The only poems by Emily Brontë that were published in her lifetime were included in a slim volume by Brontë and her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), which sold a mere two copies and received only three unsigned reviews in the months following its publication. The three notices were positive, however, especially with respect to the contributions of Ellis Bell--Emily Brontë. The writer of the review in the 4 July 1846 Athenaeum, for example, noted her "fine quaint spirit" and asserted that she had "things to speak that men will be glad to hear,--and an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted." It seemed in 1848, the year of Emily's death, as if this potential were never to be realized. However, Brontë's twenty-one contributions to Poems represented only a fraction of the nearly two...