I wouldn't have sold it!

I was insane with jealousy when I read today that a South African tourist in Ireland picked up a copy of Wuthering Heights for €3 at a flea market in Limerick, only to discover that it was a first edition. he subsequently sold it in South Africa for the equivalent of €8,000.

Had I found the book I wouldn't have sold it as it is one of my favourite books and I would be immensely proud to own a first edition. I first read it when I was 10 and I loved it, even though my mother's efforts to get me to read other English 19th century classics at that age were much less successful. I was lucky enough, subsequently, to have it as my chief English fiction assignment for the Leaving Certificate - the Irish school leaving exam.

Even though I have read many other English 19th century books since (and liked or loved most of them), I still believe this is the best. In terms of judging Emily Bronte as an author, there are several other English writers of that period who can arguably be considered as better in their overall achievement because their achievement was not limited to one book (Austen, Eliot and Dickens spring to mind). However, I would argue that there is no single novel from that period and country that's as good as Wuthering Heights. In fact' it's almost unfair to the other novelists to make the comparison because Bronte's book is so diffferent. If anything, it's easier to compare it to books like Crime and Punishment than to, say, Middlemarch, Great Expectiations or Pride and Prejudice.

Most English novelists of the period had very strong moral and social values that they bring out in their work. Even Emily's sisters did. She herself did not. The whole point about the book is that Catherine and Heathcliff demand that the reader judge them by their own standards, where the only thing that matters is their constancy to one another. In the face of this consuming and destructive passion, we barely notice that they can be callous, cruel, selfish or vindictive. It's not surprising that contemporary critics found them shocking - "pagan" is a word that was used. Indeed, religion doesn't play a major part in the book. Nellie Dean - though she can't refrain from passing judgement at times - is a tolerant person. Joseph - the only truly religious character - is a crabby caricature.

There's very little one can say about the book that hasn't been said already. To me, the core of it is that the Heights and the Grange represent parallel universes. Although the former belongs to the Earnshaws at the opening, it's Heathcliff who dominates it - just as, ultimately, he comes to own it. Catherine's departure to the Grange sets off a destructive chain reaction that only ends when she comes back from the dead to claim Heathcliff. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Cathy and Hareton are going to set up home in the Grange - suggesting that the more conventional and conformist world of ordinary people triumphs over the more turbulent world of the Heights in the end.

Some of my friends who are Jane Austen fans fall into the trap of thinking that, because Wuthering Heights is so passionate and violent, it is, therefore, less subtle than Austen's understated and witty style. Personally, I consider this very unfair; my own experience is that every time I read it I discover new subtleties both in the meanings of the book and the craft with which it's written. Relative to what's being described, it's actually very controlled and understated. Emily Bronte, despite her own turbulent character (many of the things spoken between Catherine and Heathcliff are thought to have been said between her and her brother Branwell), is able to carry off the attempt at rendering Heathcliff and Catherine convincingly. At the same time she can also portray more prosaic characters like the Lintons as believable. She filters the story through two narrators - the gentle but slightly judgmental Nellie and the dull Mr Lockwood. The split time sequence - starting the story near the end, going back to the beginning and, finally, catching up with events that took place after the opening of the book - is very unusual for the time. Not until Joseph Conrad starts to write a generation later is it used with greater effect.

So, if I had found that copy of Wuthering Heights, I would have kept it.