November 2011 Guest Editor Victoria Hislop selects Wuthering Heights...

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte would always come at the top of any such list.  It was the first “grown-up” book I read and it completely captivated me.  It is a novel where the main location, the house of the title, is one of the main characters and I definitely think this influenced me, as a sense of “place” is very important in my own writing.  Another thing which I found very reassuring and interesting, as a teenager, was that the main characters are slightly wild, on the edge.  I also realised that books don’t have to have happy endings, because life does not always resolved neatly and pleasantly.  So all of those things were influences.

One of Clare Balding's favourite books.

Chosen by the public through a survey to coincide with the 10th birthday celebrations of World Book Day 2007, this title is one of ‘the ten books the nation can’t live without’. Have you read them all? Below are links to each title and position on the list.

1. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
4. Harry Potter JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations Charles Dickens

Synopsis

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff’s bitterness and vengeance is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

About the Author

Emily Bronte lived from 1818 to 1848. Although she wrote only Wuthering Heights and about a dozen poms she is accepted as one of the most gifted writers ever. Perhaps the intensity of her writing grew out of the extraordinary pressures of her home life. Emily’s mother died when she was three and she lived with her four sisters and one brother in a bleak, isolated Yorkshire village – Haworth. Her father doted on his only son, Branwell, and expected little from his daughters – they surprised him while Branwell wasted his life and died an alchoholic and drug addict. The girls suffered dreadfully at a cheap boarding school, the oldest two dying of malnutrition. Emily, Charlotte and Anne were brought home just in time but Emily never lost her terrible fear of institutions and of being closed in. The sisters later became governesses to help support Branwell, seen by their father as a future great artist. They also began to publish their writing, under male pen-names as there was much prejudice against women writers. Their first book, a collection of poetry, failed but Emily’s novel Wuthering Heights, was highly acclaimed and is still widely read today. Emily seldom left her home village yet produced one of the most powerful novels of the inner self ever written. She caught a cold at her brother’s funeral in 1848 and died a few months later. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation