New Charlotte Brontë letter at Parsonage Museum betrays her sympathy for poor governesses. An important letter has returned to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, 150 years after Charlotte Brontë wrote it there.

Miss Mary Holmes was a struggling writer and musician originally from Gargrave, North Yorkshire, who wrote to Charlotte for advice on her book. She worked as music teacher to the daughters of novelist William Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, and he had already kindly found someone to review the book in a national newspaper, as well as offering to help pay for it to be privately printed. Thackeray passed on Charlotte’s address so that Miss Holmes could send it to the now-famous Haworth author for some advice – they came from villages just 20 miles apart.

Charlotte’s response, dated 22 April 1852, and sent from the Parsonage in Haworth, was friendly and encouraging – which was not always the case: the author of Jane Eyre, by now a bestselling literary star, could be dismissive of fellow authors seeking advice. Either she was keen to do Thackeray a favour, though, or she spotted genuine talent in Miss Holmes’s work, for she wrote that the book: seems to [me] very clever and very learned. You erred in telling me to skip the first chapters; I am glad I disobeyed the injunction.

Miss Holmes has clearly mentioned in her letter to Charlotte that she has worked as a governess. Charlotte replies: You are right in supposing that I must feel a degree of interest in the details of a Governess-life. That life has on me the hold of actual experience; to all who live it – I cannot but incline with a certain sympathy; and any kind feeling they express for me – comes pleasantly and meets with grateful acceptance.

The letter was purchased from an auction at Bonham’s in London on 12 June 2012.

It will be displayed from early 2013. 

Read all the article on: Bronte Parsonage

Weblogs and the Brontes

 

 

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(Fritz Eichenberg, illustration from Wuthering Heights, Random House edition 1943; from here)

 

Lady Edna Clarke Hall, ‘The Earnshaw Family by the Fireside’, circa 1899; in the Tate Collection along with other sketches the artist made to illustrateWuthering Heights over a long period)
 

(Detail from Sylvia Plath, ‘Wuthering Heights Today’; from here)

                 On rereading Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

Gallimaufry

On this day in 1847 The manuscripts of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were sent to the publishers; T.C. Newby. They were published in December 1847.

Charlotte submitted three novels to the firm of Thomas Cautley Newby: The Professor, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey. Newby rejected the first of these but agreed to publish the second and third. He agreed to print 300 copies but demanded his usual harsh terms for first time novelists: £50. This sum he promised to return to the authors once 250 of the 300 copies were sold.

Having obtained the money and set the book in type and sent proof sheets to the Bells, Newby then did nothing. The Bells (Brontës) wrote. Newby did not respond. He had his money. What further income could he expect from the venture?

Meanwhile, Charlotte pressed on. After Newby rejected The Professor, she sent the manuscript to Smith, Elder and Company. Like Newby they refused but in a thoughtful and courteous letter. The consequence was that later that same month the furiously writing Charlotte sent another manuscript, Jane Eyre. Its first reader, W. S. Williams, immediately saw its quality and passed it on to George Smith, who spent a Sunday ( ! ) reading it. This was late August 1847, as Charlotte’s cover letter is dated 24 August. By October, Smith, Elder and Company had published it. By December it was the talk of literary London.

Newby in October 1847 was still dilly dallying on Wuthering Heights, hesitating at a dubious commercial undertaking. He did not so neglect all his authors. In the same year as Wuthering Heights appeared, Newby published Anthony Trollope’s first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, obligingly sent him by Trollope’s mother, Frances, a successful novelist. Judging shrewdly that the Trollope name was worth something, he brought out Trollope’s book at his own expense, suggesting when he could that it was the work of the then more famous mother. It was only when Jane Eyre proved that the Bell name might also be worth something that Newby resumed production on Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. Even then he rushed the job, ignoring corrections Ellis and Acton Bell had made on the proofs he had supplied. 

Read more: englishmatters.gmu.edu