How High Will 'Wuthering Heights' Go?
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A rare first-edition copy is heading to auction. The last time one appeared at auction was in 1908, so no collector alive today has had a chance to acquire one.
Published in 1847, Emily Brontë's gothic tragedy about doomed love and obsessive revenge on the Yorkshire moors would become one of the most renowned novels of the 19th century.
The novel’s first edition was divided into two volumes, released alongside a third volume containing Agnes Grey, a novel by Emily’s younger sister, Anne. Each one was covered with green-grey cloth, with arabesques and floral patterns decorating the cover. The siblings published under the pseudonyms Ellis and Acton Bell.
Of the estimated 250 copies printed, only a few complete copies survive with their full-cloth binding intact. Today, Christie’s in London will sell the first edition’s three volumes in one lot, and is expected to achieve up to $800,000.
Apart from its rarity, the first edition has a number of peculiarities that may attract buyers. When Emily and Anne saw the printed editions, they realized that the books contained a number of errors. Some pages were marked with the wrong numbers, while others contained incorrect or missing punctuation. Perhaps the most egregious mistakes were six misspellings of “Agnes Grey” (“Anges Grey”) and three misspellings of “Heights” (“Heghts”).
Only five other known surviving first-edition copies still have their original binding: Three are in the university libraries of Leeds, Oxford and Princeton universities, while the fourth is housed at the British Library in London. The fifth, which contains Charlotte’s annotations, is missing several pages, and it sold for $86,500 in 2009.