Books

New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1848. First American edition (published less than five months after the virtually unobtainable London first edition) of Emily Brontë's singular masterpiece. Octavo, original publisher's purple cloth stamped in blind with gilt titles and tooling to the spine. In good condition with splitting and wear to the cloth. Period ownership inscription to the pastedown. Exceptionally rare in the original publisher's cloth. "Like Poems, Wuthering Heights was presented to an uncomprehending public without preface, introduction or explanation and it was left to Charlotte, ever her sister's apologist, to insist that it was simply a tale of 'the wild moors of the north of England'… There was a constant litany of complaint about the brutality and violence of some of the scenes [particularly involving Heathcliffe] and about the use of expletives, which, contrary to custom, Emily had written out in full rather than indicated by a dash… An…

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846, it was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. The novel is set on the Yorkshire moors and follows the turbulent relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan taken in by Catherine's father.