Rare Copy of Wuthering Heights Keeps Spelling 'Heights' Wrong

A rare first-edition copy of Wuthering Heights, complete with spelling mistakes, is up for auction for the first time in more than a century, as Emily Bronte's tragic, tempestuous romance gains new fans through a big-screen adaptation. Christie's auction house said on Monday that it's the first copy of the novel in the publisher's original cloth binding to be auctioned since 1908, per the AP. Only about 250 copies of the first edition were printed, and this one has been in a private library since shortly after its publication in 1847.

"The vast majority of surviving copies were rebound for collectors or libraries, meaning original cloth examples are now extremely scarce," says Christie's books and manuscripts specialist Mark Wiltshire. Being sold along with a copy of sister Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey, it's expected to sell for between $540,000 and $800,000 at a June 30 auction in London. Both books carry the male pen names the sisters adopted to get published: Ellis Bell for Emily, and Acton Bell for Anne.

Wuthering Heights was rushed to publication after the success of sister Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and the first edition is notorious for its typographical errors, including, Wiltshire notes, the occasional misspelling of the word "heights." Emerald Fennell's recent movie with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as mismatched pair Cathy and Heathcliff is the latest work to be inspired by—and take liberties with—Bronte's brooding Gothic tale. The novel shocked some critics when it was published, with one in 1848 decrying its "vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

Since then, Wiltshire says, the novel has "moved beyond literature to become a cultural touchstone," inspiring art, multiple film adapations, and music—notably, Kate Bush's pop-operatic 1978 song of the same name. "It remains a work that artists return to again and again because of its emotional force, its atmosphere, and its psychological intensity, ensuring its place not only in literary history but in wider cultural imagination," Wiltshire says.