Pléiade Publishes Brontë Juvenilia in French

A new Pléiade Gallimard volume, edited by Dominique Jean, collects the early writings of the Brontë siblings—Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Patrick—in French translation. These juvenile works, originally penned in microscopic script on tiny notebooks to evade their strict clergyman father, reveal a dark imaginary world of battlefields, massacres, violence, sadism, and cynicism. Georges Bataille, who commented on *Wuthering Heights*, described this universe as a "surchauffant tumult." The volume includes Charlotte Brontë's *Jane Eyre*, subtitled "autobiography" and first published pseudonymously in October 1947. In her preface to the second edition, Charlotte wrote that the world can only hate those who "risk looking closely at the truth to bring it to light." Jacques Henric contributes an essay.