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A rare first-edition copy of Emily Brontë’s Gothic masterpiece “Wuthering Heights” is heading to auction for the first time in more than a century.
Christie’s auction house said 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.
It is being sold along with a copy of sister Anne Brontë’s “Agnes Grey” and is expected to sell for between £400,000 and £600,000 (€462,000 and €925,000).
“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.
The first-edition copy also features spelling mistakes.
Indeed, “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.”
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, and multiple film adaptations, including the recent Emerald Fennell take starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
“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.
In our review of this year’s Wuthering Heights, we wrote: “Fennell can’t crank up the thirstiness, campery and strangeness – only paid lip service through some bold decor choices – and doesn’t bring any genuine frisson to simmering sexual awakenings or lustful repression.”
We added: “While the vapidness of “Wuthering Heights” may not be entirely surprising coming from the filmmaker who stripped all the interesting The Talented Mr. Ripley elements from Saltburn, this is a very boring new low. It didn’t have to be subtle or faithful to its literary source; but when the end result guts one of the most emotionally violent novels ever written for a surface-level flirtation with corset kink which has all the weight and depth of a half-arsed lingerie advert, there’s every reason to bemoan a lack of subversiveness, sensuality and heart.”
The auction takes place on 30 June in London.
Additional sources • AP