Mrs. Gaskell has drawn largely
upon Charlotte's letters, which are as vivid and full of character as
any of her fiction. Genius flashes from them; one feels drawn very
close to this woman who raged against her physical infirmities, but
overcame them bravely. When the spirit moved her she poured out her
soul to her friend in words that grip the heart after all these
years.
The boarding-school project fell through, and for some years the three
sisters lived at home and devoted themselves to literary work. The
first fruits of their pen was a small volume of poems by Currer, Ellis
and Acton Bell, the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily and Anne. This book
fell practically stillborn from the press, but the sisters were
undaunted and each began a novel. Without experience of life it is not
strange that these stories lacked merit.
Charlotte drew her novel from her Brussels experience and called it
_The Professor_. Though it was far the best, it was rejected, but
Emily's _Wuthering Heights_ and Anne's _Agnes Gray_ were published.
Emily's novel revealed a powerful but ill-regulated imagination, with
scenes of splendid imaginative force, yet morbid and unreal as an
opium dream. It received some good notices, but Anne's was mediocre
and fell flat. Nothing daunted by the refusal of the publishers to
bring out her first book, Charlotte began _Jane Eyre_, largely
autobiographical in the early chapters, and this book was promptly
accepted and published in August, 1847.
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