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
Thomas Bell (novelist) by Atheneum. Bell's reputation as a writer increased dramatically in 1976 when the University of Pittsburgh Press reissued "Out of This Furnace" to wide acclaim. Thomas Bell (novelist) Thomas Bell (March 7, 1903 – January 17, 1961) was an American novelist. Bell was born Adalbert Thomas Belejcak on March 7, 1903 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, United States, of immigrant Lemko Rusyn parents (Mary Krachun and Michael Belejcak) from the village of Nižný Tvarožec, Slovakia (former Austro-Hungarian Empire). He worked in the steel mills there, beginning at the age of fifteen as an apprentice electrician. In 1922 Bell moved to New York