Customer Reviews

Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Rather than delve on the contents of this strangest and strongest of English novels, so intensely poetic in its haunting darkness and otherness, I'll comment briefly on the best editions available for a good first contact:

A) Text oriented editions (that is, editions with few materials added: normally an Introduction, annotation, and perhaps Charlotte's Peface and Biographical Notice and some bibliographical indications).

1. Oxford World's Classics: authoritative text, good annotation,
excellent introduction.

2. Penguin's Classics: same as above, everything looks a little shorter but is excellent nonetheless.

3. Wordsworth Classics edition. This would be a rather fine edition as befitting this collection, if it had a good 1847 text and not the heavily tampered-with Charlotte's 1850 edition. The text itself reflects accurately that of the 1900 Haworth Edition -a careful one-. The wording changes aren't perhaps so worrying nor is the toning-down of the dialectal tirades -although funny and useless-. What is worrying is the disappearance of more than six hundred paragrapph entries (I mean just the paragraphing, not the contents itself!), that makes for a different -and worse- reading experience. Very good and full -if brief- annotation. Mass-market, glued paperback.

4. Heather Glen's for Routledge. One of the finest text-oriented editions, especially for the excellent Introduction and Epilogue together with its good annotation, out-of-print for rather obscure reasons. If you find still a very good to fine copy at amazon Canadian branch (or at abebooks.com, it would be a good buy.

5. Orchises two-volume facsimile reprint of the 1847 edition. No notes nor any additional material. the books are well produced if a little expensive. Very interesting item, but only suitable for textual scholars or would-be scholars, or otherwise for fetish-oriented WH-maniacs.

B) Study-oriented editions (i.e. editions that contain additional contextual information: early reviews, selection of Emily's poems, critical essays, chronologies of the novel or of the Bronte family...).

6. Norton's Fourth Edition (current item): OK, the text is still a little idiosyncratic, but the notes are much improved, and so is everything else (with the anthology of poems, and the critical essays). A very fine study edition but also suitable for a first contact, although annotation is still on the scarce side. Good paperback production without flaps but signature-sewn (or so it seems) and good paper and printing quality (albeit with a rather small type).

7. Broadview edition by Beth Newman: it's one of the best study editions overall. There are some minor textual foibles and the annotation is decidedly scanty (to make amends for Heywood excesses) but good and accurate, and both Prof. Newman ecellent Introduction and the selection of the additional contextual material is, arguably, the finest ever (including the very interesting document on "Brain fever"). Materially speaking, it is a good paperback without flaps with good paper and printing quality (like Norton Critical, although I can't ascertain without tearing apart my copy of Beth Newman's that it be signature-sewn instead of glue-only "perfect binding). In any case a very good buy.

7. Alison Booth's for Longman Cultural. Other of the very best study editions available. The text is deadly acuurate -except for some 1850 unobtrusive detail- on the
Clarendon 1976 reference critical edition, although the punctuation -like Norton Critical, Broadview's Newman and Oneworld's one- has been silently lightened and modernized throughout. It looks like glue-only "perfect binding" paperback, but perhaps it is signature-sewn. Paper and printing quality are good enough. The only misgiving I have is the overdone fragmentation of contextual material (good and relevant material though it is): there are 40+ items, many of them very short or they wouldn't fit into 430 pages. One of the best possible buys.

8. Onewold's Classics edition. A fine paperback edition with flaps, very good paper and printing quality and (I rather surmise than know for sure) signature-sewn. The text looks like 1847 in paragraphing but it takes in too
many of 1850 "improvements" and is wrong at some places: it's short of a disaster, but rather non-reliable (in spite of the well-meant efforts by the almost anonymous editing panel who perpetrated it). Annotation is good and comprehensive enough, but the contextual material is rather scanty and run-of-the-mill non-commital.

9. Barnes&Noble's Tatiana Holway edition (hardcover). To say it promptly the only fault with this lovely edition (but, as stated above in wordsworth Classics edition, a really big fault) is its accurate and reliable 1850 Haworth Edition text. Other than this, it looks as a popularly oriented edition, but with quality marks. The Introduction by Daphne Merkin is good enough, the annotation by Holway is really excellent. Supplementary material is very scanty: the "Charlotte's prefatory materials" of 1850 (prefixed to the text, which is a pity), and some comments about film and TV adaptations as well as some chosen excerpts of reviews. Material production is outstanding: nice hardcover with dust jacket, good paper and printing quality, the only good available edition in a becoming format (Clarendon Edition is very hard to come by nowadays: say one to three years to pin it down). Don't forget the Franklin Mint editions of the sixties and seventies if you are interested in a very beautiful book with a reliable 1847 text and illustrations by Alan Reingold (and nothing else).

Is there anybody out there who hasn't heard of Heathcliff, the dark villian/hero of this high pitched and utterly committed work of madness? Oh, I love it. It was difficult for me at first. I'm a writer, but not a natural reader. But once I was into this book, once I stopped asking questions of the narrative and just entered the shadowy world of Catherine and her doomed household, I was quite literally spellbound. Bronte died believing this book was a failure. What a dreadful irony that this quiet, disciplined woman who lived out her life in a cold parsons' house with her brilliant sisters, her drunken brother and her eccentric father (The man memorized Paradise Lost: imagine. And outlived all his children!) never even had an inkling that this outpouring of her heart and soul would become a classic, overshadowing even her sister's highly successful Jane Eyre. Both Bronte sisters had the capacity to create archetypes -- to imprint upon the culture seminal patterns that endure to the present time. One last point: the father was Irish. Madness and genius in the blood, indeed. Enjoy it. I read it over every year or so, sometimes twice in a row. I study it; I watch all the film versions. I just love it, the way it works, its strange cruelty and enchantment.

I read this book aloud to my wife 23 years ago. At the time, I was working as an apprentice at a winery on the Rhine River. There was an old medeival castle across the river from our room. It was the perfect setting, as we two were the only English speaking people in the town. I think now is the right time to review the book, because I can only recall the feelings left behind by this powerful work of literature. Most of the plot and many of the characters have been long forgotten, leaving only the residue of strong emotion. I have read many works of powerful fiction by the world's great authors since then. But not one of them affected me emotionally the way this extraordinary tale did. I remember one gray German morning finishing the chapter where Heathcliff digs up the body of his beloved Catherine because he has gone mad in his desire to hold her close once more. And then off to the Altenkirch Schwanenkellerei I went. I spent the rest of the day working quietly in the cellars of the winery, deep inside the mountain with mold hanging all about, and brooding over the maniacal behavior of these highly romantic, insane characters. I've never been able to shake the feeling entirely. There is something so entirely timeless about this work, as though it were a piece of ancient literature, old far beyond the 1840s setting, something so utterly classical and piercingly primordial, it's as though you already had the genesis of this material in your DNA and it only required this story to bring it back to life within you. You recognize the spell it weaves because it speaks to the humanity in you so clearly, it is as though you have been secretly drugged. The English language has rarely been utilized as well as it has here, and I dare say you would need to go back to Shakespeare to find its parallel. Romanticism reached its high water mark with this novel. Ms. Brontė has now become immortal because of her creation, and in the Pantheon of world literaure, she stands among the Titans. If you are a native speaker of the English language, you can hardly consider yourself educated if you have not read this astounding novel of romantic love and uncontrollable passion.

There is a thin line between love and hate, and once Heathcliff crosses it, we see a grand, passionate and absorbingly interesting man turn into a fearsome thug. Thwarted in his love for his childhood soulmate, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff turns his devastation outward, becoming a hateful -- and hated -- person all across the bleak moors that surround his Yorkshire village.

Heathcliff courts and marries the sister of the man whom Catherine chose over Heathcliff, only to torture her emotionally as a way of getting even with her brother. Meanwhile, Catherine slowly wastes away pining for Heathcliff, for although she once rejected him, she eventually realizes that she has made an irredeemable error and can never be happy. Heathcliff sums up the tragedy of their lives in a single question near the end of the novel when he asks, "Why did you betray your heart, Cathy?"

Sound depressing? It's not. Wuthering Heights is a grand and glorious novel that dramatically illustrates the power of love, for good and ill. But more importantly, it teaches us that the only path to happiness is to be true to one's heart, rather than one's head. Had Catherine honored her bond with Heathcliff and refused to bow to the social mores of her day, not only would the two of them been much happier, but all of the many people whose lives they stumbled into would have been much better off.

Another reviewer said that those of us who love this novel probably have a strong identification with one of the characters, and for me that is quite true. That's the reason for reading a classic like Wuthering Heights, because when it speaks to you in the clear and true way that Bronte does, you know that you are not alone, and that some things transcend time and place.

Think about it -- a prim, Victorian preacher's daughter living on the moors of England before there was electricity can reach across 150 years of time and speak to the heart of a wired American in the 21st century. Pretty amazing, and highly recommended

Having read a number of books in my life, I must say I was not convinced this was one I could enjoy when it popped up on my mandatory reading list for my first year in university.
How wrong one can be.
Ever since Catherine visited MR Lockwood on that stormy night at the Heights, I have been completely spellbound by this novel. I have tried to rationalize my affection and utter amazment over this book, but I have so far not succeeded. To give a reweiv with any kind of substance when it comes to the theme of this book would be pointless. After having read the book over and over again,and having watched the movies made about it, I still cannot tell you what this novel is really all about. Don`t get me wrong, the plot is easy enough to follow, but the underlying drama is something that keeps haunting me. Maybe that was what Emily Bronte wanted. For the reader to put down the book and forever be spellbound by what he or she had read. I know I am.
Maybe, in our sedated worlds, we long for this kind of emotion, this kind of passion. Not just in our love lives, but in our lives in general. The story touches timeless subjects, it erases the line between heaven, hell and the world we know. It might even suggest that heaven and hell are right here on earth among us all.
It is utterly compelling and I would recomend it to anybody. Give it a couple of chapters before you judge it, and I asure you it will be the reading experince of a lifetime.

This publishment is even more rewarding because you can read the different analysis of the book in the Critical Edition part of the book.

This was a difficult read for me. For several months I would pick up this book become utterly disgusted with the characters and put it back down again. I'm really not sure why I finished it as the more I think about it the more I truly hated it. I wish I had returned it to the library unfinished.
This is the story of Heathcliff a gypsy boy taken in by the Earnshaw family and Catherine Earnshaw his only childhood friend. Let's just say that as events unfold and as the characters develop we come to know the evil Heathcliff and selfish Catherine will never be together. Since they truly love each other the only alternative seems to be to make life miserable for themselves and everyone around them. At this point I was really hoping for a rabid pack of wolves to attack everyone and end their misery. Unfortunately this did not happen.
On a more positive note this book was very well written and the character development superb.

Oh, where to begin? Yes, some people complain about the melodramatic (some even say soap-operatic) quality of this book, but it is simply wonderful. It's hard to find a book about the dark side of love, and this book (which offered, perhaps, the first "modern" character in Heathcliff) has the dark side of love in spades. The story is centered around the Earnshaw and Linton families, who occupy the Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates, respectively. While it would give away many important and poignant moments to go more in-depth, rest assured that there is betrayal, violence, and passion. The character of Heathcliff may very well be the best character in literature (in my opinion, at least). His inner conflict between vengeance and love is tragically human, and the fact that he knows that he is doing the wrong thing but cannot stop his drive for vengeance makes him that much more human. This book is excellent. Maybe the best book I've ever read.

Not what I was expecting. For some reason I thought Heathcliff was going to be a typical romantic construct who had some dramatic character arc. I'm a little misanthropist myself so you would think I would like this novel, relishing along with my kindred spirit, but I was never quite captivated.

I'm very partial to the novel itself, but this treatment of it in the Norton Critical Editions leaves much to be desired.

1. One big advantage of the Norton Critical Editions is that they have footnotes. This one, however, is extremely sparing of its footnotes, only giving one every fifty pages or so -- and that's usually to clarify a Biblical allusion. You're supposed to know a lot of other things, such as that "bairn" is Scottish dialect for "small child." Terms like that pass by unremarked on, so don't think this version is going to help clarify all those dialect words you've been wondering about.
2. The font is small and uncomfortable to read.
3. The essays in the back, the other reason to buy a Norton Critical Edition, are somewhat absurd. Part of the mystery of "Wuthering Heights" is that its author seemed to have zilch for sources: the whole composition seems to have sprung whole from her fertile mind. So what do they do? Print her juvenalia poems, her sisters' writings, etc. Not much that will actually help you achieve a deeper understanding of the text.

The only advantage I can cite of this edition is that the footnotes (praise Heaven!) translate the ramblings of that screwball Joseph into plain, readable English.

Boy, do they ever need to come out with one of these for "Wuthering Heights": The Annotated Pride and Prejudice

It took me a few days to get over my initial distaste for the main characters, and this book in general, before writing a review. This book was not well received in its time and I understand why. Victorian England was not interested in perusing books with such irascible characters, as it didn't fall within their idea of how ladies and gentlemen of the period should behave. Heathcliff and Cathy are two people who are as twisted and tempestuous as the moors in which they live.

Heathcliff is brought to live in Cathy Earnshaw's family as a small child by her father. He is greatly disliked by Earnshaw's son, Hindley, because he regards Heathcliff as an upsurper, and does all he can to torment the newcomer. Cathy takes Heathcliff on as her playmate and from that moment on the two are inseparable, running as wild and unchecked as the windy moors surrounding them. Heathcliff grows to love Cathy fiercely as he becomes a young man, but Cathy begins to take an interest in the quiet, refined way of life at Thrushcross Grange, the home of their wealthier, more respectable neighbors.

Upon returning from an extended stay at Thrushcross Grange, Cathy is transformed from the wild, ill-mannered and incorrigible girl, to a seemingly calm and civilized young lady. She has caught the eye of her neighbor's young son Edgar and has designs to marry him. Cathy confides this to her servant, Nelly, who asks her if she does not care then for Heathcliff. Cathy expresses disdain for Heathcliff and remarks that she could never marry him. Unbeknownst to her, Heathcliff has heard this conversation and quits the house. Cathy continues to elaborate upon her feelings and reveals that though she finds Heathcliff coarse and unrefined, she loves him deeply to the extent of proclaiming herself to be Heathcliff. She cannot see herself ever separating from him because loving him is like loving herself--both are as one person. Nelly is exasperated with her talk and tells her that Heathcliff has overheard their conversation. Cathy panicks and stays up all night waiting for him to come home. He never returns and does not come back to Wuthering Heights for another 3 years.

By then Cathy has married Edgar, but pines for Heathcliff. She is immensely happy with Edgar until Heathcliff comes back bent on revenge. He takes that revenge by running away with Edgar's younger sister. Despite the fact that both have hurt each other deeply, Heathcliff and Cathy continue to love one another with a dangerous, wild and destructive passion. That passion consumes and destroys everything around them and when Cathy finally succumbs to her end, Heathcliff continues his embittered path of hatred and destruction, revenging himself on his wife, his brother-in-law and their descendants.

This was such a hard book to read because I internalized all the horrible feelings Cathy and Heathcliff exuded. I didn't like Heathcliff, I resented his love for Cathy. How is it that he can hate in such reckless abandon with the same heart that he uses to love Cathy and then treat her daughter with such contempt? How dare he profess to love when he hates and despises so cruelly. He has no compassion and, by God, I would have shot him if I was Cathy Linton.

Emily Bronte wrote a book that breaks convention and draws comparisons between men and women, society, religion and class. It is superior to Charlotte's "Jane Eyre" and Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" which though well written, are products of convention.