A rare first edition of ‘Wuthering Heights’ complete with spelling mistakes is up for auction
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
LONDON (AP) — A rare first-edition copy of “ Wuthering Heights,” complete with spelling mistakes, is up for auction for the first time in more than a century, as Emily Brontë’s tragic, tempestuous romance gains new fans through a big-screen adaptation.
Christie’s auction house said Monday that it’s the first copy of the novel in the publisher’s original cloth binding to be auctioned since 1908. Only about 250 copies of the first edition were printed, and this one has been in a private library since shortly after its publication in 1847.
“The vast majority of surviving copies were rebound for collectors or libraries, meaning original cloth examples are now extremely scarce,” said Christie’s books and manuscripts specialist Mark Wiltshire.
Being sold along with a copy of sister Anne Brontë’s “Agnes Grey,” it’s expected to sell for between 400,000 pounds and 600,000 pounds ($540,000 and $800,000) at a June 30 auction in London. Both books carry the male pen names the sisters adopted to get published: Ellis Bell for Emily and Acton Bell for Anne.
“Wuthering Heights” was rushed to publication after the success of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” and the first edition is notorious for its typographical errors including, Wiltshire noted, the occasional misspelling of the word “heights.”
Emerald Fennell ’s recent movie with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as mismatched pair Cathy and Heathcliff is the latest work to be inspired by — and take liberties with — Brontë’s brooding, Gothic tale.
The novel shocked some critics when it was published, with one in 1848 decrying its “vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”
Since then, Wiltshire said, it has “moved beyond literature to become a cultural touchstone,” inspiring art, music — notably Kate Bush’s pop-operatic 1978 song — and multiple film adaptations.
“It remains a work that artists return to again and again because of its emotional force, its atmosphere, and its psychological intensity, ensuring its place not only in literary history but in wider cultural imagination,” Wiltshire said.
