Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics)
by Emily Brontï¿1/2, Helen Small
List Price:
Our Price: $5.35
You Save: $1.60 (23%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Emily Brontï¿1/2, Helen SmallEditor: Ian Jack
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-15
ISBN: 0199535604
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics)
Book Review: in a poor, if nice, dress... but it's second-to-none, perhaps the best !
Summary: 5 Stars
This edition is just the last aesthetic overhauling of Oxford World's Classics ones with just the same picture (by the Pre-Raphaelite master John Everett Millais) on the cover (see my reviews on them or the global vision I offer in the Norton Critical Fourth Edition review).
The cover has been the main object of redesign and looks good, even showy. The only complaint I have, with this as well as with previous editions, and Penguin and some worse ones (like Wordsworth Classics), is the very bad paper quality and the outrageous mass-market paperback with glue-only binding. The book looks like it were to be destroyed BEFORE reading. This just can't be the only format in which to get this absolute classical masterpiece of world-over novel writing, in one edition in which the best scholarly efforts have been spent to get a pure text with adequate annotation. At the very least it should be offered as a quality paperback, with flaps, acceptable paper and, of course, signature-sewn.
As far as the contents and not the vessel is concerned, and summarizing: the best 1847 reliable and authoritative Clarendon critical text (due to Hilda Marsden), even with over-conservative details for a mass-market edition, like a rather heavy and outdated punctuation and the unbelievable two-volume implied structure, with its clumsy independent chapter numbering.
Ian Jack's annotation is yet one of the very best, even if its Yorkshire dialect support is scanty and a bit difficult to follow (most good editions offer by now full
foot-of-page glosses of the dialect tirades -glosses that are sometimes wrong and misleading-). The Bibliography is very good, selected, sorted and annotated (I don't know if updated, suppose not). The long Introduction by Patsy Stoneman (30 pp) is excellent, even if a little scholarly (and, as with most of other Introductions, please don't read it BEFORE the novel but after it, just as the "Charlotte's materials" of 1850 provided at the end of the volume).
This edition is a really good buy, that should be compared to the best text-oriented editions:
A) Penguin (Pauline Nestor),
B) Routledge (Heather Glen, very hard to come by, try Amazon Canada).
You may also consider the good context-oriented editions (that is, "study" ones, rich in contextual materials and/or critical essays), namely,
C) Norton Critical Fourth Edition (Dunn), with rather scanty if good annotation and a bit eclectic and even idiosyncratic text (but with very good punctuation);
D) the NEW Broadview Press edition by Beth Newman, with scanty notes (very good as they are) and full dialectal glosses like Norton Fourth (both sets of glosses neither wrong nor misleading). Some textual foibles or little blunders are not worrisome (with the best punctuation in town). The overall selection of contextual materials is, arguably, the BEST EVER, with a very interesting document on "brain fever". The brief and original Introduction (21 pp) is excellent and thought-provoking.
Not to be forgotten in this class is
E) Longman Cultural Edition (Alison Booth), featuring good if more conventional Introduction and good annotation that includes a little blunder about Milo
in Chapter 9, with the authoritative Clarendon text (I will inform you if there is any hidden foible with this), and a too vast array of almost dis-arrayed contextual pieces (more than forty of them), interesting but too brief to be really meaningful.
I stand by what I have written, but don't forget that this is one of the very best editions available!
Oneworld Classics is a worse choice, in spite of his good paperback making, with good paper and printing quality and covers with flaps. With its good annotation it would challenge the top positions, were it not by the bad quality of the text itself, that was carefully edited but keeps many blunders and too many of Charlotte's 1850 "improvements". Wordsworth Classics edition is also a worse choice, with a reliable 1850 text (that of the Haworth Edition of 1900: that is, a reliable edition of the wrong text!), adequate notes (even if brief and not user-friendly) and a fair Introduction by John S. Whitley, in one of the worst material productions ever.
If you are looking for a beautiful hardcover volume, your choices are much more limited. You can wait for two or three years to get an used copy of the Clarendon 1976 (or 1995) Edition, or you can get the nice volume in Barnes&Noble Classics (that has the reliable Haworth Edition 1850 text, which is really a pity), or rush to get one nice copy of the Franklin Mint edition of 1978 (see my review) with the beautiful if not daring double-page lithographs by Alan Reingold and a very good pre-Clarendon 1847 text, but with no modern introduction and no annotation whatever, except for the well-done footnotes glossing correctly and in full the dialect tirades (the first edition ever to do so).
Summary of Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics)
Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous love stories in the English language. It is also, as the Introduction to this edition reveals, one of the most potent revenge narratives. Its ingenious narrative structure, vivid evocation of landscape, and the extraordinary power of its depiction of love and hatred have given it a unique place in English literature. The passionate tale of Catherine and Heathcliff is here presented in a new edition that examines the qualities that make it such a powerful and compelling novel. The Introduction by Helen Small sheds light on the novel's oddness and power, its amorality and Romantic influences, its structure and narration, and the sadistic violence embodied in the character of Heathcliff. The volume retains the authoritative Clarendon text and notes, with new notes that identify literary allusions hitherto unnoticed. In addition, the edition boasts two appendices, one of which contains poems by Emily Bront� selected for their relevance to the novel, and a second which contains Charlotte Bront�'s "Biographical Notice of Ellis & Acton Bell" and "Preface to the New Edition."Classics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Classics Books
Native sonby Richard Wright
Perennial Library; Published: 1987; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Native Son: And How Bigger Was Bornby Richard Wright
Perennial; Published: 1993-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $26.84
Raphael and the Noble Taskby Catherine Salton
Harper; Published: 2000-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.77
Price in other shops:
The Great Divorce CDby C. S. Lewis
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-11-25; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $12.65
Price in other shops:
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Black Coffee (Poirot)by Agatha Christie
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $68.32
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1960s)by Joan Didion
Flamingo; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.25
Similar Books and other products
Frankenstein: the original 1818 text (Broadview Literary Texts)by Kathleen Scherf
Broadview Press; Published: 1999-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.43
Price in other shops:
A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)by Charles Dickens
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.37
Price in other shops:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)by Thomas Hardy
Addison Wesley; Published: 2009-12-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.69
Price in other shops:
Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)by Charles Dickens
Penguin Classics; Published: 2002-12-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.94
Price in other shops:
Persuasion (Norton Critical Editions)by Jane Austen
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1994-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: And Other Tales of Terror (Penguin Classics)by Robert Louis Stevenson
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.71
Price in other shops:
Northanger Abbeyby Jane Austen
CreateSpace; Published: 2010-08-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Dracula (Dover Thrift Editions)by Bram Stoker
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 2000-04-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.67
Price in other shops:
Pride and Prejudice (Dover Thrift Editions)by Jane Austen
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1995-04-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.45
Price in other shops:
JANE EYREby Charlotte Bronte
Wilder Publications; Published: 2009-03-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.54
Price in other shops: