Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel, published under the pen name Ellis Bell in December 1847, the year before her death from tuberculosis at thirty. The book is set on the moors above the West Riding of Yorkshire and is told in nested first person, beginning with the southern visitor Mr Lockwood, who in 1801 takes a tenancy at Thrushcross Grange and listens, fascinated, as the housekeeper Nelly Dean tells him the long story of the brooding household up at Wuthering Heights. Years before, old Mr Earnshaw had brought home a dark-haired foundling boy from the streets of Liverpool and named him Heathcliff. Heathcliff and Earnshaw's wild daughter Catherine grew into something fierce and inseparable. When Catherine, half from snobbery and half from confusion, married the gentle neighbor Edgar Linton instead, Heathcliff disappeared for three years and returned a wealthy, cold, and methodical man whose project for the rest of his life was the destruction of both families.
Where Wuthering Heights keeps showing up
Six of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Books in conversation with Wuthering Heights
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about Wuthering Heights
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
When the new tenant Mr Lockwood is snowed in at Wuthering Heights, the housekeeper Nelly Dean tells him the story of the Earnshaw and Linton families across the wild Yorkshire moors.
Yes. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis in 1848, the year after Wuthering Heights was published, leaving it her only novel.
It is often classified as one, but it is a violent, gothic, and deeply unhappy novel. Heathcliff and Catherine are not a model relationship.
The frame narration through Lockwood and Nelly Dean takes a chapter or two to settle into, and the Yorkshire dialect of Joseph slows some readers. The plot itself is propulsive once oriented.
Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Brontë, published in 1847 by Scholastic, Inc..
Wuthering Heights is 94 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Wuthering Heights takes most readers 1 to 2 hours to finish.
Wuthering Heights is a standalone novel by Emily Brontë, not part of a series.
Wuthering Heights is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
