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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN num: 9780199535606
ISBN number: 0199535604
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: June 15, 2008
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 62845
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
First published in 1847, Wuthering Heights is set on the bleak Yorkshire moors, where the drama of Catherine and Heathcliff, Heathcliff's cruel revenge against Edgar and Isabella Linton, and the promise of redemption through the subsequent generation, is enacted. This edition uses the authoritative Clarendon text, and in a new introduction Patsy Stoneman considers the bewildering variety of critical interpretations to which the novel has been subject, as well as offering some provocative new insights for the modern reader.
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Rated by buyers -
This edition is just the last aesthetic overhauling of Oxford World's Classics ones with just the same picture (by the Pre-Raphaelite master John Everett Millais) on the cover (see my reviews on them or the global vision I offer in the Norton Critical Fourth Edition review).
The cover has been the main object of redesign and looks good, even showy. The only complaint I have, with this as well as with previous editions, and Penguin and some worse ones (like Wordsworth Classics), is the very bad paper quality and the outrageous mass-market paperback with glue-only binding. The book looks like it were to be destroyed BEFORE reading. This just can't be the only format in which to get this absolute classical masterpiece of world-over novel writing, in one edition in which the best scholarly efforts have been spent to get a pure text with adequate annotation. At the very least it should be offered as a quality paperback, with flaps, acceptable paper and, of course, signature-sewn.
As far as the contents and not the vessel is concerned, and summarizing: the best 1847 reliable and authoritative Clarendon critical text (due to Hilda Marsden), even with over-conservative details for a mass-market edition, like a rather heavy and outdated punctuation and the unbelievable two-volume implied structure, with its clumsy independent chapter numbering.
Ian Jack's annotation is yet one of the very best, even if its Yorkshire dialect support is scanty and a bit difficult to follow (most good editions offer by now full
foot-of-page glosses of the dialect tirades -glosses that are sometimes wrong and misleading-). The Bibliography is very good, selected, sorted and annotated (I don't know if updated, suppose not). The long Introduction by Patsy Stoneman (30 pp) is excellent, even if a little scholarly (and, as with most of other Introductions, please don't read it BEFORE the novel but after it, just as the "Charlotte's materials" of 1850 provided at the end of the volume).
This edition is a really good buy, that should be compared to the best text-oriented editions:
A) Penguin (Pauline Nestor),
B) Routledge (Heather Glen, very hard to come by, try Amazon Canada).
You may also consider the good context-oriented editions (that is, "study" ones, rich in contextual materials and/or critical essays), namely,
C) Norton Critical Fourth Edition (Dunn), with rather scanty if good annotation and a bit eclectic and even idiosyncratic text (but with very good punctuation);
D) the NEW Broadview Press edition by Beth Newman, with scanty notes (very good as they are) and full dialectal glosses like Norton Fourth (both sets of glosses neither wrong nor misleading). Some textual foibles or little blunders are not worrisome (with the best punctuation in town). The overall selection of contextual materials is, arguably, the BEST EVER, with a very interesting document on "brain fever". The brief and original Introduction (21 pp) is excellent and thought-provoking.
Not to be forgotten in this class is
E) Longman Cultural Edition (Alison Booth), featuring good if more conventional Introduction and good annotation that includes a little blunder about Milo
in Chapter 9, with the authoritative Clarendon text (I will inform you if there is any hidden foible with this), and a too vast array of almost dis-arrayed contextual pieces (more than forty of them), interesting but too brief to be really meaningful.
I stand by what I have written, but don't forget that this is one of the very best editions available!
Oneworld Classics is a worse choice, in spite of his good paperback making, with good paper and printing quality and covers with flaps. With its good annotation it would challenge the top positions, were it not by the bad quality of the text itself, that was carefully edited but keeps many blunders and too many of Charlotte's 1850 "improvements". Wordsworth Classics edition is also a worse choice, with a reliable 1850 text (that of the Haworth Edition of 1900: that is, a reliable edition of the wrong text!), adequate notes (even if brief and not user-friendly) and a fair Introduction by John S. Whitley, in one of the worst material productions ever.
If you are looking for a beautiful hardcover volume, your choices are much more limited. You can wait for two or three years to get an used copy of the Clarendon 1976 (or 1995) Edition, or you can get the nice volume in Barnes&Noble Classics (that has the reliable Haworth Edition 1850 text, which is really a pity), or rush to get one nice copy of the Franklin Mint edition of 1978 (see my review) with the beautiful if not daring double-page lithographs by Alan Reingold and a very good pre-Clarendon 1847 text, but with no modern introduction and no annotation whatever, except for the well-done footnotes glossing correctly and in full the dialect tirades (the very first edition ... Read More
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