The third of six children, Charlotte Brontë attended boarding school with her two older sisters, where they both caught consumption and died. She continued her studies at home, and years of imaginative play with her younger siblings fueled their later literary work. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne published their first poems in a collection under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which successfully disguised their gender. Brontë published her novel Jane Eyre the following year (1847).