Poems

This article covers the volume of poetry. For the medical abbreviation, see POEMS syndrome .

Cover of the first edition

Poems was the name of the first volume of poetry by the Brontë siblings . He appeared in May 1846 under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

content

The first edition of the volume contains a total of 61 poems, 21 of which were written by Anne Brontë (Acton Bell) and Emily Brontë (Ellis Bell); Charlotte Brontë (Currer Bell) contributed 19 poems to the collection.

Edition history

The first edition of the volume of poetry was printed in 1846 by Aylott and Jones in London on behalf of the Brontë siblings, who paid £ 38 10s for publication . Of the 1000 copies in the first edition, only two volumes were sold in the year after printing.

By the middle of 1848, a total of 39 copies of this edition had left the publisher, a large number of them as gifts. Then the publishing house Smith, Elder & Company took over the remaining 961 copies in the hope that the success of the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1847, would increase the demand for the poetry book. The books got new covers, but continued to sell slowly; an average of about 50 copies were sold per year. It was only after the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë in 1857 that demand rose, so that the first edition was sold out in 1860.

Breakdown of pseudonyms

The pseudonyms are easy to decipher: the first letters of the sisters' first names correspond to the first letters of their pseudonyms. Charlotte Brontë corresponds to Currer Bell, Anne Brontë is Acton Bell and Emily Brontë is Ellis Bell.

literature

• DG Hargreaves: The Publishing of Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell . In: Library Review . tape 22 , no. 7 , 1970, ISSN  0024-2535 , pp. 353-356 .

Web links

Wikisource: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell  - sources and full texts (English)

Single receipts

1. ^ Auckland City Library: The Bronte sisters. Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell
2. ↑ Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America: Bronte Sisters POEMS  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.