_Jane Eyre_ was the first of Charlotte’s stories which was published, but _The Professor_ was the first that was written with a view to publication. The sisters each wrote a story—Charlotte, _The Professor_; Emily, _Wuthering Heights_; and Anne, _Agnes Grey_, and sent them to various publishers. Charlotte was the only one of the three sisters whose manuscript was returned on her hands. But she was not discouraged by the disappointment. Just at this time Mr. Brontë, who had been suffering from cataract, was persuaded by his daughters to go to Manchester for an operation. Charlotte accompanied him, and it was while she was waiting on him, in the long suspense after the operation had been performed, that she began _Jane Eyre_, the book that made her, and ultimately the name of Brontë, famous. Nothing is more striking in Charlotte’s personal history than the way in which she reproduced the events and personages of her own circle into her novels. Probably the belief that she was writing anonymously encouraged her in this. Her father’s threatened blindness and her own fear of a similar calamity are reflected, as it were, in the blindness of Rochester in _Jane Eyre_. The success of _Jane Eyre_ was rapid and complete, and there was much dispute whether its author were a man or a woman. The _Quarterly Review_ distinguished itself by the remark that if the author were a woman it was evident “she must be one who for some sufficient reason has long forfeited the society of her sex.” Sensitive as Charlotte Brontë was, the coarseness of the insult could not wound her; it could at the utmost be regarded as nothing worse than a trivial annoyance; for when the words reached Charlotte, the grave had not long closed over Branwell’s wasted life; Emily was just dead, and it was evident that Anne was dying. The greatness of her grief and the anguish of her loneliness dwarfed to their proper proportions the petty insults that at another time would have caused her acute pain. On the whole she had nothing to complain of in the way her book was received; she suffered no lack of generous appreciation from the real leaders of the literary world. Thackeray and G. H. Lewes, Miss Martineau, and Sidney Dobell were warm in their praise of her work. Charlotte’s manner of making her literary fame known to her father was characteristic. The secret of their authorship had been very strictly kept by the sisters; but when the success of _Jane Eyre_ was assured, Emily and Anne urged Charlotte that their father ought to be allowed to share the pleasure of knowing that she was the writer of the book. Accordingly one afternoon Charlotte entered her father’s study and said, “Papa, I’ve been writing a book.” When Mr. Brontë found that the book was not only written, but printed and published, he exclaimed, “My dear, you’ve never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name.”