_By the same Author:_ THE CREATORS THE DIVINE FIRE TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION THE HELPMATE KITTY TAILLEUR MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON ANN SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS ARNOLD WATERLOW: A LIFE UNCANNY STORIES THE RECTOR OF WYCK THE ALLINGHAMS A CURE OF SOULS FAR END HISTORY OF ANTHONY WARING TALES TOLD BY SIMPSON ETC. THE THREE BRONTËS _by_ MAY SINCLAIR 1912 PREFATORY NOTE My thanks are due, first and chiefly, to Mr. Clement K. Shorter who placed all his copyright material at my disposal; and to Mr. G.M. Williamson and Mr. Robert H. Dodd, of New York, for allowing me to draw so largely from the Poems of Emily Brontë, published by Messrs. Dodd, Mead, and Co. in 1902; also to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, the publishers of the Complete Poems of Emily Brontë, edited by Mr. Shorter; and to Mr. Alfred Sutro for permission to use his translation of _Wisdom and Destiny_. Lastly, and somewhat late, to Mr. Arthur Symons for his translation from St. John of the Cross. If I have borrowed from him more than I had any right to without his leave, I hope he will forgive me. MAY SINCLAIR. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE THREE BRONTËS APPENDIX I APPENDIX II INDEX INTRODUCTION When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a short essay on "The Three Brontës" I agreed with some misgiving. Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with _another_ Brontë book, seems not only a dangerous, but a futile and a fatuous adventure. All I can say is that I did not mean to do it. I certainly never meant to write so long a book. It grew, insidiously, out of the little one. Things happened. New criticisms opened up old questions. When I came to look carefully into Mr. Clement Shorter's collection of the _Complete Poems of Emily Brontë_, I found a mass of material (its existence I, at any rate, had not suspected) that could not be dealt with in the limits of the original essay. The book is, and can only be, the slightest of all slight appreciations. None the less it has been hard and terrible for me to write it. Not only had I said nearly all that I had to say already, but I was depressed at the very start by that conviction of the absurdity of trying to say anything at all, after all that has been said, about Anne, or Emily, or Charlotte Brontë.