Emily Brontë to pay for a three-year art course

Keighley News carries the story of a first edition of Wuthering Heights to be auctioned in November at Bonhams London.

A rare first edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is to be sold at auction by Bonhams in London.

The book - published in 1847, less than two years before Emily died aged just 30 - is expected to fetch about £50,000. Emily earned nothing from the book. It is being sold on November 13 by student Anne Hall, 23, of North London, to help pay for her three-year art course.

It was given to her by her grandfather when she was a child.

Only 250 original copies were published and very few survive in their original bindings.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth has one edition. But the three-volume set, which also includes Anne Brontë's book Agnes Grey, was rebound by the previous owner.

Brontë Parsonage librarian, Ann Dinsdale, said: "There are very, very few copies about because there was such a small print run.

"Both Emily and Anne had to pay towards the cost and they were told they would get a percentage of the sales refunded. But they never got anything and it was left to their sister Charlotte, after their deaths, to get something back.

"When you think of the amount of money which will change hands for this book and how little was made by the Brontës, it's very sad."

What made the first edition so precious was that it was printed without corrections that Emily wanted.

"The book was rushed out by the publisher in December 1847 hopefully to cash in on the huge success of the publication of Charlotte's Jane Eyre in October, so he didn't bother to make her corrections." she added.

When first published the three sisters wrote under the pseudonyms Ellis, Acton and Currer Bell.

The classic Wuthering Heights has been in Miss Hall's family for four generations. She said: "It was quite a wrench to part with it after all these years but the money's going to my education."

Simon Roberts, a Bonhams book specialist, said: "I have been in the book trade nearly 20 years and I've never handled a copy of the first edition.

"I took the call when the book came in and it was very exciting to see it.

"It is one of the books you want if you're putting together a collection of key works in English literature." (Clive White)

While we agree with Ann Dinsdale about how sad it is that the Brontës didn't get to enjoy the success of their books (particularly Emily and Anne), we do think that they would agree that it's being sold for a good cause. We think they would approve in this particular case.

Speaking of Wuthering Heights, ABC's podcast Nightlife featured the book while Grazia (France) included it on a list of 15 classic novels to be read. And Vanitatis (Spain) mentions that Turkish actress Melis Sezen is a fan of Wuthering Heights:

según ha declarado en varias entrevistas, le encanta escribir guiones en sus ratos libres, pintar y leer, decantándose por 'Cumbres borrascosas', de Emily Brontë, como su libro favorito. (Jorge C. Parcero) (Translation)

3 Quarks Daily reviews J. A. Mensah’s novel Castles from Cobwebs.

The baby Imani was said to have been found lying naked and abandoned in the snow. From there she was taken by sisters into the fictional St Teresa’s Convent on Holymead Island. In its gothic strictness, the convent is reminiscent of Jane Eyre’s Lowood School. As a boarder at the convent, Imani soon becomes aware of an inchoate but unbridgeable difference between her and the nuns. Over time she comes to the cognition of her blackness, a quality which is said to have ‘a way of sneaking up on people’. Whether it is the inadvertent tortures she is put through to tame her curly hair or the assumption that she will have rhythm, her blackness is suppressed – consciously and unconsciously – in this milieu. Interpreted as her imaginary friend or a ‘demon’, Imani’s tenebrous confidant Amarie is the shadow or split self who keeps her company in Holymead’s often hostile environment. (Claire Chambers)

AnneBrontë.org has a post on Emily's poetry notebooks and Charlotte 'accidentally' finding them in the autumn of 1845.