Sentence:  […] and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, "Villette", "Emma", "Wuthering Heights", "Middlemarch", were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to buy more than a few <WSD>quires</WSD> of paper at a time upon which to write "Wuthering Heights" or "Jane Eyre". 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  One-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold.