Beschreibung:

Brontë (Emily and Anne)], "Ellis and Acton Bell". Wuthering Heights; Agnes Grey, together 3 vol. (as issued), first editions, a mixed set, some light soiling and creasing to corners (heavier to Agnes Grey), Agnes Grey with marginal browning to title, C7 and O5 with neatly repaired tears to margins and E2 with closed tear to foot, vol.1 & 2 contemporary half calf, rebacked preserving original backstrip, extremities rubbed, vol.3 modern antique-style half calf to match, spines gilt, [Smith 3 pp.60-63], 8vo, Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847. ⁂ The rare first editions of the two sisters' first novels. Wuthering Heights is one of the great romantic works and remains one of the most popular novels in the English language. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were written during the remarkable 1846-47 period that also saw Charlotte write The Professor and Jane Eyre. These two novels, along with The Professor were sent as a trio to publishers from July 1846, meeting with uniform rejection until around a year later the publisher Thomas Cautley Newby expressed an interest in the novels of Emily and Anne. The terms offered to the sisters were poor: between them they had to raise £50 to cover publication costs, to be repaid if and when the novels raised enough money through sales (neither sister saw a penny). Nevertheless the sisters accepted, however Thomas Cautley Newby, essentially a one-man operation, moved slowly and their novels were not published until two months after Jane Eyre (despite this , and even then filled with the errors the authors had hoped would be expunged at the proof stages. The exact number of copies printed is unclear although Charlotte would later mention in a letter of September 1850 that Newby had undertaken to print 350 copies before subsequently declaring that he had printed only 250.