Twilight sends 'Wuthering Heights' sales soaring - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Emily Bronte's classic gothic novel 'Wuthering Heights' has witnessed its sales quadruple after the release of vampire film Twilight. The cult teenage film is itself based on a trilogy of books by Stephanie Meyer. The lead character of Bella, in Twilight series, compares her love for the vampire Edward with Cathy's passion for Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights.' Before the first Twilight books came out in 2005, Bronte's book sold 8,551 a year in Britain. However, the publishers Harper Collins reissued it last year, with a cover inspired by the Twilight artwork and the tag-line: "Bella and Edward's favourite book". According to Nielsen Bookscan, which monitors book sales across the industry, the result sales reaching 2,634 in one week and totaling to 34,023 during the year. "It's fantastic to see teenagers are reading a whole different genre - the classics - as well as fantasy novels because of the popularity of Stephanie Meyer's books," the Telegraph quoted Tesco's assistant book buyer Rachel Harcourt as saying. She added: "The new sleek black gothic-style covers of Wuthering Heights clearly appeal to lovers of vampire romance stories and are helping them to try out a different read. Anything that encourages teenagers to read good books is welcome as there are so many distractions which prevent today's youngsters from developing reading as a hobby." However, everyone is not happy with Harper Collins' marketing ploy. A reviewer on Amazon said: "How disgusting that they'll take a literary classic, and revamp it just so it looks like the "teen sensation" that is Twilight. Drawing this parallel is an absolute atrocity, Emily Bronte would be turning in her grave if she could see this."