Is Heathcliff a murderer?

by John Sutherland

In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? (well, is he?) John Sutherland investigates thirty-four conundrums of nineteenth-century fiction. Applying these 'real world' questions to fiction is not in any sense intended to catch out the novelists who are invariably cleverer than their most defectively inclined readers. Typically, one finds a reason for the seeming anomaly. Not blunders, that is, but unexpected felicities and ingenious justifications. In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? John Sutherland, recently described by Tony Tanner as 'a sort of Sherlock Holmes of literature', pays homage to the most rewarding of critical activities, close reading and the pleasures of good-natured pedantry.