How Wuthering Heights was shaped by Emily Brontë’s gothic poetry

How Wuthering Heights was shaped by Emily Brontë’s gothic poetry

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, bef…