A first edition of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, is on display for sale at Christie’s auction house, with copies estimated at 400,000–600,000 GBP (540,000–810,000 USD) in London, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
LONDON (AP) — 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 Brontë’s tragic, tempestuous romance gains new fans through a big-screen adaptation.
Christie’s auction house said Monday that it’s the first copy of the novel in the publisher’s original cloth binding to be auctioned since 1908. 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,” said Christie’s books and manuscripts specialist Mark Wiltshire.
Being sold along with a copy of sister Anne Brontë’s “Agnes Grey,” it’s expected to sell for between 400,000 pounds and 600,000 pounds ($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.
