Wuthering Heights, A Longman Cultural Edition / Edition 1

by Emily Brontë, Alison Booth

Overview

From Longman's Cultural Editions series, Wuthering Heights, edited by Alison Booth, presents Emily Bronte’s haunting, brilliant novel freshly edited, smartly annotated, and illuminated by various contexts. This illustrated edition is unique in locating Wuthering Heights in its region as well as period, while it follows every phase of the Brontë renown, from tourism to adaptations, from early reviews to recent critical trends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780321212986
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	01/15/2008
Series:	Longman Cultural Editions Series
Edition description:	Longman Cultural Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alison Booth, Professor of English at the University of Virginia with a Ph.D. from Princeton (1986), specializes in Victorian studies, the novel, and women writers, while her teaching and research also range broadly—across the Atlantic and up to contemporary cultural studies—to encompass narrative theory, biography and autobiography, and celebrity. Her numerous articles and essays have appeared in distinguished journals and collections. She is the author of two acclaimed critical books: the prize-winning How to Make It as a Woman: Collective Biographical History from Victoria to the Present (2004), and Greatness Engendered: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf (1992), and co-editor of the Norton Introduction to Literature (now in its ninth edition). Her current research, reflected in the Longman Cultural Edition of Wuthering Heights, involves the popular genre of "homes and haunts" of famous people, literary tourism, and the character of famous writers' houses.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Top Withins

High Sunderland

"Gun Portrait" from Marion Harland

Portrait

Several illustrations from Bronte Society Transactions:

Main Street, Haworth

Haworth Old Church

The Birthplace of the Bronte Sisters, Thornton

The Black Bull

Branwell Bronte's Chair

The Waterfall on the Moor

Haworth Parsonage

Emily Bronte, drawing of Keeper

Haworth Parsonage

Facscimile Title Page of First Edition

About This Edition

Introduction

Chronologies

Text of Wuthering Heights

Notes

Contexts

Biographical

Emily and Anne Bronte, "Diary Note"

Charlotte Bronte, "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell"

"Editor's Preface"

Ellen Nussey on Emily

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life Of Charlotte Bronte on Emily

Emily Bronte, Poems

Historical, Social, and Legal

Inheritance, Law, and Women

From Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, A Brief Summary, in Plain Language, of the Most Important

LawConcerning Women (London: Chapman, 1854)

Class, Urban Culture, and Mobility

Urban Slums and Street Children

Self-Help

Houses, Home Decor, and Consumer Goods

From Charles Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste

From John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Regional and International

Ireland

Family History

William Wright, The Brontes In Ireland

The Great Hunger

Yorkshire

Dialect

From Richard Blakesborough, Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the Nortern Riding of Yorkshire, 1898

Religion

Literacy: Summary and Quotation from J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels

Haworth and Vicinity

Original Locations

Memoirs and Pilgrimages

C. Holmes Cautley, "Old Haworth Folk Who Knew the Brontes," 1910

Virginia Woolf, from "Haworth, November 1904"

Sylvia Plath

Muriel Spark

The Bronte Society and Parsonage Museum

From Claude Meeker, "Haworth: Home of the Brontes," 1895

Critical and Artful

Reviews

Early Criticism

Sequels, Adaptations, Films

Further Reading

Web materials

What People are Saying About This

Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials... And there it stands colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock; in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot.

Reading Group Guide

1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?

2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?

3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?

4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?

5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.

6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?

7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?

8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victim of it?How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?

Foreword

1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?

2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?

3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?

4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?

5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.

6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?

7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?

8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victimof it? How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?

Editorial Reviews

This abridged presentation of a classic brings to life Bronte's gothic romance and provides a powerful reading by Martin Shaw, whose voice perfectly captures this dark story of the moors. Those reluctant to read the full classic will find this audio version compelling and hard to quit listening to.
—Internet Book Watch

Internet Book Watch

"It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality."
--Virginia Woolf

From the Publisher