Hello there, brand-new French fans of Les Hauts de Hurlevent!

Two news outlets write about a curious Brontë-Twilight-related phenomenon. It looks like Wuthering Heights is the teen read of the moment in France. From The Times:

French teenagers bitten by the Emily Brontë bug
Interest in Wuthering Heights has been sparked by references in the Twilight vampire novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer
It was a novel the French had forgotten, a tale of wild passions on the Yorkshire moors by an author whose style had limited appeal for modern urban youngsters. But after intense debate on teenage chat forums, Wuthering Heights is now attracting adolescent readers in their droves.
The interest in Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel is a by-product of the teenage passion for another work: Twilight, the vampire novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer. These have sold 42 million copies worldwide, including 2.5 million in France.
References to Wuthering Heights abound in Eclipse, the third of the four-book series, and Belle Swan, the heroine, emerges as a Brontë fan. The upshot in France is that the 13 to 16-year-old girls who form Meyer’s core readership have been keen to find out more about Brontë and her work.
Sales of Les Hauts de Hurlevent increased by 50 per cent last year but have risen even faster since the release in January of the film Twilight, which is based on the first of the Meyer series and stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. “We have sold as many copies of Wuthering Heights in the first two months of 2009 as we usually sell in a whole year,” said a spokeswoman for Le Livre de Poche, the publisher of the French translation.
“We are on course to sell several tens of thousands of copies this year, which is exceptional. The enthusiasm has prompted a lot of bookshops to put Brontë on display next to Stephenie Meyer, and that has obviously encouraged people to buy both of them.”
There has been no such trend in Britain, according to Penguin. “Perhaps Wuthering Heights is so much part of British culture that it’s not a discovery for Stephenie Meyer’s readers,” said Le Livre de Poche spokeswoman. “Here, it is.”
Stéphane Hun, who owns Pages d’Encre, a bookshop in Amiens, northern France, said that Brontë’s newfound popularity was wholly unexpected. “Wuthering Heights is studied in a few schools but, apart from that, I don’t think young people ever bought it to read at all. If teenagers are going from Stephenie Meyer to Emily Brontë, then that’s fantastic. It’s a bookshop’s job to take readers towards other books.”
Judging by French teenage chat forums, Brontë has made a profound impact on her new readers, who almost all appear to be adolescent girls. “The atmosphere is so dense that you are left breathless. It’s strange,” one said.
“Emily Brontë’s writing is astonishing,” said another. “Heathcliff and Catherine are figures of a really surprising blackness.”
“I dream of going to the place where the novel is set, in Le Yorkshire beaten by the wind,” said a third.
Not all appreciated the writer, however. “I have to admit that I couldn’t get into the novel,” said a detractor. “Someone gave me the DVD, but I can’t be bothered to watch it.”
In the US there has also been debate over parallels between the two works, which both centre on tragic romance: between Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, and between Belle and her vampire lover, Edward, in Twilight.
Hachette, Meyer’s publisher, even suggested that Twilight was the greatest novel in its genre since Wuthering Heights, a notion that enhanced Meyer’s status among her adolescent readers but won little support from critics. (Adam Sage)

And from The Christian Science Monitor:

What’s the hot book du jour for French teens? Number One may be “Twilight” (the mega-popular teen vampire series by American author Stephenie Meyer) but right behind seems to be “Les Hauts de Hurlevent” – the French translation of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.”
Apparently most French teens – unlike their British and American peers – never encounter the 19th-century classic in school. But when “Wuthering Heights” figured prominently in “Eclipse,” the third book of the “Twilight” series, French teens began asking for it in bookstores. [...]
Worldwide, the four books in the “Twilight” series have sold 42 million copies. About 2.5 million copies have been sold in France.
In the US, there have been discussions throughout the book world as to whether or not bestsellers lead young readers on to enjoy more serious literature. The new-found passion of French teens for Emily Bronte argues in favor of “Twilight” as a gateway to at least one classic. (Marjorie Kehe)

So, a hearty welcome to any French readers (bonjour! ça va?) who have just emerged from the pages of Wuthering Heights to search for more Brontë.

A recommendation? Emily wrote fantastic poetry which might just suit you. And she even wrote a few essays in French. And she had a couple of wonderful sisters who wrote pretty good books too.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights