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Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Author: Emily Bronte
Publisher: W. W. Norton
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Our Price: $11.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Author: Emily Bronte
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Average Customer Rating:
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Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780393978896
ISBN: 0393978893
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2002-11
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780393978896
ISBN: 0393978893
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2002-11
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Editorial Review of Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
The text of the novel is based on the first edition of 1847. For the Fourth Edition, the editor collated the 1847 text with the two modern texts (Norton's William J. Sale collation and the Clarendon), and found a great number of variants, including accidentals. This discovery led to changes in the body of the Norton Critical Edition text that are explained in the preface. New to "Backgrounds and Contexts" are additional letters, a compositional chronology, related prose, and reviews of the 1847 text. "Criticism" collects five important assessments of Wuthering Heights, three of them new to the Fourth Edition, including Lin Haire-Sargeant's essay on film adaptations of the novel.
About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
Customer Reviews of Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Feeling Blue?
Review: Feeling blue? Just read this and roar with laughter. This is little more than a Victorian soap opera -- probably one of the worst novels I have ever read. It starts out fine, but mid way through I am reduced to guffaws (and this state of hilarity has occured every time I have attempted to read this novel over the past 30 years). The prose is overwrought and the characters . . . for the life of me I am unable to explain other readers' adoration of either Heathcliff or Cathy. If you want spooks and atmosphere and Brontes, read Jane Eyre instead. It's far superior.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Beautiful gothic romance
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Why did you betray your heart, Cathy?"
Review: 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
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Does it get any better than this?
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bizarre, cracklingly brilliant, a moment in literary history
Review: 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.
Review Summary: Feeling Blue?
Review: Feeling blue? Just read this and roar with laughter. This is little more than a Victorian soap opera -- probably one of the worst novels I have ever read. It starts out fine, but mid way through I am reduced to guffaws (and this state of hilarity has occured every time I have attempted to read this novel over the past 30 years). The prose is overwrought and the characters . . . for the life of me I am unable to explain other readers' adoration of either Heathcliff or Cathy. If you want spooks and atmosphere and Brontes, read Jane Eyre instead. It's far superior.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Beautiful gothic romance
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Why did you betray your heart, Cathy?"
Review: 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
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Does it get any better than this?
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bizarre, cracklingly brilliant, a moment in literary history
Review: 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.