Project Gutenberg's The Professor, by (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

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Title: The Professor

Author: (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

Posting Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #1028]
Release Date: August, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE PROFESSOR

by (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

PREFACE.

This little book was written before either "Jane Eyre" or "Shirley,"
and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first
attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it
had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had
not indeed published anything before I commenced "The Professor," but
in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had
got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and
redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely.
At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of
incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the
result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an
author more surprise than pleasure.

I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had
seen real living men work theirs--that he should never get a shilling
he had not earned--that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to
wealth and high station; that whatever small competency he might gain,
should be won by the sweat of his brow; that, before he could find so
much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the
ascent of "the Hill of Difficulty;" that he should not even marry a
beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam's son he should share Adam's
doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.

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