Anne Brontë is often overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre, and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. In 1897, Angus MacKay described Anne, in the “bright” constellation of the Brontë triad, as the “third, mild-shining star” which “otherwise would have remained invisible” (21). The general view has been that Anne is a mere shadow compared with Charlotte, the family’s most prolific writer, and Emily, the genius. However, Anne’s subtle prose has a fine ironic edge; her talents easily equal, and sometimes surpass, those of her sisters. Her novels also reveal Anne to be the most socially radical of the three.
Born on 17 January 1820, Anne Brontë was the youngest of the six children of Patrick Brontë (1777-1861), a clergyman in the Church of England, and Maria Branwell Brontë (1783-1821). Anne was baptised in Thornton on 25 March 1820, shortly before her family’s move to the remote parish of Haworth in April 1820. There, Anne’s father took a perpetual curacy, a secure but not enriching vocation. Before Anne was two, her mother died, on 15 September 1821. Afterwards, the Brontë children were cared for by their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell (1776-1842), who took primary responsibility for the toddler Anne, her favourite according to tradition. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography, Anne’s father remembered her as precocious, reporting that once, when she was four years old, in reply to his question about what a child most wanted, “She answer’d, age and experience” (49). Edward Chitham, editor of Anne’s poems, interprets “Self-Communion” to be Anne’s childhood self-portrait, as “More timid than the wild wood-dove” (l. 48) with a “tender heart too prone to weep” (l. 55, qtd in Chitham 4). As the long poem unfolds, though, its speaker resolutely turns from the dependency and dreams of childhood, praying “let patience have her perfect work” (l. 112) so that “strength and wisdom spring from grief” (l. 113). By the end, she triumphantly promises to “gladly toil and suffer too” (l. 321), employing her customary image of a pilgrim labouring uphill on the narrow way.
In the summer of 1824, Anne’s elder sisters left home for the Clergy Daughters’ School, Cowan Bridge, Lancashire, the notorious Lowood of Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre. When her two eldest siblings died of consumption in 1825, Maria on 6 May and Elizabeth on 15 June, Anne was really too young to suffer the trauma of her siblings Charlotte, Branwell and Emily. Still, the unexpected deaths of Anne’s sisters distressed the bereaved family enough that, for the next five years, all the Brontë children were educated at home, largely by their father and aunt. In 1832, Charlotte also began teaching her younger sisters. Together, they read the Bible, poets of the 16th and 17th centuries, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Milton, Byron, and Scott, among others. In addition, they read history, geography and biography, as well as contemporary periodicals like Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser’s Magazine, and The Edinburgh Review. The Brontë children also received art lessons beginning in 1829, and piano lessons starting in 1834. As Anne grew older, the family’s resources were increasingly channelled toward her brother Branwell’s education as a portrait painter.
A great deal is known about the childhood games of the Brontës because they left behind juvenilia. Although all the Brontës collectively imagined fantastic worlds, writing tiny books which attempted to replicate in miniature the style and subject matter of their diverse reading, Anne and Emily were especially close. They were partners in the creation of their imaginary world of Gondal, a kingdom distinct from Charlotte and Branwell’s Angria. Christine Alexander and others have written about the way that creating the history and drama of these imaginary worlds offered significant training to the developing young writers. Anne and Emily, like their siblings, enjoyed inventing fiery, noble men and women, and giving them impassioned “arias” to sing. These characters were engaged in a furious civil war no doubt coloured by the Brontës’ reading on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. When together, the two youngest Brontës wrote many excellent poems (some of which survive) and prose (which does not survive) concerning Gondal; however, unlike Charlotte and Branwell, who had abandoned Angria by 1839, Anne and Emily continued to write new episodes of the Gondal story until 1845. Anne’s diary note of July 1845 does suggest that she may have grown weary of the imaginary world before Emily did; the note says she is already writing Passages in the Life of an Individual, which could potentially be considered an early version of Agnes Grey.
Along with her budding creativity, Anne also had a strong sense of duty, which intensified as she matured, giving her a longing to improve her family’s limited economic prospects. Therefore, when she had the opportunity, she went away to school, like her sisters before her, to train as a governess. Charlotte and Emily Brontë had left home for Margaret Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Mirfield, in July 1835; however, when Emily fell ill and had to be sent home, Anne replaced her. She spent the next two years at this establishment, even winning a good conduct prize. Anne remained at Roe Head until December 1837, when she herself became ill. Her illness brought on a religious crisis, causing her to send for Reverend James La Trobe, a minister of the Moravian Church at Mirfield. Perhaps as a result of this crisis, and also because of the influence of her Aunt Branwell, a devout Methodist, Anne became the most deeply religious of the Brontë children. As her faith grew, she later developed a strong, rather unorthodox personal belief in the doctrine of universal salvation, which can be seen in her letter to Dr. David Thom and in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne’s religion strengthened her art. Her religious poetry does not shy away from strife and doubt, as can be seen in her powerful final poem, “A dreadful darkness closes in” (l. 1) as cited in Edward Chitham’s collection of Brontë’s poetry (163-64). In it, she faces the knowledge of her approaching death with anguish, confessing that she is “crushed with sorrow, worn with pain” (l. 41), and with fortitude, when she strives for “[t]hat secret labour to sustain/ With humble patience every blow” (ll. 49-50). Yet although she ends by affirming a transcendent faith that will see her past Death’s “gate”, she also retains a poignant residual longing for life:
If Thou shouldst bring me back to life
More humbled I should be;
More wise, more strengthened for the strife,
More apt to lean on Thee. (ll.57-60)
Because of her poetry’s bold sincerity, critics since the nineteenth century have agreed that Anne’s religious lyrics rank with those of Cowper. In 1873, George Barnett Smith admired Anne for the “exquisite language” of her “soul’s aspiration”, contending that “there are few sweeter religious poems” (70) than hers. Her novels, too, are informed by incisive moral, political and social critiques, as well as by thoughtful discussions of the transformative power of religion over the continually changing self.
Although at school her health had been poor, Anne persisted in her education, perhaps even returning to Margaret Wooler’s school in 1838, after it had moved to Heald’s House, Dewsbury Moor. Her training was solid enough to render Anne the most successful of her sisters in obtaining paid employment as a governess; she managed to procure two positions, one of them lasting for five years. Anne’s work as a governess commenced on 8 April 1839, when she began teaching Joshua and Mary Ingham, in Blake Hall, Mirfield. Her pupils were spoiled and difficult to instruct; the parents were not only sharply critical of Anne, blaming her for her charges’ bad behaviour, but also completely unhelpful in controlling their wild children. Consequently, Anne’s stint as their governess was short-lived, ending after just nine months. Six years later, Anne wrote about her frustrating experiences in her first novel, Agnes Grey, creating a lucid and occasionally satiric portrait of a young governess’s exertions. While not as well-known as Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, it provides a more compelling and realistic picture of the challenges most governesses faced.
In May 1840, Anne tried the work again, as governess for the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia at Thorp Green Hall, little Ouseburn, near York. The Robinsons’ wealth made this a prestigious position, one she held until June 1845. Despite the family’s affluence, Anne was not always happy in her job, writing in her diary paper of 30 July 1841 that she disliked her situation and wished to change it for another. Her letters must have produced concern at home, causing Charlotte to write angrily to a friend that the Robinsons were “grossly insolent, proud and tyrannical”, and Emily, in her diary paper of 1841, to send “from afar an exhortation of courage! courage! to exiled and harassed Anne”. Anne’s pupils were Lydia, Bessy and Mary. Although older than the Ingham children, they too were willful, and likely spoiled, girls. Despite these initial difficulties, compounded by her shyness, Anne again persisted in her work, eventually evoking warm feelings from the family, and especially her pupils, who became her friends. Clement Shorter records Mary as saying that she “always retained the most kindly memories of her gentle governess” (182). The family’s affection for Anne was further evident when the Robinsons presented Anne with a puppy in 1843, and took Anne with them on long family holidays, such as to York in 1840, and to Scarborough every year from 1841 to 1844. These holidays gave Anne a lifelong love of Scarborough and also provided her with a opportunity to write, which produced the exquisitely reflective “Fluctuations”. Written in 1844 and placed at the very end of the Brontës’ one book of poetry in 1846, the poem adopts the rare night vision also utilized on occasion by Emily to celebrate the night sky’s moon, stars and meteors for their “celestial beam[s]”, which contrast the brighter daylight. The moon in particular becomes a symbol of grace and mercy, replacing the “transient” light of day, and dispelling the thick vapours of night to provide the speaker with a restorative light. The speaker concludes with a characteristic prayer for hope in the midst of trial:
Kind Heaven! increase that silvery gleam,
And bid these clouds depart
And let her soft celestial beam
Restore my fainting heart! (33-36)
During this period, Anne briefly left Thorp Hall due to her Aunt Elizabeth’s death at the end of October, 1842, returning at the request of her pupils. In 1843, Branwell also went to the Robinsons’ to tutor their son. However, just before Branwell was dismissed in disgrace about two years later, Anne resigned, perhaps feeling it proper to do so, if Branwell had indeed had an affair with Mrs. Robinson. While apparently relieved to leave the position, Anne was depressed over her uncertain future and probably also over the circumstances of her departure. At some point, Anne pencilled into her prayer book the words, “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways” in tiny script, and on 31 July 1845 she wrote in a diary paper that she had only “just escaped” from Thorp Green where she had endured “some very unpleasant and undreamt of experience of human nature”. At home, Branwell’s collapse into drugs, alcohol and despondency made family life at Haworth trying. From July 1845 onward Anne, with her father and sisters, witnessed his spiralling decline into heavy drinking and drug-taking, deploring his downfall.
As Branwell was deteriorating, the sisters developed their latest plan to augment the family income and support themselves. They collaborated on a volume of poems which they published at their own expense, using pseudonyms to disguise their identities. The publication of Poems in May 1846, by Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell, was heartening, since they had long been fruitlessly seeking gainful employment which would allow them to remain together at home. Even though Poems sold only a disappointing two copies, the book received three favourable reviews in the prominent publications The Critic, The Athenaeum and The Dublin University Magazine. Emily’s poetry was singled out for special praise, while Anne’s was described as requiring “the indulgences of affection” in one case (The Athenaeum), and praised for its resemblance to “quaint but powerful productions at the close of the Elizabethan Age” in another (The Critic). Despite the slightly mixed reviews, Anne persisted in seeking recognition as a poet, achieving more success during her lifetime than did either of her sisters. Anne showed initiative in publishing verses on three more occasions: in August 1848, Fraser’s Magazine published her long poem “The Three Guides”, and in December 1848, both the Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser’s Magazine published “The Narrow Way”. Along with eight additional religious lyrics, “The Narrow Way” was republished by Charlotte in 1850 as one of a group of posthumous poems, and later turned into a hymn.
The positive attention that Poems received no doubt encouraged the three sisters to try again as writers. This time, they chose to write novels for publication, possibly because novels had more lucrative potential, but also because they could submit their works in three volumes, thus continuing to present themselves to the reading public as a set of “three brothers”. Anne’s contribution to this endeavour was Agnes Grey. This book aligns Anne more with the neoclassical tradition of the 18th Century, than with the Romantic and Gothic tradition favoured by her sisters; it also looks ahead to the high Victorian realism of writers like George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Agnes Grey, like Tenant of Wildfell Hall, focusses on Anne’s favourite themes of moral education and societal reform, from the perspective of a marginalised but keenly observant young governess. As George Moore contends, the heroine Agnes has a “quick, witty mind” (258), while her crisp narration effectively counterpoints her own painful moral and spiritual growth with the degeneracy and disorder of the Victorian family. In addition, the novel’s presentation of the Victorian family strives to expose and reform “the errors and abuses of society” which originate in the domestic sphere. At the time hardly any critics perceived the novel’s skill or message. Most reviewers dismissed the novel as leaving “no impression at all” as did the anonymous critic of Atlas (Allott 230), and as having “nothing to call for special notice” in it, according to Britannia (223). Only one contemporary voice celebrated the novel for its sincere, thoughtful heroine and its perfect realism. In 1860, a critic in The English-Woman’s Journal, J. A., in a review of a new edition of the complete works of the Brontës, writes that it “presents us with a much more real picture of outward life than [Wuthering Heights]. Every circumstance is thoroughly probable .... The writer tells us quietly her own feelings in propria personae, they are natural and true, never sentimental and never exaggerated” (J.A. 347). Agnes Grey, the reviewer concludes, “is very commendable” because it “falls in exactly with the present notions about realism ... about each person’s true history being more interesting than romance” (348). Unfortunately, Anne’s subtle novel was obscured from the start by her sisters’ more dramatic works, partly because her unprincipled publisher, Thomas C. Newby, delayed bringing it out until the appearance of Charlotte’s second novel Jane Eyre (in October 1847), accompanied by effusive reviews and extraordinary sales, which made him eager to cash in on the fame of the Bell name. He rushed Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights to press, publishing them as a three-volume work in December. Like Jane Eyre, these books, too, sold exceedingly well, although Agnes Grey was eclipsed by Emily’s unconventional Wuthering Heights, and unfairly seen as derivative of Jane Eyre. Ironically, the composition date of Anne’s novel makes it more likely that it influenced Jane Eyre rather than the reverse.
Anne was not discouraged by the indifference of critics. She optimistically began her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, immediately; it was published in June 1848. This novel earned critical praise but received an even greater amount of indignation from many reviewers. The Rambler (September 1848) praised the “hero and heroine … [as] people of decent intentions” (437) but deplored the novel’s scenes “of the most disgusting and revolting species” (436). Charles Kingsley, writing in Fraser’s Magazine (April 1849), approved of Anne’s courage in creating “a powerful and interesting book” (422) and believed that any author who exposed the “foul and accursed undercurrents” beneath “smug, respectable, whitewashed English society” should be thanked; but he too criticized the novel’s “unnecessary coarseness” (423) and its occasional “splenetic and bitter tone” (424), ultimately decreeing that it was “utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls” (422). Such warnings did not arrest the popularity of the novel, which sold even better than had Charlotte’s and Emily’s novels. When a second edition was released only six weeks after the first, Anne wrote an eloquent preface defending her unvarnished presentation of drunkenness and cruelty by arguing that polite silence is the enemy of truth and wisdom: “Oh Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts – this whispering of ‘Peace, Peace’ when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience” (Brontë 40). This novel employs a more sophisticated structure than the simple autobiographical mode utilized in the first. Through the combined narration of a truth-telling heroine and an astute if impetuous hero, Tenant of Wildfell Hall continues its author’s interest in the moral education of the young of both genders, as well as in social reform. The structure is thus integral to the novel’s message: in her diary, Helen records harrowing experiences which, together with her hard-won faith, transform her; in turn, Gilbert is educated by this diary. Together, their story exemplifies the importance of moral awareness and spiritual guidance in the midst of systemic as well as individual corruption. It further highlights both the dangers and possibilities of the Victorian family as a microcosm of society, conveying a rather radical message of equal education and female autonomy.
Regrettably, the significance and power of this novel were long overlooked. In 1860, only The English-Woman’s Journal praised the novel for its “many didactic passages” which “come straight from the heart, and therefore have a vital force”, explaining,
There is no sham here, no getting-up of goodness or of martyrdom ... We can praise this book much more absolutely than “Wuthering Heights,” and yet how different they are! “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” is a book of a higher class, much as it has been traduced. It decidedly claims kindred with “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre”. There are forcible descriptions in it which none out of the Brontë family could have written. (J.A. 348)
However, Victorian readers could not easily arrive at a fair assessment of the novel, although it remained in print throughout the century with the other Brontë works. The novel’s publishing history partly explains its decline. When Smith, Elder decided to republish the Brontë sisters’ novels in 1850, just over a year after Anne and Emily had died, Charlotte excluded The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from the group, suggesting to her publisher that the novel was a “mistake” because it was “too little consonant with the character-tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring and inexperienced writer” (Brontë, Letters 463). Although Smith, Elder, as a result of their interest in publishing complete sets of works, restored the novel to its proper place in the Brontës’ published oeuvre within ten years, its temporary absence from the set was costly. G. D. Hargreaves has shown that the London firm of Thomas Hodgson issued a cheap one-volume edition of the novel as part of his Parlour Library series in 1854. In the interests of economy, Hodgson mutilated and truncated the novel, cutting the opening letter, the chapter headings, as well as various other sections; it was this defective version that Smith, Elder republished in 1859-60, when they brought out their first complete, uniform edition of the Brontë novels, and it subsequently became entrenched as the standard text for the rest of the century .
Not long after the appearance of her second novel, tragedy overtook the Brontë family, preventing Anne from writing further novels. When Branwell died in September, 1848, Anne handled the necessary arrangements, as Charlotte had fallen ill. When Emily died of consumption three months later, Charlotte took charge because Anne herself was beginning to feel the first symptoms of her own fatal tuberculosis, such as pain in her side and difficulty in breathing. After Anne learned that she, too, had consumption in January, 1849, she suffered under the weight of illness and religious doubt, but bravely hid her dread from her stricken family. Anne’s condition rapidly worsened until, using a legacy from Anne’s recently-deceased godmother, Charlotte took her, along with their mutual friend Ellen Nussey, to the seaside she had loved, in Scarborough, hoping for a cure. Anne Brontë died quietly there on 28 May 1849; according to Ellen Nussey, her last words to her sister were, “Take courage, Charlotte, take courage”.
Anne’s early death undoubtedly contributed to the critical neglect her novels have endured. Fortunately, over the years, diligent scholars have been raising Anne’s profile considerably: critics like Edward Chitham, Maria Frawley, Elizabeth Hollis Berry and Elizabeth Langland grant Anne a prominent place apart from her sisters. As scholars reevaluate her works, they reject the idea that they are pale imitations of those of her sisters, instead applauding their moral energy, socially conscious realism and literary art.
Works Cited
A., J. “LI. - Notices of Books: The Three Sisters.” [Review of reprints of The Life of Charlotte Brontë and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and of cheap editions of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc]. The English-Woman’s Journal. IV. (January-February 1860), pp. 338-350, pp. 413-22.
Alexander, Christine, and Jane Sellars. The Art of the Brontës. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
—. The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. London: Orion Books, 1995.
Brontë, Anne. “Fluctuations.” Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Smith, Elder and Co., 1846, pp. 164-65.
—. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, edited by Lee A. Talley, Broadview Press, 2009.
—. The Poems of Anne Brontë, edited by Edward Chitham, Macmillan, 1979.
Brontë, Emily and Anne Brontë, The Diary Papers of Emily and Anne Brontë, edited by Christine Alexander with Mandy Swann, Juvenilia Press, 2019.
Brontë, Charlotte. Letter dated 5 September 1850, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol 2: 1848-1851, ed. Margaret Smith. Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 463.
Chitham, Edward, ed. The Poems of Anne Brontë, by Anne Brontë, Macmillan, 1979.
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. D. Appleton and Company, 1892.
Hargreaves, G. D. “Further Omissions in “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, Brontë Society Transactions, 17, Part 87 (1977), pp. 115-21.
—. “The Incomplete Texts of ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’, Brontë Society Transactions, 16, Part 84 (1974), pp. 113-17.
—. ‘‘Smith, Elder’s 1857-60 Edition of the Brontë Life and Works,’’ Brontë Studies 29 (2004): 17-26
Kalkwarf, Tracy Lin. Questioning Voices: Dissention [sic] and Dialogue in the Poetry of Emily and Anne Brontë. Ph.D. diss., University of North Texas, August 2000.
Kingsley, Charles. Review for Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country (April 1849): 423-26. Reprinted in Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by, edited by Lee A. Talley, Broadview Press, 2009, pp. 422-26.
Langland, Elizabeth. Anne Brontë: The Other One, Barnes and Noble Books, 1989.
MacKay, Angus Mason. The Brontës: Fact and Fiction. Dodd and Mead, 1897.
Moore, George. Conversations in Ebury Street. Boni & Liveright, 1924.
Shorter, Clement King. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle. Hodder and Stoughton, 1896.
Smith, George Barnett. ‘The Brontës’, The Cornhill Magazine, XXVIII (July 1873), 54–71 [repr. in Littell’s Living Age, CXVIII: 1521 (2 Aug. 1873), pp. 307-19, and Poets and Novelists: A Series of Literary Studies, (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875), pp. 209-50.]
Unsigned Review, Rambler Vol. III, (September 1848): 65-66. Reprinted in Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, edited by Lee A. Talley, Broadview Press, 2009, pp. 435-7.}
“Wuthering Heights.” Britannia. [Unsigned Review]. 15 January 1848. 42-3. Reprinted in The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, edited by Miriam Allott. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 223-26.
“Wuthering Heights.” The Atlas. [Unsigned Review]. 22 January 1848. 59. Reprinted in The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, edited by Miriam Allott. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 230-33.
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Citation: Bauman, Susan R.. "Anne Brontë". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2006; last revised 06 March 2025. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=580, accessed 12 August 2026.]
