Books : Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics)

In association with Amazon.com
 View Shopping Cart or Checkout 

Author name: Emily Brontë

: Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics)
View Bigger Picture
Discount Price: $5.95
Price fluctuation possible.

Used Price: $1.94
Third Party New Price: $2.82


How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day



Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781593081287
ISBN number: 1593081286
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: August 01, 2005
Publishing house: Barnes & Noble Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 47530
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics



Other books you might be interested in perusing:

Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
 
Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights remains one of literature’s most disturbing explorations into the dark side of romantic passion. Heathcliff and Cathy believe they’re destined to love each other forever, but when cruelty and snobbery separate them, their untamed emotions literally consume them.

Set amid the wild and stormy Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights, an unpolished and devastating epic of childhood playmates who grow into soul mates, is widely regarded as the most original tale of thwarted desire and heartbreak in the English language.
 
Daphne Merkin is the author of a novel, Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant award for best new work of American-Jewish fiction, and an essay collection, Dreaming of Hitler. She has written essays and reviews for publications that include American Scholar, the New York Times, where she is a regular contributor to the Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Elle, and Vogue.





Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - "This abyss where I cannot find you! I cannot live without my soul!"
When I read WUTHERING HEIGHTS the very first time, as a teenager, I thought it was the most romantic book I'd ever experienced. I still feel that way, but now, as an adult reader, I'm far better able to appreciate the book's violence, its extreme use of the natural world, the juxtaposition of primitivism and civilization and the book's beautiful structural symmetry.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS opens in 1801 with the narration of Lockwood, a self-styled misanthrope who, despite his aversion to society, has been thwarted in love and is now renting Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire from its owner, the dark and brooding Heathcliff.

Annoyed by the housework being done at Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood sets out for a walk one wintry day and arrives at Wuthering Heights just as the snow is beginning to fall. He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights very strange people, indeed. Besides Heathcliff, there's Catherine Heathcliff, a beautiful young woman Lockwood mistakenly believes to be Heathcliff's wife; there's Hareton Earnshaw, a semi-literate young man who is the uncle of Catherine; and, there's Joseph, a religious zealot.

Although Lockwood tries to make his escape back to Thrushcross Grange, the snow and the darkness make it impossible. Zillah, Heathcliff's cook, takes pity on Lockwood and installs him in a room which, she says, Heathcliff would prefer be left unoccupied. Although Zillah doesn't know to whom the room belongs, Lockwood notices three names written across the window ledge: Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Linton, and Catherine Heathcliff. That night, the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw Linton appears to Lockwood, unsettling him further and, the subsequent day, he returns to Thrushcross Grange.

The above comprises the very first three chapters of WUTHERING HEIGHTS and in these very first three chapters one can see the importance the natural world is going to play in the unfolding of this novel. Emily Brontë, herself, was a child of the moors, the snowstorms and the heather of Yorkshire. Although bleak, the Yorkshire landscape holds tremendous wildness and unbridled passion and Emily Brontë was deeply attached to that passion...so much so that she rarely spent any time away from home and, even as she was dying, her older sister, Charlotte, ran to pluck the last of the heather for Emily, one more time.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is deeply rooted in the beauty and wildness of the moors, something that can be found in the characters of both Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Both Catherine and Heathcliff are creatures of nature. Neither can tolerate the indoors for long, and they are happiest when they're roaming the moors, among the heather, wild and free.

When Lockwood arrives safely back at Thrushcross Grange, he imposes on Nelly (Ellen) Dean to tell him the history of Wuthering Heights and, with Chapter Four, we leave Lockwood's narrative and enter Nellie's, which comprises the bulk of the book.

Wuthering Heights, Nelly tells Lockwood, is home to the turbulent past of two families, the Earnshaws of the Heights, and the Lintons of the Grange. Nelly sets the beginning of her story in the year 1760, when the master of Wuthering Heights returned from a trip to Liverpool with a "...dirty, ragged, black-haired" child he called Heathcliff. Although Mrs. Earnshaw and her son, Hindley, take an instant dislike to Heathcliff, Catherine sees in him a kindred spirit and truly, from the moment of their meeting, Heathcliff and Catherine, though their lives will not always follow the same path, will never be parted in spirit.

As the years go by, Heathcliff and Catherine grow closer and closer. In fact, it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.

Life, for Heathcliff and Catherine, changes one day when they come upon Thrushcross Grange and decide to spy on the Linton family. While admiring the Linton's refined manners and fine clothes and furniture, Catherine is bitten by a dog and taken in to the Grange to recover while Heathcliff is sent back to the Heights. When Catherine does return home to the Heights, in many respects, she is not the same Catherine who Heathcliff left at Thrushcross Grange. This plot point marks the end of the almost idyllic happiness that Heathcliff and Catherine shared, just as it marks the beginning of Catherine's desire to inhabit both the refined world of Edgar Linton, as represented by Thrushcross Grange and the stormy world of Heathcliff's unbridled passion, as represented by Wuthering Heights.

Catherine's brother, Hindley's wife, Frances, dies soon after giving birth to Hareton, and Hindley finds himself lost in a downward spiral, morally, emotionally and spiritually.

Catherine, who is not aware that Heathcliff is listening, tells Nelly Dean that she wants to marry Edgar Linton, ... Read More


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - B+
This classic of English literature has certainly stood the test of time. From the commencement of the novel with moody images to its likewise saturnine conclusion, Bronte's work with tone and characterization sets the bar high for authors of all kinds. The raging zealousness of love that so possess Heathcliff and Catherine melts off the pages in molten waves - truly, has a romance so deluded and inherently doomed ever been described so well? The passions of Romeo and Juliet seem lame in comparison. But never have protagonists been so unlikable. It is hard to sympathize with either one of them, which is the major disappointment of the novel. It is with relief, then, that the romance between young Catherine and Hareton is established. Innocent and true without the sadness that is a trademark of Heathcliff's obsession, the reader begins to glimpse the true meaning of love. The book is intensely readable and page-turning, accessible and unique. The bulk of Wuthering Heights is a psychological exploration of what the past does to a person - it does not so much examine a passionate affair than it does the consequences of actions undertaken by the abused and misguided. Surely Bronte's masterpiece of the human soul will linger as long as Heathcliff's intensity for his lost idol.


Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - A bit of a letdown
Often held up as the standard of the classic gothic novel, Wuthering Heights is, for the most part, a showcase of emotional savagery and a dismal portrayal of the human heart. Not well received when very first published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Emily Bronte went to her grave believing that her one and only novel was a complete failure. A subsequent edition, edited by sister Charlotte, was released after Emily's death and became a worldwide success.

Everyone has heard the name Heathcliff, and that must be due to his being surely one of the vilest, most hateful literary characters to ever exist on a page. An unidentified foundling who is brought to the Earnshaw home as a young boy, Heathcliff is forever painfully aware of his lack of identity and culture and lashes out at everyone with whom he comes into contact. For awhile, his dearest childhood ally, Catherine, is his one sanctuary, but in time he begins to hate her almost as much as he loves her. From that hatred is born several generations of misery and pain, as Heathcliff devotes his entire existence to ruining Catherine, her family, and everything she ever held dear, and no one is immune from Heathcliff's wrath - not even his own children.

Most of the story is told as a look-back by aging housekeeper Nelly Dean as she relates the whole sordid tale to Mr. Lockwood, a tenant who comes to Wuthering Heights to rent for a short time and becomes curious about his angry, tormented landlord. The past soon fuses into the present, as Heathcliff's revenge continues to plague both his and Catherine's hapless descendants.

As dark and depressing a story as it appears on the surface, Bronte's unfettered examination of the twin emotions of intense love and equally intense hatred is powerful, and stays with the reader long after the last page has been turned. It's nothing if not a poignant and eerie lesson in the damage one person's tortured soul can wreak on everyone around him. I found myself much more affected by it than I thought I would be. Recommended for any fan of classic literature, particularly the gothic era of the 19th century.



Find other books like this one:

 


Coffee And Face Psoriasis / Chest Pain And Panic Attacks / Babbitt / Kenilworth. / Swords /
Mothers Dress For Wedding Basket Business Gift Home Start Sherlock Holmes Movie Sherlock Holmes Museum Islam Autism Society Disney Alice In Wonderland Wizard Of Oz Memorabilia Elephant In Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book Desk Sets Anniversary Gifts Unusual Gift

Home - Nancy Drew - Sherlock Holmes - Jane Austen - Enid Blyton