Wuthering Heights

The tale of Heathcliff's and Cathy's ungovernable love and suffering, and the havoc that their passion wreaks on the families of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, shocked the book's first readers, with even Emily's sister Charlotte claiming Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bront's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centers. The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys both thems and many around them. Now considered a classic of English literature, the novel's innovative structure, which has been likened to a series of Matryoshka dolls, met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared.