Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights - Oxford 1963

Reader's note

This vintage classic tells the tale of Mr. Lockwood who visits his landlord, Heathcliff, at the neighbouring Wuthering Heights. A former housekeeper relates to Lockwood Heathcliff's story, that of a foundling brought there by Mr. Earnshaw to be raised alongside his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Hindley's contempt for the perceived outsider increases when he becomes the master of Wuthering Heights, while a close spiritual bond forms between Heathcliff and Catherine. That bond is stretched to breaking point when the adult Catherine chooses refined, sophisticated Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange, who offers her the chance to be "the greatest woman of the neighbourhood".

Heathcliff disappears, only to return, enriched, years later, a destructive force of nature bent on avenging past wrongs. His machinations eventually make him master of both properties, but the spiritual connection with Catherine transcends revenge, and Heathcliff is a victim as much as a victor. In Emily Brontë, only novel, passions as wild as the moors surrounding Wuthering Heights are unleashed. Too disturbing for many tastes when first published, this dark tale of love and loss, power and possession, action and terrifying reaction, stands as one of the greatest works of fiction in the English language.