Wuthering Heights

A gentleman rents a house on the Yorkshire moors, pays a courtesy call on his landlord at Wuthering Heights, and stumbles into the wreckage of a story still smoldering after decades. Through the housekeeper Nelly Dean, he (and we) hear it from the beginning: how old Mr. Earnshaw brought home a foundling boy called Heathcliff; how Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw grew into a bond too fierce to be called anything as tame as love; and how her choice of a gentler, richer man set Heathcliff on a course of revenge patient enough to consume two families and two generations.

There is nothing else like it in Victorian fiction. No moralizing narrator, no soft edges, just wind, moorland, and wills in collision, told through nested storytellers who may not deserve your full trust. Emily Brontë wrote one novel. It turned out to be one of the most intense ever written, and its storm reads best out loud.

At roughly 115,600 words, Wuthering Heights runs about 13 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

Wuthering Heights is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “Wuthering Heights” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.