One of a handful of surviving copies of the first edition of Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s astonishing novel which has inspired countless works of art, plays, films, an opera, a ballet and an immortal pop song, is coming up for auction at Christie’s London this month, estimated at up to £600,000. The rarity lies in the slightly faded rather dull grey green cloth 1847 binding—almost all the survivors of the poorly printed first edition, probably of no more than 250 copies, have been re-bound for public or private collections.
“It is a work of art. It is not the text but the objects, these books in their original binding, which are so important and so extraordinarily rare,” Mark Wiltshire, a rare books specialist at Christie’s London, said. “The last time one appeared at auction was in 1908, so no collector alive has had a chance to acquire one. Private and public collectors all over the world will want this book.”
Wuthering Heights, bound in two volumes with a third volume of Agnes Grey, the much quieter novel by Emily’s sister Anne, was published in 1847. It was rushed out by Thomas Cautley Newby, who was desperate to capitalise on the immediate success of Emily and Anne’s older sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, released by a rival publisher. The three books appeared under noms de plume: Currer [Charlotte], Ellis [Emily] and Acton [Anne] Bell, though Wiltshire says Newby was very happy for just the surname to stand out, and for the impression to prevail that Wuthering Heights was by Charlotte.
The inside of the rare edition of Wuthering Heights
Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026
Their real authorship was only revealed after Emily’s death, when Charlotte, who outlived all her five siblings, published a revised edition of Wuthering Heights in 1850 with a biographical note about her extraordinary sister.
The 1847 edition was full of printing errors—also cherished by collectors—including erratic dashes and commas, and repeated spelling of Heights as Heghts. The passionate story of love, loss, class and weather split the critics from the start. A critic for the Graham’s Lady’s Magazine wrote: “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”.
However many who found it heavy going acknowledged its power. A Literary World critic wrote: “In spite of the disgusting coarseness of much of the dialogue, and the improbabilities of much of the plot, we are spellbound”. Later ardent admirers included the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet Algernon Swinburne, and the novelist Virginia Woolf, who wrote ‘’Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte”.
Like many others, Wiltshire came to Wuthering Heights through “Heathcliff”, Kate Bush’s wailing 1978 Number 1 hit, and the book has never lost its grip on him. “It is, truly, a landmark, one of the most iconic novels in the English language,” he says. He has tracked surviving copies of the first edition, and believes there are only six in public collections in the original binding, and just three in the UK: in the British Library, the Bodleian in Oxford, and the Brotherton library in Leeds.
The copy to be sold on 30 June comes from the trustees of an undisclosed “aristocratic private collection”, and although the shelf records say it was in the library by the early 1850s, Wiltshire believes it was bought in 1847—to be read immediately. Wuthering Heights was clearly read, but Agnes Grey is immaculate.
The volumes will go on public display for the first and possibly last time at the free exhibition at Christie’s in London, for four days from 26 June before The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures on 30 June.
