SOURCE: “The Manuscript of The Professor.” In Review of English Studies, ns, Vol. 11, No. 42, May, 1960, pp. 157-70.

In the following essay, Brammer discusses the fair copy of Brontë's The Professor, examining the nature of the changes made to that copy by the author and her husband William Bell Nicholls.

Charlotte Brontë completed the fair copy of The Professor on 27 June 1846.¹ Her original draft, presumably finished by April of that year,² has not, so far as is known, survived; but the fair copy of this particular novel is of some interest. It is well known that after a series of ‘ignominious dismissals’ from various publishers, the manuscript was returned with a courteous and reasoned refusal from Smith, Elder and Co. Soon after their publication of Jane Eyre, Charlotte was contemplating a revised Professor,³ but her publishers evidently advised her not to attempt it. However, little more than a...