BOOKS: The Perfect Uterine Sentence ; the Oxford Companion to the Brontes Ed Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith OXFORD Pounds 60 Pounds 60 (+ Pounds 2.25 P&P PER ORDER) 0870 800 1122

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Last year's countdown of that TV abomination, BBC2's The Big Read, demonstrated that the Brontes retain their place in the nation's affections. Riding in at number 10 with Jane Eyre, Charlotte was the only 19th-century novelist apart from Jane Austen to make it into the upper reaches of the poll, while Emily's Wuthering Heights followed, close on its heels, at number 12 (despite a television adaptation in 1996 of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and various reassessments, Anne Bronte continues to be relegated to the literary equivalent of the back pantry).

Whether or not Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights actually continue to be read by large numbers, rather than sampled in …