Heathcliff's missing years: Author tells the untold tale from ‘Wuthering Heights’

From The Independent:

In the original novel, Catherine, though she loves Heathcliff with a burning intensity, marries her social equal Edgar Linton. It is a sacrifice; she hopes her marriage will enable her to raise Heathcliff’s lot in life. But overhearing of her plans to marry, Heathcliff flees Wuthering Heights.

And he is gone for three years. When he returns, he is a man of means, wealthy and well dressed, though still wild at heart and with a blazing passion and a foul temper. He will eventually take possession of both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. But where has he been in those three years? And how did he make his fortune?

There are no real clues in Emily Brontë’s novel, and it is Stewart’s work, Ill Will, that sets out to answer that question. Thus he has Heathcliff setting out to return to Liverpool, from where he was taken by Mr Earnshaw, in a bid to discover the truth of his own origins.

read more here @ The Independent

read Wuthering Heights online @ Project Gutenberg