Brontë family "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey", had launched a rumour that the three novels were the work of one author, understood to be Ellis Bell (Emily). George Smith was extremely surprised to find two gawky, ill-dressed country girls paralysed with fear, who, to identify themselves, held out the letters addressed to "Messrs. Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell". Taken by such surprise, he introduced them to his mother with all the dignity their talent merited, and invited them to the opera for a performance of Rossini's "Barber of Seville". Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 under the masculine pseudonym Ellis
Beth Ellis within it. As the "New York Times" wrote of her fourth novel in 1910: "The book is a good one of its kind. But, of course, some censorious reader will inevitably ask: 'Has not its kind been done to death?'" Today Ellis is remembered chiefly for her book on Burma, described by one authority as "one of the funniest travel books ever written." The British and Canadian editions appeared under the name Beth Ellis, the American ones under the name Elizabeth Ellis. Selections of Ellis's work have also appeared in the following anthologies: Beth Ellis Elizabeth Ellis (1874–1913) was a