Early poems

It was during this early period of playful yet intense immersion in make-believe literary life that Charlotte Brontë first experimented with poetry. Producing sixty-five poems and a satirical play about poetry writing in 1829-1830, the fourteen-year-old self-consciously attempted to define herself as a poet.
Though most of these early poems have a Glass Town context, being embedded within her narratives and spoken or sung by fictitious characters, some are only loosely connected to the stories. Many are interesting in that they reveal Brontë's exposure to current literary debates such as those concerning "neglected genius," the role of tradition and imitation versus originality and inspiration, and the public reception of poetry in a changing literary economy.
 The various poetic forms that Brontë experimented with during this time reflect her self-designed apprenticeship through imitation of earlier poets. For example, her many descriptions of natural landscapes are indebted to the eighteenth-century topographical poem that had been developed by "nature poets" such as James Thomson and Wlliam Wordsworth. Also, the influence of the popular Thomas Moore can be seen in Brontë's many poems written as songs. Although the early poems contain visionary, lyre-playing bards and other romantic poet-figures, Brontë in her stories and plays repeatedly satirizes the romantic conception of the poet as a self-inspired original genius. 

                                                                      

                                                                                                                                     

She deploys parodic characters, such as Henry Rhymer in "The Poetaster," a story dated 6-12 July 1830, to debunk her own romantic posturing and that of her siblings. "The Poetaster" also humorously depicts the changing literary culture of England in the 1830s, a time when technological advances in printing allowed for the entry of many new writers into the literary marketplace. The "noble profession [of authorship] is dishonoured," wails a Glass Town publisher who soon expects to see "every child that walks along the streets, bearing its manuscripts in its hand, going to the printers for publication." Making fun of her own and her siblings' precocious literary aspirations, Brontë shows a good-humored awareness of both the opportunities and the complexities involved in pursuing a literary career in her day.