Christie’s June 30 Exceptional Sale in London offers many fine lots, among them, a bespoke cigar humidor of Cuban amboya gifted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill during the war ($25,000-$40,000); a sabre-toothed tiger skull discovered in a Pleistoscene sinkhole in Florida in 2008 ($1,000,000-$1,500,000); and by no means least, a rare first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, published, fascinatingly, as a three-volume set, the first two of which are devoted to that novel, the third of which is her sister Anne’s novel, Agnes Grey. Pictured top, a portrait of the twent
The three volumes carry a pre-sale estimate range of $200,000-$300,000, but for a host of reasons, as the gavel strikes Christie’s lectern sometime after 4:30 British Summer Time (11:30 Eastern) on June 30, the market value of this particular first edition is thought to be running higher than that. Some of the more breathless estimates bandied about in the last weeks range up into the low seven figures. Pictured below, the three-volume first edition.
Whatever the hammer price turns out to be, the intensity of interest and the magnetic attraction that these three volumes exert is real. Working from the inside of these volumes to their remarkably well-preserved cloth bindings – more on which, below – the first and main element of value is that it is Emily Brontë’s enduring and revolutionary masterpiece that is, chiefly, at issue.
The significance of her achievement within English and global literature is difficult to overstate. Of the three sisters, Sister Emily’s exquisitely modern gift to literature and to us – via her characters Catherine and Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton families – was to show us that we are all conflicted, riven, subject to great swings of emotion and roundly challenged by simply living out our lives in a largely stormy world, whatever quotient of that may be of our own manufacture.
Her storytelling of this narrative premise is unadorned, stripped bare, in immediate reach of the brutal facts of her characters’ relations and complications with each other, and the dialogue she gives them cuts to the point of those many conflicts. There’s is virtually none of the mannered, digressive froth to the narrative. Although the narrative takes place over generations, neither Emily Brontë nor her famous characters wasted a minute outside their conflicts. They lived them. Heathcliff’s rage is the massive engine, a steam locomotive thundering through the landscape, throwing off steam, coal dust and sparks.
Wuthering Heights’ is meant to be a hard story, illuminating with breathtaking depth the disastrous human cost of hard emotions within hard lives. With the West Riding of Yorkshire’s wind-whipped moors and ferocious changes of weather as a backdrop, the book’s prose is nothing short of cinematic – its brooding austerity carries a visceral, visual immediacy. The book’s intense drama literally begs for a visual treatment.
Which brings us to the second – 20th- and 21st-century – level of Wuthering Heights’ wholly justified fame. The novel has been adapted at last count into some thirty-five films and television series, including four films in Hindi, Mexican and Venezuelan telenovelas, a series in Polish, and a Spanish adaptation directed by no less a cinematic surrealist than Luis Buñuel, as well as a dozen stage productions and not least, an opera, not to mention a bouquet of subsequent satiric treatments in Mexico, England, and India. The most recent – and controversial – adaptation is the Emerald Fennell film released in February 2026. That is literary timelessness – or put another way eternal cultural relevance – at work, and it adds significantly to the value here.
David Wiltshire, Christie’s formidable literary scholar and director of books, aptly sums that up in his description of Wuthering Heights as “canonical,” quickly adding, “and it will always be.”
Discussing the volumes’ physical attributes, Wiltshire observes: “This particular set resided in a private library in a house in England since shortly after publication, until now. That adds a great deal of value to collectors. The last Wuthering Heights first edition of similar quality was sold in the early 1900s. They just don’t come to market. Effectively, there aren’t any, except in libraries such as the one these books came from. The Brontë sisters books were immensely popular and were read by a lot of people, so that’s why we see so many that have had to be rebound or repaired. It’s very rare to get an early edition, much less a first edition, in the original cloth binding, with no pages missing and not otherwise damaged.”
Wiltshire notes that Emily Brontë’s publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, didn’t know that his author “Ellis Bell” was not a man – which of course is now hilarious in a great many ways but back in the day was not. Getting the edition printed, bound and issued in the autumn of 1847 brought its own version of literary comedy. In a word, Newby, who seems to have been no slouch when it came to mid-19th-century “marketing” took close note that another “Bell” sibling, “Currer Bell,” had issued “his”
Some of these collectors,” Wiltshire adds, “have been waiting for a Wuthering Heights first edition like this one for longer than they’ve been alive.”in this kind of condition
There was a rushed first edition print run of 250 copies in October of 1847 to get “Ellis Bell’s” (Emily Brontë’s male nom de plume) and “Acton Bell’s”) (Anne Brontë) books published.
As the very first edition of this remarkable bundle of teeming modernity was published in October 1847, its big bundle of modern narrative meant, of course, that it would be initially panned by some of the more persnickety of London’s flock of critics. were not unanimously enthused as they had been with the ragingly popular and acclaimed novel by Charlotte Brontë.
There is none of the mannered, digressive – all that was in fact what it meant to be human. We are all that, all Heathcliff and Catherine, was the message, and it was an intensely modern one. The key to the Bronte sisters in general lay in their acceptance and celebration of characters as stormy and unpredictably tumul. first published in a three-volume set in tandem with her sister Anne’s far milder Agnes Grey in 1848, was not initially liked by London’s flocks of critics.
But Emily Brontë’s genius – essentially, the Copernican revolution that she engineered with this novel in English and in world literature – won the day. The value of the book’s place in global literature and as a touchstone for adaptation is difficult to overestimate. Its tale of unrequited love has been adapted at last count into some thirty-five films and television series, including four films in Hindi, Mexican and Venezuelan telenovelas, a series in Polish, and a Spanish adaptation directed by Luis Bunuel.
There is none of the mannered, digressive – all that was in fact what it meant to be human. We are all that, all Heathcliff and Catherine, was the message, and it was an intensely modern one. The key to the Bronte sisters in general lay in their acceptance and celebration of characters as stormy and unpredictably tumultous as the weather beating the house from which the novel takes its famous name.
There is none of the mannered, digressive – all that was in fact what it meant to be human. We are all that, all Heathcliff and Catherine, was the message, and it was an intensely modern one. The key to the Bronte sisters in general lay in their acceptance and celebration of characters as stormy and unpredictably tumul
