I desire to express my gratitude to Miss Catherine Galbraith Welch, who introduced an outline of my Brontë discoveries to the readers of _The New York Times Saturday Review of Books_. I thank _The Spectator_, _The Outlook_, and other organs for their open acknowledgment of the fact that I have made a discovery at last throwing light upon Charlotte Brontë's Brussels experiences and her relations with the Hégers at Brussels. And I wish also to thank the anonymous and scholarly writer who penned the long and careful article in _The Dundee Advertiser_ under the heading "The Original of Jane Eyre," containing an encouraging appreciation of the importance of my discovery I dealt with in my article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" in _The Saturday Review_. I would like to give a pressure of the hand to my subscribers for the first edition of _The Key to the Brontë Works_. Your kind letters to me and your active interest in _The Key to the Brontë Works_ will ever dwell among my pleasant memories. One I grieve will never see on earth these pages--the late Most Honourable Marquis of Ripon, K.G., who numbered with my earliest subscribers. The readers of _The Key to the Brontë Works_ will love Charlotte Brontë more and know her better than ever they have loved or known her in the past. They will see her books are rich with new-found treasures, and will recognize her to be a world's writer--a character of signal eminence, one of the most illustrious of women. Truth will out, and facts have their appointed day of revelation; thus I cannot help it that more than sixty years of writing on the Brontës is placed out of date by my discoveries. JOHN MALHAM-DEMBLEBY. THE KEY TO THE BRONTË WORKS. CHAPTER I. OUTLINE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S LIFE. St. Michael the Prince of Messengers--to him was dedicated the little church on the hill at Haworth, in the Parish of Bradford, Yorkshire, whose living gave sustenance to the family of the restless, ambitious son of Erin, Patrick Brontë.[5] Is it for nothing that a spiritual banner is raised by man and appeal made for the beneficent influence of a conception of definite personal character? Within this sacred circumscription came to be written the works of Charlotte Brontë, and herefrom the words of a Messenger went out to the uttermost parts of the world.