“Wuthering Heights is perhaps the finest example [of nineteenth century Gothic writing], articulating as it does the terrible possibility of a passion so intense as to transcend the barrier that separates the living from the dead.“ (McGrath).
The third edition of Wuthering Heights, the “Cheap Edition” published 8 years after the second edition of 1850. With the important Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (Emily and Anne Brontë) and the Preface to Wuthering Heights, both by Charlotte Brontë which were first included in the second edition.
Praise for the “new”, “cheap” editions proudly printed on the back cover: “The specimen now before us is furnished with so clear a type, and printed on paper of so good a quality that cheap as the books may be, they will be worth handsome binding when the first neat cover in which they are issued shall have had its day” (Examiner); “It is excellently printed, and so neatly put up in cloth, that it may take its rank upon the bookshelf without further adornment” (Northampton Mercury).
The cheap edition’s inexpensive manufacture, bringing the text to a wider audience (“displac[ing] a good deal of the trash with which railway stalls are so often filled” (Economist review on the cover), was not conducive to this particular edition’s longevity. The current copy is in good condition, though with some crude restoration work, mainly to the top of the spine, and the front free endpaper where the text block had likely been coming away from the covers. The front and rear hinges are both split, though presumably holding due to the restoration work. The cloth is frayed and grubby, again particularly to the spine, and the text on the covers is lightly worn. Edges dusty, with an ink stain along the fore-edge, but internally remarkably clean.
Walter E. Smith, The Brontë Sisters, A Bibliographical Catalogue, (“Cheap Edition: 1858, p. 69).
