authoresses are liable to be
looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics
sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of
personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not
true praise. The bringing out of our little book was hard
work. * * Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to
succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be
pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell
produced 'Wuthering Heights,' Acton Bell 'Agnes Grey,' and
Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume. These MSS.
were perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the
space of a year and a half; usually, their fate was an
ignominious and abrupt dismissal. At last 'Wuthering
Heights' and 'Agnes Grey,' were accepted on terms somewhat
impoverishing to the two authors."

The MS. of a one-volume tale by Currer Bell had been thought by Messrs.
Smith & Elder so full of promise, that its writer was asked for a longer
story in a more saleable form.--

"I was then just completing 'Jane Eyre,' at which I had been
working while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary
round in London: in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and
skillful hands took it in. This was in the commencement of
September, 1847; it came out before the close of October
following, while 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey,' my
sisters' works, which had already been in the press for
months, still lingered under a different management. They
appeared at last. Critics failed to do them justice."

The narrative may be best concluded in the writer's own words.

"Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself for one moment to
sink under want of encouragement; energy nerved the one, and
endurance upheld the other. They were both prepared to try
again; I would fain think that hope and the sense of power
was yet strong within them. But a great change approached:
affliction came in that shape which to anticipate, is dread;
to look back on, grief. In the very heat and burden of the
day, the laborers failed over their work. My sister Emily
first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded
in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or
narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she
lingered over any task that lay before her, and she d