Wuthering Heights Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 67 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 67 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Wuthering Heights.
This section contains 796 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Wuthering Heights Study Guide

Initial reception to the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847 was overwhelmingly negative. Published in a volume that also included her sister Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey, Emily's brooding tale managed to find favor only with Sydney Dobell and Algernon Charles Swinburne. "I have just read over Wuthering Heights ," wrote Charlotte Brontë in her preface to the 1850 edition of her sister's book, "and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults …Wuthering Heights must appear a rude and strange production... in a great measure unintelligible, and-where intelligible-repulsive." The preface was intended as a defense of the writer and the work and must have achieved its aim, for the second edition of the novel was received more favorably. Algernon Charles Swinburne, writing in The Athenaeum in 1883, admitted to the awkward construction and clumsy...

(read more)

This section contains 796 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Wuthering Heights Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Wuthering Heights from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.