SOURCE: Review of “The Professor: a Tale. By Currer Bell.” In The Athenaeum, No. 1546, June 13, 1857, pp. 755-57.

In the following essay, the critic offers a plot summary and dismisses The Professor as incomplete, lacking the “descriptive or womanly touches” of Brontë's other novels.

After nine years—the fitting Horatian interval—Currer Bell's rejected novel makes its posthumous appearance in print. The wondrous story of Jane Eyre has so much gratified, and the more wondrous, “ower true,” and over-tragic life-drama of Charlotte Brontë so much amazed the world, that it feels disposed rather to err on the side of gentleness than rigour, and to question the justice of the criticism which refused, rather than the constructive power which was latent in the earlier tale. Accordingly friends, lovers, and biographer have moved for a new trial, and The Professor comes before the public with every advantage of typography, and...