Add MS 43474-43476

The autograph fair copy written out 16- 19 March 1847 (see vol. 1, f. i, and vol. I I I, f. 265) and sent to Messrs Smith, Elder and Co. on 24 Aug. 1847. First published, in 3 vols., on 16 Oct. 1847 as Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. The manuscript was originally written as one volume, the folios being numbered consecutively throughout, viz. 1-255 (= vol. 1), 255 (lower half of page)-503 (= vol. II), and 504-768 (= vol. III),and the chapters being similarly treated (vol. II opens with the original chap. 16, vol. III with chap. 27). That the manuscript is a copy is shown by errors of transcription (see, e.g., vol. 1, ff. 69, 83, 222; vol. II, f. 76; vol. III, ff. 2, 113, 254). Verbal alterations or expansions of phrase, reflecting second thoughts, are few, but do occur (see, e.g., vol. 1, ff. 70, 139, 225, 228; vol. II, ff. 1, 8; vol. III, ff. 43, 60, 96, 97, 122); a few (e.g., vol. II, f. 31) are in pencil. The signatures and first leaf numbers of the gatherings of the printed text are usually indicated in the MS. (as also the compositors'' names), but in vol. I they do not agree after f. 193 with the printed text; in vols. II and III several are wanting. Paper. Three volumes. Quarto. A.D. 1847. The MS. is referred to in T. J. Wise, A Bibliography ... of the Brontë Family, 1917, p. 19, as being in the possession of Mrs Yates Thompson (daughter of George Smith) and the first page of the MS. is reproduced as the frontispiece.