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 Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Gray. All these stories travelled from publisher to publisher. At last The Professor reached the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., of Cornhill. The “reader” for that firm, R. Smith Williams (1800–1875), was impressed, as were also his employers. Charlotte Brontë received in August 1847 a letter informing her that whatever the merits of The Professor—and it was hinted that it lacked “varied interest”—it was too short for the three-volume form then counted imperative. The author was further told that a longer novel would be gladly considered. She replied in the same month with this longer novel, and Jane Eyre appeared in October 1847, to be wildly acclaimed on every hand, although enthusiasm was to receive a counterblast when more than a year later, in December 1848, Miss Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake (1809–1893), reviewed it in the Quarterly.

Meanwhile the novels of Emily and Anne had been accepted by T. C. Newby. They were published together in three volumes in December 1847, two months later than Jane Eyre, although the proof sheets had been passed by the authors before their sister’s novel had been sent to the publishers. The dilatoriness of Mr Newby was followed up by considerable energy when he saw the possibility of the novels by Ellis and Acton Bell sailing on the wave of Currer Bell’s popularity, and he would seem very quickly to have accepted another manuscript by Anne Brontë, for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published by Newby in three volumes in June 1848. It was Newby’s clever efforts to persuade the public that the books he published were by the author of Jane Eyre that led Charlotte and Anne to visit London this summer and interview Charlotte’s publishers in Cornhill with a view to establishing their separate identity. Soon after their return home Branwell died (the 24th of September 1848), and less than three months later Emily died also at Haworth (the 19th December 1848). Then Anne became ill and on the 24th of May 1849 Charlotte accompanied her to Scarborough in the hope that the sea air would revive her. Anne died there on the 28th of May, and was buried in Scarborough churchyard. Thus in exactly eight months Charlotte Brontë lost all the three companions of her youth, and returned to sustain her father, fast becoming blind, in the now desolate home at Haworth.

In the interval between the death of Branwell and of Emily, Charlotte had been engaged upon a new novel—Shirley. Two-thirds were written, but the story was then laid aside while its author was nursing her sister Anne. She completed the book after Anne’s death, and it was published in October 1849. The following winter she visited London as the guest of her publisher, Mr George Smith, and was introduced to Thackerary, to whom she had dedicated Jane Eyre. The following year she repeated the visit, sat for her portrait to George Richmond, and was considerably lionized by a host of admirers. In August 1850 she visited the English lakes as the guest of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and met Mrs Gaskell, Miss Martineau, Matthew Arnold and other interesting men and women. During this period her publishers assiduously lent her books, and her criticisms of them contained in many letters to Mr George Smith and Mr Smith Williams make very interesting reading. In 1851 she received a third offer of marriage, this time from Mr James Taylor, who was in the employment of her publishers. A visit to Miss Martineau at Ambleside and also to London to the Great Exhibition made up the events of this year. On her way home she visited Manchester and spent two days with Mrs Gaskell. During the year 1852 she worked hard with a new novel, Villette, which was published in January of 1853. In September of that year she received a visit from Mrs Gaskell at Haworth; in May 1854 she returned it, remaining three days at Manchester, and planning with her hostess the details of her marriage, for at this time she had promised to unite herself with her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1817–1906), who had long been a pertinacious suitor for her hand but had been discouraged by Mr Brontë. The marriage took place in Haworth church on the 29th of June 1854, the ceremony being performed by the Rev. Sutcliffe Sowden, Miss Wooler and Miss Nussey acting as witnesses. The wedded pair spent their honeymoon in Ireland, returning to Haworth, where they made their home with Mr Brontë, Mr Nicholls having pledged himself to continue in his position as curate to his father-in-law. After less than a year of married life, however, Charlotte Nicholls died of an illness incidental to childbirth, on the 31st of March 1855. She was buried in Haworth church by the side of her mother, Branwell and Emily. The father followed in 1861, and then her husband returned to Ireland, where he remained some years afterwards, dying in 1906.

The bare recital of the Brontë story can give no idea of its undying interest, its exceeding pathos. Their life as told by their biographer Mrs Gaskell is as interesting as any novel. Their achievement, however, will stand on its own merits. Anne Brontë’s two novels, it is true, though constantly reprinted, survive principally through the exceeding vitality of the Brontë tradition. As a hymn writer she still has a place in most religious communities. Emily is great alike as a novelist and as a poet. Her “Old Stoic” and “Last Lines” are probably the finest achievement of poetry that any woman has given to English literature. Her novel Wuthering Heights stands alone as a monument of intensity owing nothing to tradition, nothing to the achievement of earlier writers. It was a thing apart, passionate, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness, its grey melancholy. Among women writers Emily Brontë has a sure and certain place for all time. As a poet or maker of verse Charlotte Brontë is undistinguished, but there are passages of pure poetry of great magnificence in her four novels, and particularly in Villette. The novels Jane Eyre and Villette will always command attention whatever the future of English fiction, by virtue of their intensity, their independence, their rough individuality.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs Gaskell, was first published in 1857. Owing to the many controversial questions it aroused, as to the identity of Lowood in Jane Eyre with Cowan Bridge school, as to the relations of Branwell Brontë with his employer’s wife, as to the supposed peculiarities of Mr Brontë, and certain other minor points, the third edition was considerably changed. The Life has been many times reprinted, but may be read in its most satisfactory form in the Haworth edition (1902), issued by the original publishers, Smith, Elder & Co. To this edition are attached a great number of letters written by Miss Brontë to her publisher, George Smith. The first new material supplied to supplement Mrs Gaskell’s Life was contained in Charlotte Brontë: a Monograph, by T. Wemyss Reid (1877). This book inspired Mr A. C. Swinburne to issue separately a forcible essay on Charlotte and Emily Brontë, under the title of A Note on Charlotte Brontë (1877). A further collection of letters written by Miss Brontë was contained in Charlotte Brontë and her Circle, by Clement Shorter (1896), and interesting details can be gathered from the Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Augustine Birrell (1887), The Brontës in Ireland, by William Wright, D.D. (1893), Charlotte Brontë and her Sisters, by Clement Shorter (1906), and the Brontë Society publications, edited by Butler Wood (1895–1907). Miss A. Mary F. Robinson (Madame Duclaux) wrote a separate biography of Emily Brontë in 1883, and an essay in her Grands Écrivains d’outre-Manche. The Brontës: Life and Letters, by Clement Shorter (1907), contains the whole of C. Brontë’s letters in chronological order.

BRONTE, a town of the province of Catania, Sicily, on the western slopes of Mt. Etna, 24 m. N.N.W. of Catania direct, and 34 m. by rail. Pop. (1901) 20,366. It was founded by the emperor Charles V. The town, with an extensive estate which originally belonged to the monastery of Maniacium (Maniace), was granted, as a dukedom, to Nelson by Ferdinand IV. of Naples in 1799.

BRONX, THE, formerly a district comprising several towns in Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., now (since 1898) the northernmost of the five boroughs of (q.v.). Several settlements in the Bronx were made by the English and the Dutch between 1640 and 1650.

BRONZE, an alloy formed wholly or chiefly of copper and tin in variable proportions. The word has been etymologically connected with the same root as appears in “brown,” but according to M. P. E. Berthelot (La Chimie au moyen âge) it is a place-name derived from aes Brundusianum (cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiii. ch. ix. §45, “specula optima apud majores fuerunt Brundusiana, stanno et aere mixtis”). A Greek MS. of about the 11th century in the library of St Mark’s, Venice, contains