Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had
given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each
set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced 'Wuthering
Heights,' Acton Bell 'Agnes Grey,' and Currer Bell also wrote a
narrative in one volume. These MSS. were perseveringly obtruded
upon various publishers for the space of a year and a half;
usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal.

At last 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey' were accepted on terms
somewhat impoverishing to the two authors; Currer Bell's book found
acceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so that
something like the chill of despair began to invade her heart. As
a forlorn hope, she tried one publishing house more--Messrs. Smith,
Elder and Co. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which
experience had taught her to calculate--there came a letter, which
she opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard, hopeless
lines, intimating that Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. 'were not
disposed to publish the MS.,' and, instead, she took out of the
envelope a letter of two pages. She read it trembling. It
declined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, but
it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, so
considerately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so
enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than
a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added,
that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention.

I was then just completing 'Jane Eyre,' at which I had been working
while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London:
in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and skilful hands took it