Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Emily Bronte (1818-48), one of three sisters whose literary productions caused a minor sensation when they began appearing in the late 1840s. Born to Patrick Bronte, a Yorkshire clergyman, and his wife Maria, Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Bronte were precocious readers and writers. The three sisters spent years writing for their own pleasure and amusement, then published a volume of poetry in 1846. Fearing that the volume’s reception would be biased if the authors were known to be women, the sisters adopted the names of Ellis (Emily), Acton (Anne), and Currer (Charlotte) Bronte. Their poems did not sell well but garnered some positive reviews—Ellis Bell’s poems were said by one critic to demonstrate “a fine quaint spirit . . . which may have things to speak that man will be glad to hear” (Allott, p. 61). The following year Wuthering Heights was published as the first two volumes of a three-volume set, which also included Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey. Wuthering Heights was initially overshadowed by the greater acclaim that greeted Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, published earlier that same year, but has since been recognized as a great work in its own right.
