Brontë story for forbidden love is finally published

A LONG-LOST short story written by Charlotte Brontë for the married teacher with whom she fell in love has been published for the first time.

L’Ingratitude, written in French, was recently found by Brussels-based archivist and Brontë expert Brian Bracken in a Belgian museum a century after it was last heard of.

It is the first-known piece of homework set for Charlotte by Constantin Heger, a tutor who taught both her and her sister Emily in Brussels.

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“Charlotte’s novel Villette, published in 1853, reworks her experiences in Brussels, with the difference that the teacher returns the heroine’s love,” Bracken wrote in the London Review of Books, which has published the story in full on its website.