Preface.
The following poem, now printed for the first time from the original Manuscript, was written by Anne Brontë in the winter of 1847–48. Its composition belongs, therefore, to the period which intervened between the publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846, and The Tenant of Wildfield Hall in 1848.
Self-Communion is not one of the juvenile essays, written in a microscopic hand, which were produced in considerable numbers by the Brontë children, and with which every Brontë student is sufficiently familiar. The poem is, on the contrary, a mature effort, and is by no means inferior to much of the work which Anne contributed to the joint volume of 1847.
The Manuscript is well and carefully written,
