Book summary

Drawing on the Gothic tradition, Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS is the tale of Catherine Earnshaw, a wilfull and romantic girl brought up to be a lady, and Heathcliff, the mysterious gypsy orphan. Bronte's use of a series of unreliable narrators to unfold their story heightens the mythic quality of the passionate attachment that is at the heart of the book--a relationship that remains tempestuous to its end, and leaves its mark on future generations of their complicated families. The novel's innovative structure, full of sophisticated flashbacks and shifts in time, was ahead of its time, and the brilliant evocation of the Yorkshire moors, with their contrasting great houses--dark and terrible Wuthering Heights, serene and civilized Thrushcross Grange--is a brilliant example of scene-setting. WUTHERING HEIGHTS is Emily Bronte's only novel--unless it is true that, upon her death, her sister Charlotte burned the manuscript of another. When the book was published (1847), it was considered odd, unpleasant, and slightly mad, but time has improved its reputation: WUTHERING HEIGHTS is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest works of English literature.

Media reviews

"The action is laid in Hell--only it seems places and people have English names there."