Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was a volume of poetry published jointly by the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne in 1846 (see 1846 in poetry), and their first work to ever go in print. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted masculine first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became "Currer Bell", Anne became "Acton Bell", and Emily became "Ellis Bell". The book was printed by Aylott and Jones, from London. The first edition failed to attract interest, with
Alexander Graham Bell as Professor Henry Higgins in "Pygmalion"). Ellis immediately wrote back indicating that the experiments were similar to existing work in Germany, and also lent Bell a copy of Hermann von Helmholtz's work, "The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music". Dismayed to find that groundbreaking work had already been undertaken by Helmholtz who had conveyed vowel sounds by means of a similar tuning fork "contraption", Bell pored over the German scientist's book. Working from his own erroneous mistranslation of a French edition, Bell fortuitously then made a deduction that would be the underpinning of all