May 23, 2024 - Sale 2670

Sale 2670 - Lot 20

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)
Wuthering Heights. A Novel. By the Author of "Jane Eyre."

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848.

First American edition, octavo, early ownership inscription inside front board possibly reading, "S.E Lyon, Thorn Hedge"; bound in publisher's textured purple cloth boards stamped in blind on boards; gilt-decorated spine, (binding worn, joints and endcaps frayed, boards abraded and faded; boards securely attached); 7 3/8 x 5 in.

The following is from a review of WT published in the American Whig Review in June of 1848: "Respecting a book so original as this, and written with so much power of imagination, it is natural that there should be many opinions. Indeed, its power is so predominant that it is not easy after a hasty reading to analyze one's impressions so as to speak of its merits and demerits with confidence. We have been taken and carried through a new region, a melancholy waste, with here and there patches of beauty; have been brought in contact with fierce passions, with extremes of love and hate, and with sorrow that none but those who have suffered can understand. This has not been accomplished with ease, but with an ill-mannered contempt for the decencies of language, and in a style which might resemble that of a Yorkshire farmer who should have endeavored to eradicate his provincialism by taking lessons of a London footman. We have had many sad bruises and tumbles in our journey, yet it was interesting, and at length we are safely arrived at a happy conclusion."