Emily Bronte · 1847 · exile

Emily Bronte's only novel, set on the West Yorkshire moors she walked from Haworth. A farmer brings home a foundling from Liverpool, and the consequences run through two households and two generations - a story told at several removes, by a housekeeper to a tenant, about people who are almost all dead by the time he hears it.

1. 1
   Wuthering Heights

   The old farmhouse on the exposed hilltop, built to stand the weather and named for it - where Mr Earnshaw brings back a black-haired child from Liverpool, and where Hindley's resentment turns him into a servant.

2. 2
   Thrushcross Grange

   Four miles off and sheltered in the valley, the Lintons' house is warmth, carpets and manners - and Cathy, bitten by their dog and kept there five weeks, comes back a lady and can no longer quite belong to the Heights.

3. 3
   Penistone Crags

   The moor between the two houses is where the children run wild and where everything that matters happens - and the second Cathy, forbidden to go there, is drawn to the Crags exactly as her mother was.

4. 4
   Gimmerton

   The village kirkyard on the moor edge takes them one by one, and the book ends at three headstones - with a tenant standing over them wondering how anyone could imagine unquiet slumbers for sleepers in that quiet earth.