{"product_id":"2940012174192","title":"The Bront\u0026euml; Prefaces","description":"CONTENTS:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to Jane Eyre\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to Shirley\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to Villette\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to The Professor\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to Wuthering Heights\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn excerpt from the beginning of:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction to Jane Eyre\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Jane Eyre' was first published in October 1847. Half a century—since this tale of the North by an unknown writer stole upon London, and, in the very midst of the serial publication of 'Vanity Fair,' took the town by storm, obtaining for its author in the course of a few weeks a success which, as the creator of Becky Sharp afterwards said to her, a little sadly and sharply, 'it took me the work of ten years to achieve.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHalf a century, in the view of the Roman Church, is often hardly sufficient to decide even the first step in the process of canonisation; it is generally amply sufficient to decide all matters of literary rank and permanence. How has the verdict gone in the case of Currer Bell? Have these fifty years 'cut all meaning from the name,' or have they but filled it with a fuller content, wreathed it with memories and associations that will for ever keep it luminous and delightful amid the dim tracts of the past?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJudging by the books that have been written and read in recent years, by the common verdict as to the Brontë sisters, their story, and their work, which prevails, almost without exception, in the literary criticism of the present day; by the tone of personal tenderness, even of passionate homage, in which many writers speak of Charlotte and of Emily; and by the increasing recognition which their books have obtained abroad, one may say with some confidence that the name and memory of the Brontës were never more alive than now, that 'Honour and Fame have got about their graves' for good and all, and that Charlotte and Emily Brontë are no less secure, at any rate, than Jane Austen or George Eliot or Mrs. Browning of literary recollection in the time to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut if the Brontës live, their books live also. There are some names of the past—Byron—Voltaire—that are far greater now, more full of magic and of spell, than the books associated with them—that are, in fact, separable from the books, and could almost live on without them. But Charlotte Brontë is Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe. You cannot think of her apart from what she has written, and everything that she wrote has the challenging quality of personal emotion or of passion, moving in a narrow range among very concrete things, and intimately fused throughout with the incidents and feelings of one small, intense experience: so that, if one finds, as one does find abundantly, that the Brontës are remembered, it must be that their books are read, that people still sit up into the night with 'Jane Eyre,' and are still as angry as they were at the first, that they can get no one to assure them of Paul Emmanuel's safe return.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo it must be; and so, indeed, the personal experience of most of us can vouch that it is. Nevertheless, here and there one may hear a protesting voice. Here and there a reader—and generally a reader of more subtlety and range than his fellows—struck with the union of certain extravagances and certain dogmatisms in Charlotte Brontë's work, with the weakness of Anne's and the crudity of Emily's, will dare to say, 'Not at all! The vitality of the Brontë fame does not mean primarily the vitality of the Brontë books. It is a vitality which springs from the English love of the pathetic and the picturesque, and the English tendency to subordinate matters of art to matters of sentiment. Mrs. Gaskell, herself an accomplished novelist, wrote an account of these lonely girls on a Yorkshire moor, struggling with poverty and consumption, developing genius in the very wrestle with death, taking the heaven of fame by violence, and perishing in the effort. She showed them to us oppressed by poverty and by daily contact with a vicious brother, and yet, through it all, remaining dutiful, loving, and virtuous, as the good English public likes them to be: she describes the deaths—the piteous deaths—of two of the sisters in the very moment, or on the very threshold, of success, and, finally, her narrative brought us to the death of Charlotte herself—Charlotte snatched from happiness and from motherhood, after one brief year of married life: and so skilful is the telling, so touching the story, that the great English heart goes out to it, and forthwith the Brontë books must be books of genius, because the Brontës are so interesting and their story so tragic.'","brand":"Leila's Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47173476647152,"sku":"2940012174192","price":1.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012174192_p0.jpg?v=1763552716","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012174192","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}