Editor’s Note

This is the complete text of Wuthering Heights as first published by Thomas Cautley Newby, London, in December 1847, under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It is set from a public-domain digital transcription of that first-edition text. The first edition printed the novel in two volumes and numbered the chapters of each volume from I; like the transcription and most later editions, this edition numbers the thirty-four chapters straight through, from Chapter I to Chapter XXXIV.

The spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing of the source are kept, including Joseph’s Yorkshire speech exactly as printed and forms such as sympathising and any one. We have made no corrections. Only the typography has been brought to the series style: curly quotation marks and apostrophes, closed em dashes, italic type where the transcription marked emphasis, and a plain ornament for the breaks within chapters. The two lines of the ballad Nelly hums in Chapter IX are set as verse.

Removed from the source: the transcription’s header and license, its title lines, and all distributor notices. Nothing has been added to the text.