Charlotte Brontë Poems

Abstract

Charlotte Brontë seems to have given serious attention to poetic composition from the age of thirteen. At the end of 1836, when she was only twenty, she had written considerably more than half her poetry, and it was at this time that she invited Southey, the Poet Laureate, to judge some of her poems. He replied:

You evidently possess, and in no inconsiderable degree, what Wordsworth calls the ‘faculty of verse’. I am not depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare. Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which, if it had appeared half a century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author. Whoever, therefore, is ambitious of distinction in this way ought to be prepared for disappointment.