Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

American publishers of most of the Brontë novels, who negotiated with their British publishers to receive the first sheets of new Bell novels. When Thomas Newby offered them The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with the claim that the Bell works were “all the production of one writer” (CB to MT, 4 Sep 1848) Harper and Brothers were naturally annoyed with Smith, Elder, who had promised them first sheets of Currer Bell’s next novel, Shirley . They had already published Wuthering Heights as “By the author of ‘Jane Eyre’.” They were the victims of, rather than collaborators in, Newby’s chicanery, but nevertheless, if they could not get first sheets, they were as shameless at pirating work as other American publishers. On meeting a daughter of one of the brothers on his first visit to New York Thackeray genially enquired: “So this is a pirate’s daughter, is it?” (D. J. Taylor: Thackeray , 1999, p. 333). ... log in or subscribe to read full text