Those interested in revisiting Wuthering Heights following the recent film adaptation may wish to take note of the Christie’s auction on June 30th, The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures, which included many significant works of art. Among the lots was a first edition copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in its original binding.
This marked the first time that a textually complete first edition of Brontë’s acclaimed novel in its original binding has come to auction since 1908. Most copies from the first print run have since been rebound for private and public collections, making this an exceptional find for any rare-book collector. While the exact size of the first edition print run is unknown, Charlotte Brontë suggested it numbered no more than 250 copies. This first edition offered at Christie’s comprises two well-read volumes of Wuthering Heights, together with a third volume containing an immaculate copy of Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë.
The first edition was rushed into print in December 1847 by Emily Brontë’s publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, following the immediate and resounding success of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, published by the rival house Smith, Elder & Co. in October 1847. Although Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey had both been accepted for publication earlier, Jane Eyre reached the printers first. Newby was content to let the public believe that Charlotte was also the author of Wuthering Heights. Indeed, the title page of the first-edition copy held at the Bodleian Library states that the text was written “by the author of Jane Eyre.” This confusion was compounded by the sisters’ shared use of male noms de plume to circumvent the gender prejudices of the Victorian era, with Charlotte writing as Currer Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell, and Anne as Acton Bell.
The edition offered at Christie’s is bound in diagonally-ribbed green-grey cloth, its cover stamped with floral patterns and arabesques, and its spine lettered in gilt. Copies surviving in the publisher’s original full-cloth binding represent the rarest state of the first edition, with at least five variants recorded. By contrast, copies intended for circulating libraries were bound in boards backed with cloth, and are considerably more common than full-cloth copies such as this one. The full-cloth bindings themselves are distinguished from one another by variations in cover color, the direction of the cloth’s diagonal ribbing, the central stamp on the cover, the number of blind-stamped lines in the border, and the style of gilt lettering on the spine. A first edition gifted to the University of Leeds in 2022, for instance, is bound in maroon cloth; like many other known variants, it has pale yellow endpapers, a four-line border, diamond-shaped and plain-ruled bands on the spine, and a gilt title. By contrast, the present copy is distinguished by the particular shape of its blind-stamped arabesque markings, the inclusion of blind-stamped corners, its green-grey cloth, and the absence of a full stop after the volume number on the spine.
Copies of this first edition are sought after by collectors not only for their rarity but also for the numerous spelling and grammatical errors they contain. Emily and Anne had both died from tuberculosis in 1848 and 1849, respectively. Their surviving sister, Charlotte, republished Wuthering Heights in 1850 with the errors corrected and an added preface.
Only five other copies are known to survive in the publisher’s full-cloth binding: one each at the University of Leeds, the University of Oxford, and the British Library; one at Princeton University, annotated by Anne Brontë; and one in a private collection, last sold by Christie’s in December 2009. This one was Charlotte Brontë’s own copy, annotated with her marked editorial changes, yet unfortunately missing some pages.
A rebound first-edition copy of Wuthering Heights was sold by Christie’s London in July 2020; estimated at £70K to £100K, it realized £87.5K w/p. Consigned by the trustees of an undisclosed aristocratic private collection, the present copy is complete, unrebound, and in its original publisher’s binding. Christie’s estimated the book to sell for £400K to £600K ($540K to $800K). It ended up exceeding specialists’ expectations, hammering at £950K (or £1.21 million / $1.6 million w/p).
by Madeleine Kent