Abstract

This article disinters the impact of the correspondence between Mary Taylor and Charlotte Brontë on their respective intellectual lives and writing. Supplementing the epistolary archive, textual evidence from Shirley (1849) and Miss Miles (1890) demonstrates the powerful collaborative dynamic between the two writers, which not only affected their work but also helped them to cultivate a sense of literary legitimacy in a publishing context habitually hostile to women’s voices. Brontë and Taylor’s letters indicate the explicit influence of one another’s thinking upon their writing, and suggest that the writers shared a sense of belonging to an intellectual partnership through their sustained correspondence. Simon-Martin’s theory of ‘epistolary education’ illuminates how Taylor and Brontë’s friendship through letters was formative in developing both writers’ feminist consciousness and their agitation for social reform, as well as their authorial agency.

摘要

本文揭示了玛丽·泰勒和夏洛特·勃朗特之间的通信对她们各自的知识生活和写作的影响。补充书信档案、雪莉(1849) 和迈尔斯小姐的文字证据（1890）展示了两位作家之间强大的合作动力，这不仅影响了他们的作品，而且帮助他们在习惯性敌视女性声音的出版环境中培养了文学合法性感。勃朗特和泰勒的信件表明了彼此的思想对他们的写作的明确影响，并表明两位作家通过他们持续的通信分享了一种知识分子伙伴关系的归属感。西蒙-马丁的“书信教育”理论阐明了泰勒和勃朗特通过书信建立的友谊如何对两位作家的女权主义意识、社会改革的鼓动以及他们的作者代理的发展产生了影响。