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.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
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.

Speech is generated locally without uploading the book for narration. Download the book and check your chosen voice before travelling offline. Available voices depend on your device; check the in-app voice list. Try every available voice for your first 8 hours of listening. Afterwards, keep a free English voice selection and unlimited book listening. No LoudReader account or word quota.