Editing Emily Brontë (section)

==''Wuthering Heights''==
{{Main|Wuthering Heights}}
[[File:Wuthering.jpg|thumb|upright|Title page of the original edition of ''[[Wuthering Heights]]'' (1847)]]
Emily Brontë's ''Wuthering Heights'' was first published in [[London]] in 1847 by [[Thomas Cautley Newby]], appearing as the first two volumes of a three-volume set that included [[Anne Brontë]]'s ''[[Agnes Grey]]''. The authors were printed as being Ellis and Acton Bell; Emily's real name did not appear until 1850, when it was printed on the title page of an edited commercial edition.<ref>Mezo, Richard E. ''A Student's Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë'' (2002), p. 2</ref> The novel's innovative structure somewhat puzzled [[critic]]s.

''Wuthering Heights''{{'}}s violence and passion led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man.<ref>Carter, McRae, ''The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland'' (2001), p. 240</ref> According to [[Juliet Gardiner]], "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers."<ref>Juliet Gardiner, ''The History today who's who in British history'' (2000), p. 109</ref> Literary critic Thomas Joudrey further contextualizes this reaction: "Expecting in the wake of Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre'' to be swept up in an earnest [[Bildungsroman]], they were instead shocked and confounded by a tale of unchecked primal passions, replete with savage cruelty and outright barbarism."<ref>Joudrey, Thomas J. [http://ncl.ucpress.edu/content/70/2/165"'Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run': Selfishness and Sociality in ''Wuthering Heights''."] ''Nineteenth-Century Literature'' 70.2 (2015): 165.</ref> Even though the novel received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was often condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion, the book subsequently became an English literary classic.<ref>''Wuthering Heights'', Mobi Classics (2009)</ref> Emily Brontë never knew the extent of fame she achieved with her only novel, as she died a year after its publication, aged 30.

Although a letter from her publisher indicates that Emily had begun to write a second novel, the manuscript has never been found. Perhaps Emily or a member of her family eventually destroyed the manuscript, if it existed, when she was prevented by illness from completing it. It has also been suggested that, though less likely, the letter could have been intended for [[Anne Brontë]], who was already writing ''[[The Tenant of Wildfell Hall]]'', her second novel.<ref>''The letters of Charlotte Brontë'' (1995), edited by Margaret Smith, Volume Two ''1848–1851'', p. 27</ref>