Studies in Bibliography. Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
Volume 61, 2025 pp. 271-322
On September 8, 1849, James Taylor traveled from London to Haworth, Yorkshire, to collect the manuscript of Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley for publication. His firm, Smith, Elder and Co., had been awaiting the completion of the book for nearly a year. Readers both in England and abroad were eager to read the next work by Currer Bell, whose first published novel, Jane Eyre, had attracted so much notice. Before that, the previously unknown writer had cowritten and published only an obscure collection of poetry with Acton and Ellis Bell that few had read. The public continued to speculate about the identity of this new author, who had written with such power and originality.
Composed in three physically distinct volumes for publication as a three-volume novel, the fair-copy manuscript of Shirley consists of high-grade writing paper—a mixture of wove and laid folded half-sheets—copied out in a clear, legible hand with a steel-tipped dip pen. Although the first two volumes of the manuscript are each made up of about 140 bifolia or approximately 280 leaves, the third volume is noticeably longer, composed of about 160 bifolia or 320 leaves. Examining these, one finds that the novel's text has been carefully written [End Page 271] out onto the recto of each leaf. (Only two leaves contain any content from the novel on their versos.) The upper right-hand corner of each leaf bears numbering in brown ink. At the beginning of the manuscript, the sequence appears to be regular enough. But starting in the second volume, the brown-ink numbers have been crossed out and replaced by a new series written in red ink that continues to the end of the third volume.
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