What is the time for the events of the entire book of Wuthering Heights?

The plot of Emily Bronte's novel  Wuthering
Heights can be traced back to the year 1500 where presumably the name of the
first Hareton Earnshaw is set in stone as the first tenant of the manor. However, the
events that take place in the story begin on or around 1771, when Mr. Earnshaw brings
the gypsy foundling, Heathcliff, to live in Wuthering Heights as a member of the family
along with Mr. Earnshaw's children Catherine and
Hindley.

The story of Catherine and Heathcliff's
complicated childhood relationship extends all the way to 1777 when Mr. Earnshaw dies
and Hindley becomes lord of the manor, abusing and humiliating Heathcliff until the
latter escapes. Three years later, he returns to see Catherine marrying Edgar
Linton.

Heathcliff is not a rich man,but a changed man. His
only goal is to take revenge on those who humiliated him once. Catherine, Heathcliff's
love, dies a year or two after his return, leaving him a completely broken
man.

As Heathcliff's character ages, his anger intensifies.
It is at the break of the next century that he takes over Thrushcross Grange. It is 1801
when he had taken young Catherine (Catherine's daughter) basically hostage and makes her
marry his son, Linton. It is when Edgar Linton (Catherine's father) dies, and then after
his own son Linton dies, that then Heathcliff can call himself master of the
grange.

The story, which is told from the anecdotal
accounts of Nelly, comes to the "present" time when Lockwood is sick and comes to stay
at the Grange. By this time the year is 1802. Lockwood now knows the whole story of
Heathcliff. The story ends a year later with the expected marriage of young Catherine
and Hareton Earnshaw- This basically closes the circle of the Lintons, Heathcliff, and
the Earnshaws. In all, the story of their lives covers over 40
years.

As far as the location of the story, we know that it
first begins at Thrushcross Grange when Lockwood arrives in 1801 having rented the
Grange. His landlord, Heathcliff himself, is a rich but wretched man who lives in
isolation at Wuthering Heights.  Both homes are isolated manors in the middle of
nowhere. Both places display elements of Gothic literature: An atmosphere of darkness,
coldness, dampness, nostalgia, melancholy, and longing.  Both places hold mysteries and
stories to tell, and in both places there has been a major
loss.

Therefore, the length of time of the story and the
state of isolation in which most of the story develops affects the central theme of the
story in bringing the Gothic aspect of the narrative to a very descriptive
level.