Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — the clear-eyed realist sister

The youngest Brontë and the most unflinchingly realistic. Long overshadowed by her sisters, she is increasingly recognized as a bold social critic: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, with its portrait of a woman fleeing an abusive, alcoholic husband, was one of the first sustained feminist novels and shocked Victorian readers with its frankness. Agnes Grey drew on her own bleak experience as a governess. She died of tuberculosis at twenty-nine.

Key works

• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall1848— A woman's flight from a ruinous marriage — proto-feminist and unsparing
  Novel
• Agnes Grey1847— The hard realities of a governess's life
  Novel

Connections

External