However, when it was ultimately revealed that the true author was a woman, damning reviews of Jane Eyre began to emerge. Under the name Currer Bell, the first release of Jane Eyre was met to widespread critical acclaim and reprinted within ten weeks. Upon sending her poetry to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, Charlotte received a response letter saying 'literature cannot be the business of a woman's life.' The Brontë sisters knew that female writers wouldn't be taken seriously, and might even be ostracised by society. Yet interestingly, Anne's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – published the same year as Wuthering Heights in 1848 – sold better. Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817–1848) National Portrait Gallery, LondonĬharlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights are perhaps today the most famous books. The Brontë Sisters (Anne Brontë Emily Brontë Charlotte Brontë) In 1870, her nephew published Memoir of Jane Austen, which boosted her popularity.Īmantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, more widely known as the French novelist George Sand, authored countless novels and short stories, becoming a literary icon in nineteenth-century Europe. In the latter text, Austen had written: 'A woman, especially, if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.'Īlthough today she is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time, during her own lifetime she only received little personal fame.
After Austen's death in 1817, Henry posthumously published Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, for the first time identifying his sister as the author. Since she never married, Austen sent her work to publishers through her brother Henry. Not only was it deemed 'improper', but impractical seeing as women didn't have the legal power to sign contracts.
To be acknowledged as a female writer in the late eighteenth century did not sit well with societal notions of 'respectability'. This pencil and watercolour work of Austen was completed by her sister Cassandra Austen in around 1810. Cassandra Austen (1773) National Portrait Gallery, London
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