Preface

In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical--something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly.

Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such treasures. Men in business are usually thought to prefer the real; on trial the idea will be often found fallacious: a passionate preference for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling--the strange, startling, and harrowing--agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface.

Such being the case, the reader will comprehend that to have reached him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone through some struggles--which indeed it has. And after all, its worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes comfort--subdues fear--leans on the staff of a moderate expectation--and mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of the public, "He that is low need fear no fall."

CURRER BELL (AKA Charlotte Bronte)

The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the publication of "The Professor," shortly after the appearance of "Shirley." Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some use of the materials in a subsequent work--"Villette," As, however, these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been represented to me that I ought not to withhold "The Professor" from the public. I have therefore consented to its publication.