Letter to William S. Williams, dated Haworth, 8 May 1849
Henry H. Bonnell Collection, bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969
that one book. I can make no promise as to when another will be ready – neither my time nor my efforts are my own. That absorption in my employment to which I gave myself up without fear of doing wrong when I wrote “Jane Eyre” would now be alike impossible and blamable; but I do what I can – and have made some little progress: we must all be patient.
Meantime – I should say – let the Public forget at their ease and let us not be nervous about it; and as to the critics, if the Bells possess real merit – I do not fear impartial justice being rendered them one day.
I have a very short mental as well as physical sight in some matters, and am far less uneasy at the idea
Brontë wrote this letter to her friend William S. Williams of the firm Smith, Elder, & Co., which had published Jane Eyre, to send him a wrenching update of her sister Anne’s decline. She wrote on black-edged mourning stationery, having recently lost her sister Emily and brother, Branwell, both of whom had died a few months before.