This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Emily Brontë's includes the complete, unabridged text; 12 starkly beautiful woodcut illustrations by renowned artist Clare Leighton (which were the inspiration for the sets of the classic 1939 Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon film adaptation), as well as a helpful introduction, detailed author bio, and bibliography. was released in 1847 in the shadow of the instantly successful , published two months earlier by her older sister Charlotte. It enjoyed only mixed reviews--but the reactions were intense, foreshadowing the eventual stature the novel would claim in the pantheon of English literature, surpassing in many readers' eyes even her sister's magnum opus. Though Emily would not live to see it, would become synonymous with passionate gothic romance and tragic love, establishing Heathcliff and Catherine as the most poignantly doomed couple in fiction since Romeo and Juliet, but with even darker consequences for everyone involved.