Final answer:
Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights during a period when authors commonly circulated manuscripts within a small intellectual community before wider publication. This practice allowed some control over the work and helped in building networks of patrons and subscribers.
Step-by-step explanation:
Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in a time when the path to print for writers was quite nuanced. Before and during the early days of modern copyright, which emerged in the early 1770s, authors like Brontë often began as manuscript authors.
Their work was circulated among a select group before a wider publication, often without the author's explicit consent. This method served multiple purposes including the creation of small, intellectual communities and the potential development of a network of benefactors or patrons. Manuscript circulation was a form of publication that highlighted a personal connection between writer and reader, emphasizing social authorship.
Brontë's experience with publishing would have been influenced by this literary culture. Manuscript diacriticals, which include highlighted words, phrases, or symbols to punctuate meaning, were important for authors who wished to maintain some semblance of control over their written word, much as Phillis Wheatley did with her poetry.
Brontë, like other authors of her time, may have sought to harness the power of manuscript circulation, diacriticals, and personal connections to control the presentation of her novel, although specific details about her publishing process for Wuthering Heights are not provided by the text provided.