Five Things to Know About ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Author Emily Brontë’s Only Novel

The famed 1847 book inspired numerous adaptations, including a new version directed by Emerald Fennell in theaters this week

Michelle Mehrtens | Arts and Culture Correspondent

February 13, 2026

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

In 1847, English writer Emily Brontë published her first and only novel, Wuthering Heights. While it originally shocked and baffled critics, it eventually became a beloved classic. Multiple film adaptations have hit the screen, such as the 1939 iteration starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as the novel’s legendary leads, Heathcliff and Catherine (Cathy) Earnshaw, and Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 version starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

More recently, a 2011 adaptation featured actors James Howson and Kaya Scodelario. And this week, director Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights debuts with Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The movie has renewed interest in the novel, and as Forbes’ Sofia Chierchio reports, more than 70,000 copies were sold across all print editions in January.

As the latest Wuthering Heights film enters theaters, here are some helpful facts about Brontë and her novel to keep in mind when watching.

"Wuthering Heights" | Official Trailer

Watch on

Who was Emily Brontë?

Born in Thornton, Yorkshire, on July 30, 1818, Brontë was the daughter of a respected church curate, Patrick Brontë, and his wife, Maria Branwell. Along with her six siblings, she spent much of her childhood in a parsonage at Haworth, a small village near the Yorkshire moors. During this time, she experienced a series of significant losses. She was only 3 when her mother died, and her older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died from tuberculosis a few years later. Brontë remained close with her surviving siblings, her sisters Charlotte and Anne and her brother, Patrick Branwell, known simply as Branwell. The group often read, wrote and shared stories with one another.

In 1846, Brontë and her sisters released a book of poetry under male pen names, hoping to stave off criticism influenced by their gender. Titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the collection received positive press, but it was far from a commercial success, reportedly only selling two copies. A year later, Brontë published her novel, Wuthering Heights, under the name Ellis Bell. She did not live long enough to see what ultimately became of her book, dying in 1848 at age 30 from tuberculosis.

What is Wuthering Heights about?

The novel opens with Lockwood, Heathcliff’s new tenant, who asks a housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him more about his landlord. Her account frames the central narrative, which includes a large ensemble of characters, though the plot is centered around Catherine and Heathcliff. Their interactions make up the bulk of the first half of the novel, and the second half examines the consequences of their chaos, largely through the lens of their extended family and acquaintances.

The coddled daughter of a wealthy landowner, Cathy resides at the Wuthering Heights estate with her family. She is described as beautiful, and she has an unpredictable, lively spirit, often vacillating between arrogance and anger.

Heathcliff is an enigma when he arrives at Wuthering Heights. Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, brings him to his estate as a young orphan, the details of his background a mystery. He is referred to as a “dark-skinned gipsy” and later described as “dark almost as if it came from the devil.” Heathcliff is scorned for his ambiguous, most likely nonwhite, racial identity and lower-class status.

After meeting as children, Cathy and Heathcliff become close companions, and their mutual obsession grows stronger when they get older. When her father dies, Cathy’s brother, Hindley, treats Heathcliff like a servant, periodically abusing and castigating him.

Cathy rejects the possibility of marriage with Heathcliff and marries the affluent Edgar Linton. Heathcliff swears revenge, leaving Wuthering Heights and returning years later as a prosperous gentleman, but his malevolence has only increased, and his violence touches everyone who once knew him.

What is the significance of the moors?

A moor, or moorland, is an expanse of open land, often recognizable by its rolling hills, low grass, bog moss and sparse tree growth. Heather and peat are other common elements of the landscape.

The English moors play a central role as the setting for the novel. Many scholars agree that the dramatically and meticulously rendered moors in Wuthering Heights are the very Yorkshire moors that Brontë and her siblings wandered in their youth.

Wuthering Heights is more tragedy than romance

Brontë was a voracious reader. She particularly enjoyed Romantic literature and regularly studied works by William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Emerging in the late 18th century, Romanticism challenged earlier artistic conventions, such as Neoclassicism, that spotlighted order, balance and rationality. Instead, arbiters of Romanticism prioritized imaginative and emotional modes of being. An appreciation of nature in all its wildness was another crucial facet of the movement, as was a devotion to the mysterious and the bizarre.

In Wuthering Heights, Brontë embraces darkness, ferocity and the remote allure of the natural landscape. The Gothic classic is not, for many, a typical love story, nor a romance in the modern sense.

Brontë’s novel was initially a critical failure

When Wuthering Heights was first published, critics were appalled.

A reviewer for Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper wrote, “The reader is … disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity and the most diabolical hate and vengeance.”

Another critic for Graham’s magazine fumed, “How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”

Brontë’s sister Charlotte—who would become a literary heavyweight in her own right with Jane Eyre—struggled with the backlash, mostly due to fears that their family would undergo permanent social ostracism. Anne similarly experienced condemnation for her novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

After her sisters died, Charlotte tried to defend their reputations, writing the “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” in 1850. In the account, she reworked Brontë into a more palatable persona, describing her as a naïve and impressionable woman who was not “learned.” This stood in stark contrast to who Brontë appeared to be: savvy, intellectual and educated. Yet Wuthering Heights unnerved the public—and Charlotte—to such an extent that her sister grew determined to change the conversation. It is rumored that she even burned the manuscript of Brontë’s second novel.

But Brontë’s legacy proudly lives on, inspiring (and terrifying) readers to this day. Despite its earlier critics, Wuthering Heights is now applauded as a feat of creative genius.

Michelle Mehrtens | Read More

Michelle Mehrtens is the manager of programming for Smithsonian Enterprises, where she oversees the production of original digital series for Smithsonian magazine.