Description:

Emily Bronte
New York, NY, ca. 1848
Emily Bronte Rare 1st American Edition of Wuthering Heights, Published Only 5 Months After the Virtually Unobtainable London 1st Edition
First Edition Book

Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848. Period-style three-quarter brown morocco gilt, contemporary marbled boards, 5" x 7.5". Usual foxing and light soiling to text, small ink stain to lower edge of text block, marginal paper repairs throughout including to title page. A couple of small ink letters to endpapers. Extraordinarily important and rare first American edition (published less than five months after the virtually unobtainable London first edition and preceding the London second edition) of Emily Bronte's passionate masterpiece. An excellent copy, attractively bound.

"Like Poems, Wuthering Heights was presented to an uncomprehending public without preface, introduction or explanation and it was left to Charlotte, ever her sister's apologist, to insist that it was simply a tale of 'the wild moors of the north of England'… There was a constant litany of complaint about the brutality and violence of some of the scenes [particularly involving Heathcliffe] and about the use of expletives, which, contrary to custom, Emily had written out in full rather than indicated by a dash… An American reviewer wrote in the Literary World: 'Fascinated by strange magic we… are made subject to the immense power of the book… we are spell-bound, we cannot choose but read'" (Barker, 502, 539-40). G.W. Peck wrote of it that "if the rank of a work of fiction is to depend solely on its naked imaginative power, then this is one of the greatest novels in the language."

One year after her only novel's publication, Emily Bronte was dead of consumption. "Wuthering Heights stands alone as a monument of intensity owing nothing to tradition, nothing to the achievement of earlier writers. It was a thing apart, passionate, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness… Bronte has a sure and certain place for all time" (Britannica). Although the title page of the 1848 Wuthering Heights states, "By The Author of 'Jane Eyre,'" it was, of course, Emily's older sister, Charlotte, who authored Jane Eyre. Not until the famous Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, by Charlotte Bronte, in 1850 did Charlotte clearly address the matter of the pseudonyms and the true authorship of the works: "It has been thought that all the works published under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were, in reality, the production of one person…[O]n [this] occasion…I am advised distinctly to state how the case really stands." The first London edition was published December 4, 1847; this edition was published April 21, 1848, simultaneously as two parts in wrappers and as a single, clothbound volume. Smith, 74-75.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 5" x 7.5"
  • Medium: First Edition Book

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