1887 Rare Book - Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, writing as Ellis Bell
Author: Emily Brontë, writing as Ellis Bell; and Anne Brontë, writing as Acton Bell. With a biographical notice by Charlotte Brontë (Currer Bell).
Title: Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey.
Publisher: London, W. Nicholson & Sons, 26 Paternoster Square, E.C., and Albion Works, Wakefield, circa 1887.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Pages: 388 pages + publisher's catalogue.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s green cloth, pictorially blocked in dark-green-black on the upper cover with an Arts & Crafts–influenced symmetrical design, the title and author gilt-stamped. Spine lettered and decorated in gilt (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown, sunning and fading to the spine, as shown, with lighter wear to extremities - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the frontispiece illustration and the title vignette.
Estimate: (USD 350–500).
The book: This late nineteenth-century Victorian edition brings together Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) and Agnes Grey by Acton Bell (Anne Brontë), accompanied by a biographical notice by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë). Issued for a broad reading public at a time when the Brontë novels had become firmly established as classics, the volume balances accessibility with decorative ambition. The bold pictorial cloth binding reflects the era’s taste for expressive cover design, while the inclusion of both novels preserves the original association of the Brontë sisters’ first published works.
The authors: Emily Brontë (1818–1848) created in Wuthering Heights one of the most powerful and unconventional novels of the nineteenth century, a work of elemental passion, psychological depth, and stark landscape imagery. Anne Brontë (1820–1849), often more restrained but equally incisive, explored moral integrity and social constraint in Agnes Grey. Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855), writing here as Currer Bell, shaped the early reception of her sisters’ work through her biographical notice, offering readers a rare contemporary perspective on their lives and literary aims.
The edition: Nicholson’s Victorian reissues played a significant role in sustaining the popularity of the Brontës into the late nineteenth century. Copies such as this one, retaining the original cloth and publisher’s catalogue, are increasingly sought after for their combination of literary importance, period illustration, and characteristic Victorian book design.