BRONTE, Emily.
Wuthering Heights.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848.
$16,800.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152831
+$500
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same": Rare First American Edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
Rare first American edition of Emily Brontë's immortal gothic romance and singular masterpiece, preceding the Boston edition of the same year and published less than five months after the virtually unobtainable English edition. Octavo, original publisher’s ripple-grain cloth, the boards stamped in blind and the spine lettered and elaborately decorated in gilt. Published by Harper & Brothers in April 1848, this first American edition marked the first time Wuthering Heights appeared on its own, separated from Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey, with which it had been bundled across three volumes in the original London edition. The sisters' English publisher, Thomas Newby, had been promoting the rumor that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were a single author to capitalize on the success of Jane Eyre, and on that assumption Harper's wrongly attributed the novel to "the author of Jane Eyre," Charlotte Brontë, rather than to Emily. The present copy bears the ownership inscription of John Henry Williams, dated “Nashville, Sept 1848,” and that of his daughter Lera D. Williams of Woodlawn, Tennessee, the family’s historic Nashville house, in whose library it remained for over a century, later passing to Mrs. Dorothy Moore, who acquired Woodlawn and its library in 1922, and by gift to Paul Clements in 1982, thence by descent. In very good condition, with toning throughout the text and a few old creases and ink stains, the original cloth rubbed. Smith, pp. 74-75; Symington, p. 100; Tinker 389. Housed in a custom half chemise and morocco clamshell box. Scarce and desirable in the publisher's original cloth.
"Like Poems, Wuthering Heights was presented to an uncomprehending public without preface, introduction or explanation and it was left to Charlotte, ever her sister's apologist, to insist that it was simply a tale of 'the wild moors of the north of England'… There was a constant litany of complaint about the brutality and violence of some of the scenes [particularly involving Heathcliffe] and about the use of expletives, which, contrary to custom, Emily had written out in full rather than indicated by a dash… An American reviewer wrote in the Literary World: 'Fascinated by strange magic we… are made subject to the immense power of the book… we are spell-bound, we cannot choose but read'" (Barker, 502, 539-40). "Wuthering Heights stands alone as a monument of intensity owing nothing to tradition, nothing to the achievement of earlier writers. It was a thing apart, passionate, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness… Bronte has a sure and certain place for all time" (Britannica). Although the title page of the 1848 Wuthering Heights states, "By The Author of 'Jane Eyre,'" it was, of course, Emily's older sister, Charlotte, who authored Jane Eyre. Not until the famous "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, by Charlotte Bronte," in 1850 did Charlotte clearly address the matter of the pseudonyms and the true authorship of the works: "It has been thought that all the works published under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were, in reality, the production of one person…[O]n [this] occasion…I am advised distinctly to state how the case really stands." The first London edition, was published December 4, 1847; this edition was published April 21, 1848, simultaneously as two parts in wrappers and as a single, clothbound volume. Emily died one year following her only novel's publication.
Wuthering Heights.
$16,800.00
In Stock