The race of Heathcliff, the brooding antihero of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, is a much-discussed element of the classic tale.
Brontë variously describes him as “a little lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway”; “that gipsy brat,” not “a regular black,” the offspring of the “Emperor of China,” and the son to an “Indian queen”.
