Wuthering Heights | 1848, first edition, the earliest obtainable edition on the market of Brontë's masterpiece

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The earliest obtainable edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, printed in New York in 1848 and issued anonymously under the line by the author of Jane Eyre.

When Harper and Brothers published Wuthering Heights in America, they followed the lead of the London first edition and withheld the author’s name. Their attribution by the author of Jane Eyre was a deliberate marketing strategy intended to tap into the success of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, itself issued under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Emily Brontë’s authorship remained concealed and she would die later that year, still unknown to the public. This American edition therefore marks the first appearance of Wuthering Heights outside Britain and the only edition published in her lifetime that collectors can practically own today.

The true first edition, published in London in December 1847, has become mythical. Complete copies in original state scarcely appear and are priced well above two hundred thousand pounds. By contrast, the 1848 Harper and Brothers edition remains exceptionally rare but survives as the earliest attainable form of the novel for collectors. Only two examples are currently available in original cloth, and this is by far the finer. These copies were cheaply made for a mass audience and very few have survived in presentable condition.

This example is in the original publisher’s brown cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine, with the characteristic blind-stamped boards. Light wear to the extremities and rubbing to the cloth, as expected for a book of this construction and age. The text block shows mild toning with occasional spotting. Overall a remarkably well-preserved survival of an edition never intended to last.

Wuthering Heights has become one of the defining works of nineteenth-century literature and a cornerstone of the modern imagination. As renewed attention gathers around Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation, copies of this calibre represent not only the foundation of Brontë collecting but the gateway through which most readers first encountered the novel in the nineteenth century. It is a powerful reminder of how the book travelled, how it was received, and how a novel published without an author’s name began its journey toward immortality.

8vo. Spotting throughout. Original red-brown wavy-grained cloth decorated in blind, the spine decorated and lettered in gilt. A few old tiny repairs to the spine ends and near the titling. Fore-corners rubbed and the extremities lightly sunned. Hinges starting with some stitching visible, as is often the case with this edition. Housed in a morocco-backed folding case.