60 Fun Facts About Wuthering Heights

Under which pen name did Emily Brontë publish Wuthering Heights in 1847?

The three sisters kept their initials: Charlotte was Currer and Anne was Acton; only two copies of their joint book of poems had sold the year before.

How many novels did Emily Brontë write?

She died of tuberculosis in December 1848, aged 30, a year after it was published and before its reputation was made.

The novel was published in one three-volume set together with which other book?

Emily's book filled the first two volumes and her sister's the third; the publisher Thomas Newby only hurried after Jane Eyre became a hit.

Which publisher accepted the manuscript alongside Agnes Grey?

He had been slow to deal with the sisters and only saw the advantage of the family connection once Jane Eyre took off with a rival firm.

In which year does the novel's framing story open, with a new tenant visiting his landlord?

The tenant is snowed in overnight, reads a dead woman's diary and dreams of her ghost begging at the window.

What is the name of the new tenant whose visit opens the novel?

He rents the Grange to escape society and narrates until chapter 4, when the housekeeper takes over the tale.

What is the name of the second, more genteel house in the novel, home of the Lintons?

It sits in a walled, landscaped park; Ponden Hall near Haworth is often claimed as its model, though it looks more like the farmhouse.

Which housekeeper tells most of the story to the convalescing tenant?

Ellen Dean has served three generations of Earnshaws and two of Lintons; one 1958 critic argued she is the novel's true villain.

In which city does Mr Earnshaw find the orphan he brings home and names Heathcliff?

He walked the 60 miles rather than take a horse away from the harvest; the boy is described as 'like a gipsy' and possibly a Lascar or castaway.

How old are Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw when the foundling arrives?

Hindley beats the newcomer from the start; Catherine becomes his inseparable companion on the moors.

What happens to Catherine when she and Heathcliff spy on the Lintons?

The Lintons take her in for weeks and send the ragged boy home, and she comes back a young lady.

Why does Catherine tell Nelly she cannot marry Heathcliff, even though she loves him?

Heathcliff overhears that part and not the rest, and vanishes without a word.

Whom does Catherine marry?

She is 17 and he is 21; some critics read the choice as a surrender of nature to culture, with disastrous results for everyone.

How long is Heathcliff away before he returns mysteriously rich?

Nobody ever learns how he made his money or acquired his ruthless grasp of the law.

Whom does Heathcliff marry purely as revenge on Edgar?

She is 19 and infatuated; he sneers afterwards that she had pictured in him 'a hero of romance', and she flees south while pregnant.

Through what vice of Hindley's does Heathcliff gain control of Wuthering Heights?

He becomes mortgagee of the estate; Hindley later dies of drink and his son Hareton inherits only debts.

Catherine dies shortly after doing what?

She had locked herself in her room and refused food for three days after Edgar banished Heathcliff; the baby is also called Cathy.

What does Heathcliff do at Catherine's deathbed that drives the rest of the novel?

Years later he admits he has opened her grave twice, and he dies in her old room.

What is the name of the sickly son born to Heathcliff and his runaway wife?

He is raised in the south until he is twelve; his father then forces him to marry young Cathy to seize the Grange.

Which character, heir to the farmhouse, is kept illiterate and made to speak like a servant?

Young Cathy mocks his uncouth speech at first, then teaches him to read, and they plan to marry.

What can Hareton read when the novel opens?

It is carved over the farmhouse door with the date 1500, marking how long the Earnshaws have held the land.

Which sanctimonious old servant speaks in thick Yorkshire dialect that Charlotte later toned down?

A 1970 study by the linguist K. M. Petyt found Emily had recorded the Haworth dialect accurately; Charlotte feared 'Southerns' would find it unintelligible.

How does Heathcliff die?

He is 38 and dies intestate; the two estates revert to Hareton and Cathy, and locals report seeing two ghosts on the moors.

How old is Heathcliff when he dies?

He was 20 when he married Edgar's sister and has no next of kin, so his amassed wealth would in theory escheat to the crown.

Whose three graves does the tenant find side by side at the end?

He decides all three are finally at peace, though the locals are less sure.

What does the word 'wuthering' describe, according to the novel's own explanation?

The house's stunted firs and gaunt thorns all lean one way from the north wind, 'as if craving alms of the sun'.

Which ruined farmhouse near Haworth did Ellen Nussey suggest as the model for the house?

Its layout does not actually match the farmhouse in the book, but walkers still trek up to it across the moor.

Which periodical's reviewer wondered how anyone could write the book 'without committing suicide'?

The Atlas called it 'a strange, inartistic story' with 'a sort of rugged power' in every chapter.

Which Pre-Raphaelite poet called the book 'a fiend of a book' whose action 'is laid in hell'?

He also thought it the best novel he had read 'for two ages'; his friend Swinburne became another early champion.

Which modernist novelist declared in 1925 that Emily 'was a greater poet than Charlotte'?

Until the 1880s Jane Eyre was regarded as the best of the sisters' novels; a biography of Emily began to shift that view.

Who edited and provided a preface for the second edition of the novel in 1850?

She fixed the punctuation and diluted the old servant's dialect; the 34 chapters were renumbered as a single volume.

The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) reads Catherine Earnshaw as a counterpart to which of Milton's characters?

Gilbert and Gubar see her 'fall' as running from the chaos of the Heights into the heavenly order of the Grange, which destroys her.

Which four Shakespeare tragedies does the novel echo, according to scholars?

Emily was a good Latinist familiar with Greek tragedy, an exceptional education for a woman of her time.

Which periodical's 1825 article introduced the Brontë children to Byron?

Byron had died the previous year and became, for the children, synonymous with the prohibited and audacious.

Who played Heathcliff opposite Merle Oberon in the celebrated 1939 film?

William Wyler's film covers only 16 of the novel's 34 chapters and drops the whole second generation.

How many of the novel's 34 chapters does the 1939 film cover?

It won the New York Film Critics award for best film and Gregg Toland took the Oscar for black-and-white cinematography.

Where were the 1939 film's supposedly Yorkshire moorland scenes actually shot?

Wildwood Regional Park and the present site of California Lutheran University stood in for the moors.

Which 1992 film version is notable for keeping the usually cut second-generation story?

Andrea Arnold's 2011 film later cast James Howson as the first Black Heathcliff on screen.

Which actor played Heathcliff in ITV's 2009 two-part adaptation?

Charlotte Riley played Cathy; the two married in real life a few years later.

How old was Kate Bush when she wrote her song 'Wuthering Heights' in a single evening?

It was primarily inspired by a BBC adaptation she had seen at the age of eight rather than by the book.

What record did Kate Bush set when 'Wuthering Heights' reached number one in March 1978?

It stayed at the top for four weeks and was also number one in Australia, Ireland, Italy and New Zealand.

Which single did Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights' knock off the top of the UK chart?

The song is sung from Catherine's point of view as she pleads at Heathcliff's window to be let in.

Which 1976 Genesis album takes its title and two track names from the novel's closing lines?

The tracks are 'Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers...' and '...In That Quiet Earth'.

Where in Halifax did Emily teach in 1838, near a hall sometimes claimed as a model for the Heights?

She worked seventeen-hour days, said she preferred the house dog to her pupils, and left within months.

What did the Brussels schoolmaster Constantin Heger say Emily should have been?

He rated her intellect 'something even higher' than Charlotte's; the sisters' stay was cut short by their aunt's death.

What was the name of the imaginary world whose poems Emily copied into a labelled notebook in 1844?

Scholars have tried to reconstruct a Gondal saga from the poems; Charlotte and Branwell's world was Angria.

How many copies of the sisters' 1846 book of poems had sold when they were told the figure months later?

One of the two buyers was impressed enough to write asking for the sisters' autographs.

How old was Emily Brontë when she died in December 1848?

Her mother had died when she was three, and she was mostly taught at home in Haworth by her curate father.

Which American firm issued the first US edition of the novel in April 1848?

The same house had published the first American Jane Eyre three months earlier.

Which critic argued in 1958 that the housekeeper-narrator, not Heathcliff, is the true villain?

His case: she drives most of the conflicts by choosing what to reveal and conceal, and ends up running both houses.

What date is carved on the lintel over the farmhouse door?

The Earnshaws are an ancient farming family with tenants of their own, prosperous enough to send a son to university, but not gentry.

What is the name of Hindley Earnshaw's wife, who dies soon after giving birth to Hareton?

After her death Hindley sinks into drink and gambling, and dies of alcoholism six months after Catherine.

How does Hindley try, and fail, to kill Heathcliff?

Heathcliff beats him after the failed attempt, having already taken the estate through Hindley's gambling debts.

What is the name of the nearest village, where Mr Linton serves as magistrate?

Heathcliff leaves the village a penniless labourer and returns three years later with the wealth and manners of a gentleman.

Which house near Haworth, often visited by Emily, is reputedly the model for Thrushcross Grange?

Biographer Winifred Gerin instead linked it to Anne Brontë's Wildfell Hall, while Shibden Hall in Halifax has also been proposed.

At what age does Linton Heathcliff marry Cathy Linton on his father's orders?

The sickly son of Heathcliff and Isabella is terrified of his father; the couple have no children, ending the Linton entail.

Which Brontë sibling is thought to have partly inspired the character of Heathcliff?

Though Heathcliff has none of Branwell's drink or drug problems, the influence of his character is considered likely.

At what point does Nelly Dean take over the narration from Mr Lockwood?

Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange to escape society, but by the end decides society is preferable after all.

Which Marxist critic read the novel as a symbolic picture of England's 19th-century class system?

Kettle pointed to its concerns with property, social comforts, marriage, education, religion and status.

Which profession explains why the local 'doctor' in the novel is addressed as Mr Kenneth?

Kenneth attends most of the novel's illnesses and deaths, though Heathcliff refuses to let him examine Linton in his final illness.