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pursued.”
    A year later, seeing that nothing had come of their
poetic debut, Charlotte, tenacious as ever, sent copies of the slim green volume
to various celebrated authors, including Tennyson, Wordsworth, and De Quincey,
with an imploring letter to each:
    Sir,
    My relatives, Ellis and Acton Bell, and
myself, heedless of the repeated warnings of various respectable publishers,
have committed the rash act of printing a volume of poems.
    The consequences predicted have, of course,
overtaken us; our book is found to be a drug; no man needs or heeds it. In the
space of a year our publisher has disposed but of two copies, and by what
painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two, himself only
knows.
    Before transferring the edition to the
trunk-makers, we have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what
we cannot sell—We beg to offer you one in acknowledgement of the pleasure and
profit we have often and long derived from your works.
    I am, sir, yours very respectfully,
    Currer Bell.
    Undeterred by the Bells’ lackluster debut,
Charlotte wrote a follow-up letter to Aylott & Jones, advising them that “C.
E. & A. Bell are now preparing for the Press a work of fiction—consisting of
three distinct and unconnected tales which may be published together as a work
of 3 vols. of ordinary novel-size, or separately as single vols—as shall be
deemed most advisable.” And she brashly advised them to respond soon, as other
publishers might be interested as well. They declined the solicitation.
    What they foolishly turned down, of course, were
novels that would become part of the canon of English literature: Anne was
writing Agnes Grey. Emily had begun Wuthering Heights (whose ferocity of emotion Charlotte
found rather off-putting). And Charlotte had collected all the material she
needed for her novel Jane Eyre , having worked, quite
miserably, as a governess—but the novel she’d written first was The Professor , with its male narrator, Charles
Grimsworth, who teaches at a girls’ school in Brussels. The story, which she’d
completed in June 1846, was based on her own formative time at a Brussels girls’
school, where she fell in love (unrequited) with her headmaster before
homesickness set in and she returned, deeply depressed, to the refuge of
Haworth.
    Though she tried submitting their works for
consideration elsewhere, she had no luck. Finally, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were
accepted by a minor publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, but he didn’t want The Professor. Charlotte sent it to other publishers,
and it was repeatedly rejected. In fact, she would not see the novel published
in her lifetime. It came out in 1857, two years after her death.
    Amazingly, the year 1847 would bring publication
for all three sisters, almost at once. Charlotte completed Jane Eyre , which she’d written in small square books. As she wrote,
she suffered from an almost unbearably painful toothache and gum disease that
would linger for years. (By 1851, Charlotte had very few teeth left.) But she
persevered, and Jane Eyre was accepted with
enthusiasm by the obscure publishing house Smith, Elder and Company in
London.
    It wouldn’t remain unknown for long; in the latter
half of the century, Smith, Elder became known as the distinguished publisher of
Elizabeth Gaskell, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Thackeray, Browning, and
Ruskin. The firm’s eventual success could be traced to having taken a chance on
an unknown writer named Currer Bell.
    Charlotte submitted the manuscript to her publisher
in August 1847, with a note indicating casually that “[i]t is better in future
to address Mr Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Brontë, Haworth, Bradford,
Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at
present.” Later, George Smith, the head of the firm, recalled his suspicions
about Currer Bell: “For my own part I never had much doubt on