April 10, 1848

Haworth, Yorkshire

My dear Mr Newby, my most sagacious Editor,

                I do hope that the changing season finds both you and your dearest friends as well as any good Christian on this green and blessed earth.

                I write in response to your letter of last month, in which you offered the most bullshit generous sum of ten guineas in advance for my humble manuscript, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  While I am truly pissed overwhelmed that one as read and worldly as yourself would condescend to spare even a pittance for the efforts of one of such meagre intellect as myself, I did note that this sum is a full five pounds less than the sum you offered my elder siblings, Mssrs Currer and Ellis Bell, for merely the promise of a new novel.

Of course, such is to be expected, and no devout individual of talents as limited as my own would hope to compete with greater literary minds.  But I cannot help but feel that, at least as compared to my sis brothers’ works, my own might yet stand amongst them in their faltering, enfeebled way.

I mean, really, look at Charlo Currer’s plodding, moralizing delightful, pleasing little novel about that charming heroine, Jane Eyre.  Surely, none of my creations could ever hope to compare to Jane and her darling Edward, but I should like to imagine in my most private heart that my prose and plots are at least as competent as Charlotte’s.  Really, now, a madwoman in the attic who conveniently thumps about whenever darling Jane happens to be having a spot of insomnia?  And don’t get me started on her damned gentlemen.  Rochester is bad enough, with his manipulations, his lying!  Heaven forfend that one should encounter such a loathsome little beast as M. Paul Emanuel, the chauvinist autocrat of Villette!  Maybe Miss Lucy Snowe would have been better off if she’d just snuffed it after all, rather than falling back on her quiet self-reliance to deliver her directly into the arms of some short, irascible twat.

Let’s not even get into fucking Emily and her Heathcliff. If the bitch wasn’t laid up in bed with her “weak constitution,” I’d tell her myself where to shove her moors and her brooding.  Wuthering Heights would have been a much homelier house for everyone involved if Catherine and Heathcliff had just committed to some semi-incestuous murder-suicide in Chapter 4, or if Mr Earnshaw had just let the bastard die in the street.  And let’s not even think on what that relationship says about Emily’s feelings for our cunt-headed brother, Branwell – I give him six months before the women and the drink take him to the devil, and sooner, if God is good.

Listen, I get it: somehow, I’m the stupid one.  No matter that Wuthering Heights is a load of moody bollocks, or that Emily hasn’t cranked out a new one in nearly two years despite wasting about three of the four hours she spends out of her room mooning about, waiting for Branwell.  She’ll catch her death if she doesn’t close the cocking window; probably pass it to me on her way out the door, just for spite.  And let’s all forget that Charlotte who is past thirty and still hasn’t managed to find a man to take her, has always been a bit of a shit to me; I bet five shillings she’ll burn my manuscripts if she manages to outlive me, the vengeful slut.

Anyway, I believe I’ve gotten somewhat off the point.  I want fifty pounds or you can bite my wide lady’s arse.

Yours most sincerely,

Anne Mother-Fucking Brontë (Acton Bell, to you)