A rare first edition copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has sold at auction for a record price.
The three-volume book, published in 1847, fetched £163,250 when it went under the hammer last Thursday, at Sotheby’s, in London. The figure — more than double the pre-sale estimate — is the most ever paid at auction for a copy of the classic novel.
The buyer was an unnamed American dealer.
Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, at Haworth, said: “In the context of the worldwide recession it seems a lot of money and is quite surprising, but anything associated with Emily fetches that bit more.
The book was among 123 rare publications, mostly first editions, which together sold for more than £3.1 million.
The seller was a 75-year-old collector.
Also included in the lots was a first edition copy of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which sold for £85,250 — slightly above its estimate.
A first edition of Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot, which was once owned by the Keighley Reading Society, failed to sell.
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