Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/9

 A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

''The admirer of Emily Brontë and her work has known her poetry up to the present through only some thirty-nine poems. There were twenty-two poems in the little volume entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which was the first venture of the three Miss Brontës, and there were yet another seventeen in the Posthumous Poems that Charlotte Brontë printed after Emily's death. These thirty-nine poems have been reprinted many times, usually at the end of'' The Professor. ''No less than one hundred and thirty-eight additional poems are included in the present volume. Although it cannot be pretended that any one of these is equal to 'The Old Stoic,' that gave so much distinction to the first volume, or to the 'Last Lines,' that were the unforgettable glory of the second, it will scarcely be disputed that these newly printed verses are of profound interest.''

''There is no incident in the profoundly pathetic story of the Brontës better known than that of the publication of the poems by the three sisters through the firm of Aylott and Jones of Paternoster Row. The little book bears the date'' 1846. ''Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë here courted public favour for the first time. Only two copies were sold, as we learn from a letter that Currer Bell sent to certain eminent contemporaries—to Tennyson, to Lockhart, to De Quincey, and to others. Here is the letter in question:—''

June 16th, 1847. ,—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.