Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two extensive upland estates and their landowning families on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons; and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws' foster son, Heathcliff. Driven by themes of love, possession, revenge, and reconciliation, the novel is influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. It is considered a classic of English literature. Wuthering Heights was accepted by publisher Thomas Newby along with Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey before the success of their sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, but Jane Eyre was published before the other two. The first American edition was published in April 1848 by Harper & Brothers of New York. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited a second edition of Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1850. Though contemporaneous reviews were polarised, Wuthering Heights has come to be considered one of the greatest novels written in English. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality, religion, and the class system. It has inspired an array of adaptations across several types of media.