Wuthering Heights. A Novel EMILY Brontë's only novel is considered to be one of the most powerful and enigmatic works in English literature. An intense tale of passionate relationships, set in the windswept Yorkshire moors of the north of England and ranging over two generations, it has been compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace and to Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear.
Composition
Despite the secrecy of much of Emily Brontë's writing, the composition and publication of Wuthering Heights was closely linked with the work of her sisters. Early collaboration in the Glass Town saga and later partnership with Anne in the Gondal saga meant that Emily's writing practice (if not the content of the writing) was associated with a family atmosphere of literary activity. The Diary Papers show that Emily knew what was happening in Charlotte and Branwell's Angrian manuscripts and that she read sections of ‘the Emperor Julius's life’ and other Gondal prose to Anne. Elizabeth Gaskell describes the way the sisters would pace up and down the sitting-room, discussing their stories and regularly reading chapters to each other (Gaskell Life, 2. 11), a habit that may have started well before the novels. If there was criticism and debate, it was only to confirm the writer's own judgement. Charlotte tells how the readings were ‘of great and stirring interest to all’, but her sisters' remarks seldom caused her to alter her work, and her comment on Emily's reaction to criticism suggests a similar self-confidence, if not intransigence:
The date of composition of Wuthering Heights is uncertain; no drafts or fair copy of the novel survive. In her ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’, Charlotte explained that although only two copies of their Poems 1846 were sold, the sisters' appetites for publication had been whetted and they ‘each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced Wuthering Heights, Acton Bell Agnes Grey, and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume [ The Professor]’. Her chronology, recalled some time after the event and after the deaths of her sisters, is in fact inaccurate. As the editors of the Clarendon edition point out, Poems was published in May 1846, yet Charlotte had already approached the same publishers (Aylott and Jones) as early as 6 April 1846 about the possibility of publishing ‘three distinct and unconnected tales’ which the sisters were ‘preparing for the Press’ (Wuthering Heights, p. xiii). To approach a publisher like this, all three novels must have been well on the way to completion. We know only the completion date of The Professor—27 June 1846—but Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey must both have been fair copied by early July, when Charlotte offered all three manuscripts to Henry Colburn.
Composition
Despite the secrecy of much of Emily Brontë's writing, the composition and publication of Wuthering Heights was closely linked with the work of her sisters. Early collaboration in the Glass Town saga and later partnership with Anne in the Gondal saga meant that Emily's writing practice (if not the content of the writing) was associated with a family atmosphere of literary activity. The Diary Papers show that Emily knew what was happening in Charlotte and Branwell's Angrian manuscripts and that she read sections of ‘the Emperor Julius's life’ and other Gondal prose to Anne. Elizabeth Gaskell describes the way the sisters would pace up and down the sitting-room, discussing their stories and regularly reading chapters to each other (Gaskell Life, 2. 11), a habit that may have started well before the novels. If there was criticism and debate, it was only to confirm the writer's own judgement. Charlotte tells how the readings were ‘of great and stirring interest to all’, but her sisters' remarks seldom caused her to alter her work, and her comment on Emily's reaction to criticism suggests a similar self-confidence, if not intransigence:
‘If the auditor of her work when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell [Emily] would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation’ (Editor's Preface to 1850 edn.; in Wuthering Heights, p. 443).
The date of composition of Wuthering Heights is uncertain; no drafts or fair copy of the novel survive. In her ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’, Charlotte explained that although only two copies of their Poems 1846 were sold, the sisters' appetites for publication had been whetted and they ‘each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced Wuthering Heights, Acton Bell Agnes Grey, and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume [ The Professor]’. Her chronology, recalled some time after the event and after the deaths of her sisters, is in fact inaccurate. As the editors of the Clarendon edition point out, Poems was published in May 1846, yet Charlotte had already approached the same publishers (Aylott and Jones) as early as 6 April 1846 about the possibility of publishing ‘three distinct and unconnected tales’ which the sisters were ‘preparing for the Press’ (Wuthering Heights, p. xiii). To approach a publisher like this, all three novels must have been well on the way to completion. We know only the completion date of The Professor—27 June 1846—but Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey must both have been fair copied by early July, when Charlotte offered all three manuscripts to Henry Colburn.
