Emily Bronte's brooding imagination evoked as thwarted and tragic a group of human creatures as ever walked the bleak moorlands or had their existence in the dark byways of life. The barren world in which their villanies [sic] flourished forms the background for deeds as weird as they are sinister and for passions as fierce as they are persistent. Wuthering Heights is by common consent one of the most compelling novels in the English language. It is a book compact of beauty and loveliness, hate and cruelty and heartrending pathos.