Book Challenge Day 6

Day 6 of 7 - I've accepted the challenge from Ali Williams to post the cover of a book I love every day for 7 days than this one.

. Well, today there couldn't be any other book than this one:

I was just ten years old and living just a few miles away from Haworth where the Bronte sisters grew up when one day, at school, to distract us - appropriately enough - from the wild thunderstorm outside, the teacher started to tell us the story of Wuthering Heights. We only ever heard the start of the story - up to the moment when Heathcliff turned his back on Cathy and walked away to make his fortune - so I didn't know what happened until I found a copy on my mother's bookshelves and found out what happened in the rest of the book. I was hooked instantly - and have been hooked ever since.

If you read my post of a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that I was part of a panel on Romance and The Brontes for the Romantic Novelists Association- not that I think Wuthering Heights is a romance, it's a book about passion, power and possession - and that I wrote my MA thesis on the childhood writings of Emily and Charlotte and their influence on the adult books the sisters wrote. I even wrote my own tribute to Wuthering Heights as a Modern Romance called The Return of the Stranger.

So today there can really only be one book that I'm posting about. I do still have the small, dark blue Nelson Classics edition of Wuthering Heights - the one that saw me through both my degree and my MA - and was used by my mother in her degree studies too. It's full of scribbled notes by both of us - well it was a study aid! But today I'm posting the treasure that a very special friend gave me because she knew how much I loved the book. It was enough of an amazing gift 30+ years ago - but now of course it's over 30 years older and even more antique. In fact even this book is 160 years old this year!

Happy 200th Birthday, Emily Bronte! I just I had the time to sit and reread your amazing novel - and some of your magnificent poetry - to celebrate the big day., today there couldn't be any other book than this one.