In their youths, the Brontë siblings collaborated on a series of imaginative stories, plays, and poems set in the fictional land of Angria. Charlotte's contribution to these tales, which were collected and published posthumously as
Legends of Angria (1933), served as a catalyst for her mature works and marked the beginning of her interest in writing.
For many years Brontë concealed her writing from her family. After the accidental discovery that Emily, too, secretly wrote verse, and that Anne shared their interest, the three published, at their own expense, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846). The sisters assumed masculine pseudonyms both to preserve their privacy and to avoid the patronizing treatment they believed critics accorded women writers. Poems sold only two copies, but Charlotte was undeterred and continued to write. Her first novel, The Professor (1857), was rejected by six publishers, but her next work, Jane Eyre, was accepted immediately. The work received lavish attention, was praised by Queen Victoria and George Eliot, and brought Brontë into popular literary circles, where she met William Makepeace Thackeray (to whom she dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre), Matthew Arnold, and Harriet Martineau.
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