Wuthering Heights initially baffled readers who dismissed it as “a strange book”.
Earlier readers found it was “wild” and “confused”, portraying a “semi-savage love”. Yet, in 1850, the poet and critic Sydney Dobell recognised its originality and power, praising the novel’s distinctly poetic quality. To Dobell, “the thinking out” of many of the passages was “the masterpiece of a poet, rather than the hybrid creation of a novelist”.
Fittingly, before Heathcliff and Cathy haunted the moors, Emily Brontë was crafting her magic in verse preoccupied with death, steeped in grief and brimming with elemental passion and the spectral. Such motifs form the beating heart and singular atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, but without her gothic poetry, her beloved novel may not have existed. And, while this novel defines her reputation today, in her lifetime she was first and foremost a poet.
