Charlotte Bronte to Hartley Coleridge, 10 December 1840: 'I am sorry Sir I did not exist forty or fifty years ago when the "Lady's magazine" was flourishing like a green bay tree ... You see Sir I have read the "Lady's Magazine" and know something of its contents ... I read them before I knew how to criticize or object -- they were old books belonging to my mother or my Aunt; they had crossed the Sea, had suffered ship-wreck and were discoloured with brine -- I read them as a treat on holiday afternoons or by stealth when I should have been minding my lessons ... One black day my father burnt them because they contained foolish love-stories.'