INTRODUCTION

THE THREE BRONTËS

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

INDEX




INTRODUCTION


When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a
short essay on "The Three Brontës" I agreed with some misgiving.

Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in
any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and
protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with _another_
Brontë book, seems not only a dangerous, but a futile and a fatuous
adventure. All I can say is that I did not mean to do it. I certainly
never meant to write so long a book.

It grew, insidiously, out of the little one. Things happened. New
criticisms opened up old questions. When I came to look carefully into
Mr. Clement Shorter's collection of the _Complete Poems of Emily