After Miss Burney had set the fashion, women pressed boldly forward into literary ranks, although the author of “Waverley” absorbed in a great degree the curiosity of the reading public.  Miss Austen, whose work is destined, in the opinion of good judges, to survive with the language, made her first venture, like the author of “Evelina,” anonymously; but it created no such furore.  This was “Sense and Sensibility,” published in 1811; but she had already written “Northanger Abbey” and “Pride and Prejudice,” although they were not published until years afterward.  No one supposed her to be more than an every-day bright and observant young lady.  Like other English girls of her class, it was her habit to sit in the drawing-room with the ladies of the family after eleven o’clock each day, ready to receive visitors.  Instead of having needle-work in her hand, Jane had a pen, which was often dropped just in the midst of one of her clear, incisive pictures of the Woodhouses, Knightleys, and Bennets, as neighbors who might have served for the originals of those characters were announced.  Feminine tact instantly obliterated every sign of literary occupation:  the quill was thrown aside, and her sister’s canvases and embroidery were strewn over the writing-table to cover every scrap of paper.

The famous pseudonyme of George Sand, which seems so characteristic of the writer, was a matter of accident.  When Madame Dudevant, tired of her domestic role, went to Paris to take up a literary career, her mother-in-law, Baroness Dudevant, said to her, with incredulous horror,—­

“Is it true that it is your intention to print books?”

“Yes, madame.”

“Well, I call that an odd notion.”

“Yes, madame.”

“That is all very good and very fine; but I hope you are not going to put the name that I bear on the covers of printed books.”

“Oh, certainly not, madame:  there is no danger.”

When the publisher wanted a signature for “Indiana” which should show that it was by one of the authors of “Rose et Blanche,” which she had written in collaboration with Sandeau under the name of Jules Sand, the author retained the Sand and prefixed George to it as a simple and rustic title.

The Brontes when about to publish their poems took the names “Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,” each keeping her initials.  This choice, wrote Charlotte, was “dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because, without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine,’ we had a vague impression that authoresses were likely to be looked on with prejudice.”  The London “Athenaeum,” which was one of the few papers that noticed the little book, spoke of the work of the three “brothers.”  Even after “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” and “Agnes Grey” were printed, the secret of