Free public-domain audiobook
Listen to Wuthering Heights as a free audiobook on iPhone
You can listen to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë as a free audiobook on your iPhone. Because the book is in the public domain, you can download a free EPUB edition and have it read aloud with natural on-device voices - privately, offline, and without buying an audiobook.
Heathcliff and Catherine’s destructive love poisons two families across two generations on the bleak Yorkshire moors. Emily Brontë tells it through a tenant’s account of a housekeeper’s memories, a frame that keeps the wild story at an uneasy distance. It is harsher and stranger than its reputation as a romance suggests.
Why Wuthering Heights is free to listen to
Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 and is fully public domain, so free EPUB editions are easy to find and listen to.
Length: A medium-length novel, 34 chapters.
How to listen to Wuthering Heights on iPhone
- Download a free public-domain EPUB of Wuthering Heights (Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks both offer one).
- Move the EPUB to your iPhone via AirDrop, iCloud Drive, email, or a direct download into Files.
- Open the EPUB in a reader app that reads text aloud, or use Apple's built-in Speak Screen to hear the open page.
- Choose a voice and press play. A reader that generates the voice on the device works offline, with nothing uploaded.
Questions & answers
Why is Wuthering Heights confusing at the start?
Wuthering Heights opens with a frame narrator, Lockwood, hearing the housekeeper Nelly recount events from years earlier, and two generations share similar names. Knowing that the story is a memory-within-a-memory, and that there are two Catherines, makes the early chapters far easier to follow by ear.
Is Wuthering Heights a romance?
Wuthering Heights is often shelved as a romance, but it is closer to a Gothic tragedy about obsession and revenge than a love story with a happy arc. Going in expecting something darker and stranger sets the right tone. It is public domain and free, so it costs nothing to try.