The Professor

Smith, Elder, London, 1857 is the true first and the census claim stands. Harper & Brothers, New York, published the first American edition the same year, 1857; it is a separately collected edition worth naming, but it follows the London printing and is not the true first. The book's oddity is genuine and the census states it correctly: The Professor was the first novel Charlotte completed and submitted — Smith, Elder rejected it in 1846 and again in 1851, steering her instead toward the longer work that became Jane Eyre — so the first-written novel is the last-published, and it closes the seven-novel Brontë canon.