On returning to Haworth, she endeavored, together with her sister Emily, to establish a school at their home.  But pupils were not to be had, and the outlook was discouraging.  Two periods of service as governess, and the ill health that had followed, had taught Charlotte the danger that threatened her.  Her experiences as a governess in the Sedgwick family were pictured by-and-by in ‘Jane Eyre.’  In a letter to Miss Ellen Nussey, written at this time, she gives a dark vignette of her situation.

With her two sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and retired life.  The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of the Yorkshire people, impelled the three sisters to construct in their home an ideal world of their own, and in this their pent-up natures found expression.  Their home was lonely and gloomy.  Mr. Clement K. Shorter, in his recent study of the novelist and her family, says that the house is much the same to-day, though its immediate surroundings are brightened.  He writes: 

“One day Emily confided to Charlotte that she had written some verses.  Charlotte answered with a similar confidence, and then Anne acknowledged that she too had been secretly writing.  This mutual confession brought about a complete understanding and sympathy, and from that time on the sisters worked together—­reading their literary productions to one another and submitting to each other’s criticism.”

This was however by no means Charlotte’s first literary work.  She has left a catalogue of books written by her between 1829 and 1830.  Her first printed work however appeared in a volume of ‘Poems’ by Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell, published in 1846 at the expense of the authors.  Under these names the little book of the Bronte sisters went forth to the world, was reviewed with mild favor in some few periodicals, and was lost to sight.

Then came a period of novel-writing.  As a result, Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Anne Bronte’s ‘Agnes Grey,’ and Charlotte Bronte’s ‘The Professor’ set out together to find a publisher.  The last-named was unsuccessful; but on the day it was returned to her, Charlotte Bronte began writing ‘Jane Eyre.’  That first masterpiece was shaped during a period of sorrow and discouragement.  Her father was ill and in danger of losing his eyesight.  Her brother Bran well was sinking into the slough of disgrace.  No wonder ‘Jane Eyre’ is not a story of sunshine and roses.  She finished the story in 1847, and it was accepted by the publishers promptly upon examination.

After its publication and the sensation produced, Charlotte Bronte continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected by the furore she had aroused.  A few brief visits to London, where attempts were made to lionize her,—­very much to her distaste,—­a few literary friendships, notably those with Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell, and Harriet Martineau, were the only features that distinguished her literary