to quit listening to.
—Internet Book Watch

Internet Book Watch

"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

From the Publisher