8vo. Proof copy. [16], 374pp. Without the 12 plates issued with the first edition (list of illustrations fittingly blank). Original publisher's buff wrappers, printed paper title label to upper wrappers. Housed in modern green cloth solander. Lightly rubbed, creased, some loss to lower wrapper, head and foot of spine chipped. Occasional contemporary marginal pencilled annotations/corrections. With a loosely inserted single sheet prospectus announcing the 1939 French translation of the book.

'It is not bold, but merely honest, to declare that Emily Brontë was the author of the greatest novel ever written by a woman, and, at her best, with only Sappho, Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson as indisputable peers, one of the greatest women poets of all time'.

A proof copy, corrected in manuscript, of American poet, novelist, and scholar Virginia Moore's (1903-1993) rapturous critical biography of Emily Brontë (1818-1848); in which she notably posits the theory that the author, due to her reluctance to marry, was a lesbian.