After Emily and Anne Brontë died in 1848, Charlotte Brontë took the initiative to edit her younger sisters’ works. For Wuthering Heights, she reorganized paragraphs, corrected punctuation errors, and lightened Joseph’s Yorkshire accent so he could be more easily understood.

The second edition of Wuthering Heights was published in December 1850 by W.S. Williams in London. Like the first edition, it was combined with Agnes Grey. Charlotte provided the “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” and “Editor’s Preface to the New Edition” in this second edition of Wuthering Heights to reveal the identities of the sisters.