Offered without comment.

One word more, and I have done. Respecting the author’s
identity, I would have it to he distinctly understood that Acton
Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his
faults be attributed to them. As to whether the name be real
or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him
only by his works. As little, I should think, can it matter
whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman, as one
or two of my critics profess to have discovered. I take the
imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation
of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute
much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I
make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am
satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex
of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for
both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive
how a man should permit himself to write anything that would
be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be
censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming
for a man.

JULY 22nd, 1848

Anne Bronte, in the preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.