Which Wuthering Heights recording should you buy?
Sixteen editions, and the neatest illustration on this site of why a narrator name is not enough to go on: Juliet Stevenson appears twice, once at 13 hours 24 and once at 2 hours 41. Same book, same reader, a fifth of the text.
Short answer
Juliet Stevenson at 13 hours 24 -- but check the runtime, because her name is on two different products and the other one is a 2h41 abridgement. That is the whole lesson of this page in a single listing: recognising the narrator tells you nothing about whether you are getting the book. Michael Kitchen, Patricia Routledge and Janet McTeer are all complete if you prefer another voice. Worth a second look before you buy: the Moira Quirk and Dan Stevens edition is marked unabridged at 7 hours 41, against a cluster of twelve to fourteen hours. We have not established why it is so much shorter.
Every recording, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juliet Stevenson Our pick | 13 hrs 24 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. Not to be confused with her own abridgement below. |
| Patricia Routledge | 14 hrs 15 mins | Unabridged | Complete, and the longest reading here. |
| Janet McTeer and David Timson | 13 hrs 8 mins | Unabridged | Complete, with the two narrators split between the frame narrators. |
| Michael Kitchen | 11 hrs 38 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Aimee Lou Wood and Kristin Atherton | 13 hrs 58 mins | Unabridged | Complete. |
| Joanne Froggatt and Rachel Atkins | 12 hrs 32 mins | Unabridged | Complete. |
| Moira Quirk and Dan Stevens | 7 hrs 41 mins | Unabridged | Marked unabridged, but four to six hours shorter than every other complete reading here. That is a large gap and we have not established the cause. |
| Juliet Stevenson | 2 hrs 41 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to about a fifth. The same narrator as the complete recording at the top of this table, which is exactly how this one gets bought by mistake. |
| Ben Batt, Chloe Pirrie, Emma Fielding and a full cast | 2 hrs 17 mins | Full-cast dramatisation | A radio adaptation rather than a reading. |