Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855
Charlotte Brontë's earliest literary exercises were in the genre of poetry. Her decision to abandon poetry for novel writing exemplifies the major shift in literary tastes and the marketability of literary genres–from poetry to prose fiction–that occurred in the 1830s and 1840s.
Early in her career, Charlotte sought advice on her poems from Robert Southey, then poet laureate of England. His assessment of the hopeful young writer’s literary expectations, preserved in a letter dated March 12, 1837, has become infamous:
Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life: & it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment & a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, & when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre won immediate and widespread acclaim upon its first release. The Times called it "a remarkable production…that "stand[s] boldly out from the mass." Fraser's Magazine urged its readers to "lose not a day in sending for it." Some, however, declared the book coarse and immoral, and unfit reading for young ladies.
Writing under the pseudonym "Currer Bell," Brontë placed her novel with the London publisher Smith, Elder & Co., who assumed the writer was male. She received 500: a princely sum for a first novel. Brontë’s true identity, revealed the following year, caused great controversy.
With Jane Eyre, Brontë achieved the literary celebrity that Southey had warned her to eschew.
Autograph Letter to Ellen Nussey
Brontë sent this letter to her life-long school friend, Ellen Nussey. She thanks her friend for a birthday gift, admitting "I had forgotten all about your birthday and mine, till your letter arrived to remind me of it." Brontë also relates family news, and asks about a planned visit in the fall.