Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /-teɪ/;^[1] 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet. A member of the Brontë literary family, she was the younger sister of Charlotte, Emily, and Branwell. Anne is known for her 1847 novel Agnes Grey and for her 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is considered to be one of the first feminist novels.^[2]

Anne was the last of six children born to Maria Branwell, the daughter of a Cornish merchant, and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Maria died when Anne was a year old and her two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died when she was four. She lived most of her life with her father and three surviving siblings in Haworth, Yorkshire, where her father served as perpetual curate, leaving to attend boarding school in Mirfield between 1836 and 1837 and to work as a governess for a number of families between 1839 and 1845. In 1846, she and her sisters, Charlotte and Emily, published a book of poetry, writing under the pseudonyms Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. Anne's first novel, Agnes Grey, was published as one of a three-volume set which included Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published a year later.

Anne died aged 29, most likely of pulmonary tuberculosis. After her death, her sister Charlotte edited Agnes Grey to fix issues with its first edition, but prevented republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, believing it to be "a mistake." This decision had a negative effect on Anne's popularity as a writer. Nonetheless, both of her novels are now considered classics of English literature.

Anne's father was Patrick Brontë, the oldest of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory, who were poor Irish peasant farmers.^[3] Patrick, an ambitious young man, attended St John's College, Cambridge, and took orders within the Church of England. Anne's mother was Maria Branwell, the daughter of Anne Carne and Thomas Branwell, a successful and property-owning grocer and tea merchant in Penzance.^[4]

Their first child, Maria (1814–1825), was born after they moved to Hartshead. In 1815, Patrick was appointed curate of the chapel in Market Street Thornton, near Bradford. A second daughter, Elizabeth (1815–1825), was born shortly after.^[5] Four more children followed: Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849).

Anne was the youngest of the Brontë children. She was born on 17 January 1820 at the parsonage in Market Street, Thornton, on the outskirts of Bradford,^[6] where her father, Patrick, was curate. Anne was baptised in Thornton on 25 March 1820, and soon after, Patrick was appointed to the perpetual curacy in Haworth, a small town seven miles (11 km) away. In April 1820 the family moved into the five-roomed Haworth Parsonage.

When Anne was barely a year old, her mother, Maria, became ill, probably with uterine cancer.^[7] Maria died on 15 September 1821.^[8] Patrick tried to remarry, without success.^[9] Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, had moved to the parsonage initially to care for Maria, but stayed on to help with the children, and remained there until her death. She was stern and expected respect, not love.^[10] There was little affection between her and the older children, although according to Ellen Nussey, a family friend, Anne was her aunt's favourite.^[11] Like her siblings, she was precocious: in Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, Patrick remembered that when Anne was four years old he had asked her what a child most wanted and she had replied: "age and experience".^[12]

In summer 1824 Patrick sent Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily to school at Crofton Hall in Crofton, West Yorkshire, and subsequently to the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.^[13] Conditions at Cowan Bridge were poor, with harsh conditions, poor food and frequent outbreaks of disease, all of which may have contributed to the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth Brontë. Maria and Elizabeth had been sent home from school ill following an outbreak of typhus, and they died of tuberculosis on 6 May and 15 June 1825 respectively.^[12] The deaths of the two eldest girls distressed the family so much that Patrick could not face sending his surviving daughters away again. Charlotte and Emily were removed from Cowan Bridge, and they and their siblings were educated at home for the next five years, largely by their aunt Elizabeth and by Patrick himself.^[14]

The children made little attempt to mix with others outside the parsonage and relied on each other for company. The moors surrounding Haworth became their playground. Anne shared a room with her aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, which may have had an influence on Anne's personality and religious beliefs.^[15] Anne was very close to all her siblings, but remained closest to Emily most of all: Ellen Nussey described them as being "like twins."^[16]

Anne's studies at home included music and drawing. The Keighley church organist gave piano lessons to Anne, Emily and Branwell, and John Bradley of Keighley gave them art lessons.^[17] Their aunt tried to teach the girls how to run a household, but they inclined more to literature.^[18] They read widely from their father's well-stocked library. Their reading included the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott, articles from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Fraser's Magazine and The Edinburgh Review, and books of history and geography and biography.^[19]

In June 1826, their father gave Branwell a set of toy soldiers, which he shared with his sisters. The siblings gave names to the soldiers, also known as "The Young Men" or the "Twelves",^[20] and developed their characters. This led to the creation of an imaginary kingdom: Angria, a series of fictional islands off the coast of West Africa, which they illustrated with maps and watercolour renderings. The children played games and wrote stories and plays about the inhabitants of Angria and its capital city, "Glass Town", also referred to as Verreopolis or Verdopolis.^[21]

The siblings' imaginary kingdom included details taken from historical and real-world sources. The children provided their characters with tiny newspapers, magazines and chronicles, written in letters so small that they were difficult to read without a magnifying glass. These writings provided an apprenticeship for the siblings' later literary efforts.^[22]

Around 1831, when Anne was eleven, she and Emily broke away from the Angrian world, which had become dominated by Charlotte and Branwell, to create and develop their own fantasy world, Gondal, which would continue to influence them into adulthood. Anne and Emily had always been particularly close, and this continued after Charlotte left for Roe Head School in January 1831.^[23] Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey, visiting Haworth in 1833, reported that Emily and Anne were "inseparable companions". She described Anne thus:^[24][25]

Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes; fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion.

Charlotte finished her schooling at Roe Head, returning to tutor her siblings. She then returned to Roe Head as a teacher on 29 July 1835, accompanied by Emily, who was a pupil. Emily's tuition was largely financed by Charlotte's teaching. However, Emily was unable to adapt to life at school and suffered from severe homesickness. She was withdrawn from the school in October, and Anne took her place there.

At this point, Anne was 15, and it was her first time away from home. She made few friends at Roe Head. She was quiet and hardworking and determined to stay to acquire the education which she would need to support herself.^[26][27] She stayed for two years, returning home only during the Christmas and summer holidays. She won a good-conduct medal in December 1836. Charlotte's letters from Roe Head seldom mention Anne. By December 1837 Anne had become seriously ill with gastritis.^[28] A Moravian minister was called to see her several times during her illness, suggesting her distress was caused, in part, by a crisis of faith triggered by the staunch Calvinism of the school.^[29] Concerned for her sister's health, Charlotte wrote to their father, and he arranged for Anne to be sent home.

On leaving the school, Anne began to seek a teaching position. As the daughter of a poor clergyman, she needed to earn a living. Her father had no private income and the parsonage would revert to the church on his death. Teaching or working as a governess were among the few employment options for a woman of her background. In April 1839 Anne, now aged 19, started work as a governess for the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield.^[31]

The children in her charge were spoiled and disobedient.^[32] Anne had great difficulty controlling them and little success in educating them. She was not allowed to punish them, and when she complained about their behaviour she received no support and was criticised for being incapable. The Inghams were dissatisfied with their children's progress and after nine months, Anne was dismissed.^[33] She returned home in December 1839 to join Charlotte and Emily, who had also left their positions. Anne's unhappy time at Blake Hall is believed to have been the principal inspiration for her novel Agnes Grey.^[34]

When Anne returned to Haworth she formed a friendship with William Weightman, her father's new curate, who had started work in the parish in August 1839.^[35] Weightman was 25 and had obtained a two-year licentiate in theology from the University of Durham. He was handsome, popular with the family and became a frequent visitor to the parsonage until his sudden death from cholera in 1842.^[36] He had an outgoing and flirtatious personality, and, on learning that none of the Brontë sisters had ever received a Valentine's card, wrote cards and poems to all three of them, as well as to Ellen Nussey, who was staying with them at the time.^[36] It has been suggested that Anne may have been in love with him,^[37][38] although there is little real evidence to confirm this,^[39] aside from a poem written by Anne after his death, I will not mourn thee, lovely one, which seems to express the affection that the whole family felt for the young curate.^[35][40]

From 1840 to 1845 Anne worked at Thorp Green Hall, a comfortable country house near York. Here she worked a governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife, Lydia.^[41][42] The house appears as Horton Lodge in Agnes Grey. It was at the Long Plantation at Thorp Green in 1842 that Anne wrote her three-verse poem Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day, which was published in 1846 under the name Acton Bell.^[43]

Anne had four pupils: Lydia (15), Elizabeth (13), Mary (12), and Edmund (8).^[44] She initially had problems similar to those she had encountered at Blake Hall: she missed her home and family, and her quiet and gentle disposition made it a challenge for her to settle into the household.^[45] In a diary paper in 1841, Anne wrote that she did not like her situation and wished to leave it. But Anne was determined to made a success of her position, and became well-liked by her employers. Her charges, the Robinson girls, became lifelong friends.

Anne spent only five or six weeks a year with her own family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of her time was spent with the Robinsons. She accompanied the family on annual holidays to Scarborough, a place which became very dear to her. Between 1840 and 1844 Anne spent around five weeks each summer at the coastal town,^[46] a number of locations of which feature in her novels. She had opportunities to collect semi-precious stones,^[47] developing an interest in geology,^[48] depicting it in her novels as an interest equally suitable for men and women.^[49]

Anne and her sisters considered setting up a school while she was still working for the Robinsons. Various locations were considered, including the parsonage, but due to a lack of suitable pupils, the project never materialised. In early November 1842, Anne came home following the death of her aunt while her sisters were in Brussels.^[50] Elizabeth Branwell left a £350 legacy (equivalent to £40,000 in 2023)^[51] for each of her nieces.^[52]

In January 1843 Anne returned to Thorp Green and secured a position for Branwell. He was to tutor Edmund, who was growing too old to be in Anne's care. Branwell did not live in the house as Anne did, and his tutorship was not a success. Anne's writings reflect her inner turmoil and her efforts to remain calm at this time.^[53] All three Brontë sisters worked as governesses or teachers, and all experienced problems controlling their charges, gaining support from their employers, and coping with homesickness, but Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of her work.^[54]

Anne and Branwell taught at Thorp Green for the next three years, during which time Branwell's behaviour grew increasingly erratic, and he fell in love with his employer's wife, Lydia Robinson. When Anne and Branwell returned home for the holidays in June 1845 Anne resigned.^[55] Anne gave no reason for her resignation, but it may have been provoked by the relationship between her brother and Mrs Robinson.^[56] Branwell was dismissed soon afterwards. Anne continued to exchange letters with Elizabeth and Mary Robinson. They came to visit Anne in December 1848.^[57]

Anne took Emily to visit some of the places of which she had become fond during her time with the Robonsons. A plan to visit Scarborough fell through, but they went to York and saw York Minster.^[58]

During the summer of 1845, the Brontës were at home with their father. None of the siblings had any immediate prospect of employment. Charlotte found Emily's poems, which had been shared only with Anne, and insisted that they should be published. Emily was angry at the invasion of her privacy, and refused to contemplate publication, but Anne revealed that she too had been writing poems in secret, poems which Charlotte "thought ... had a sweet sincere pathos of their own".^[59][60] Encouraged by Charlotte, the sisters agreed to have the poems published. They told nobody what they were doing. With the money left by Elizabeth Branwell they paid for publication of a collection of poems, 21 from Anne, 21 from Emily and 19 from Charlotte.^[54]

The book was published under pen names which retained their initials but concealed their sex.^[61] Anne's pseudonym was Acton Bell. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was available for sale in May 1846. The cost of publication was 31 pounds and 10 shillings, about three-quarters of Anne's salary at Thorp Green.^[62][63] On 7 May 1846 the first three copies were delivered to Haworth Parsonage.^[64] The book achieved three somewhat favourable reviews, but was a commercial failure, with only two copies sold in the first year. Anne nonetheless found a market for her later poetry. The Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser's Magazine published her poem The Narrow Way under her pseudonym in December 1848. Four months earlier, Fraser's Magazine had published her poem The Three Guides.

By July 1846 a package containing the manuscripts of each sister's first novel was making the rounds of London publishers. Charlotte had written The Professor, Emily had written Wuthering Heights, and Anne had written Agnes Grey.

After some rejections, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted by the publisher Thomas Cautley Newby. The Professor was rejected.^[65] However, Charlotte's second novel, Jane Eyre, was accepted immediately by Smith, Elder & Co. It was the first of the sisters' novels to be published, and it was a resounding success. Meanwhile, Anne and Emily's novels "lingered in the press". Anne and Emily were obliged to pay fifty pounds to help meet their publishing costs. Their publisher was galvanised by the success of Jane Eyre and published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey together in December 1847.^[66] They sold well, but Agnes Grey was outshone by Emily's more dramatic Wuthering Heights.^[67]

Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in the last week of June 1848.^[69]

The novel challenged contemporary social and legal structures. In 1913, May Sinclair said that the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England.^[70]

In the book Helen has left her husband to protect their son from his influence. She supports herself and her son in hiding by painting. She has violated social conventions and English law. Until the Married Women's Property Act 1870 was passed, a married woman had no legal existence independent from her husband and could not own property nor sue for divorce nor control the custody of her children. Helen's husband had a right to reclaim her and charge her with kidnapping. By subsisting on her own income she was stealing her husband's property since this income was legally his.^[54]

Anne stated her intentions in the second edition, published in August 1848. She presented a forceful rebuttal to critics (among them Charlotte) who considered her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing. Anne "wished to tell the truth". She explained: "When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear."^[71] Anne also castigated reviewers who speculated on the sex of authors and the perceived appropriateness of their writing. She was:

... satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.^[72]

In July 1848 Anne and Charlotte went to Charlotte's publisher George Smith in London to dispel the rumour that the "Bell brothers" were one person. Emily refused to go. Anne and Charlotte spent several days with Smith. Many years after Anne's death, he wrote in The Cornhill Magazine his impressions of her:

a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy.^[73]

The increasing popularity of the Bells' works led to renewed interest in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, originally published by Aylott and Jones. The remaining print run was bought by Smith and Elder, and reissued under new covers in November 1848. It still sold poorly.

Branwell's persistent drunkenness disguised the decline of his health and he died on 24 September 1848.^[74] His sudden death shocked the family. He was 31. The cause was recorded as chronic bronchitis – marasmus, but was probably tuberculosis.^[75]

The family suffered from coughs and colds during the winter of 1848, and Emily became very ill. She worsened over two months and rejected medical aid until the morning of 19 December. She was very weak and said that "if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now".^[76] But Emily died at about two o'clock that afternoon, aged 30.^[76]

Emily's death deeply affected Anne. Her grief undermined her physical health.^[77] Over Christmas Anne had influenza. Her symptoms intensified and in early January her father sent for a Leeds physician. The doctor diagnosed advanced consumption with little hope of recovery. Anne met the news with characteristic determination and self-control.^[78] However, in her letter to Ellen Nussey she expressed her frustrated ambitions:

I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect ... But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa's and Charlotte's sakes but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practise – humble and limited indeed – but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose. But God's will be done.^[79]

Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines and followed the advice she was given.^[80] She also wrote her last poem, A dreadful darkness closes in, in which she deals with being terminally ill.^[81] Her health fluctuated for months, but she grew thinner and weaker.

Anne seemed somewhat better in February.^[82] She decided to visit Scarborough to see if the change of location and the fresh sea air might benefit her.^[83] Charlotte was initially against the journey, fearing that it would be too stressful, but changed her mind after the doctor's approval and Anne's assurance that it was her last hope.^[79]

On 24 May 1849, Anne set off for Scarborough with Charlotte and Ellen Nussey. They spent a day and night in York en route. Here they escorted Anne in a wheelchair and did some shopping and visited York Minster. It was clear that Anne had little strength left.

On Sunday 27 May, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier to return home and die instead of remaining in Scarborough. A doctor was consulted the next day and said that death was close. Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for Ellen and Charlotte, and whispered for Charlotte to "take courage".^[84] Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon on 28 May 1849, aged 29.

Charlotte decided to "lay the flower where it had fallen",^[75] and arranged for Anne to be buried in Scarborough. The funeral was held on 30 May. The former schoolmistress at Roe Head, Miss Wooler, was in Scarborough, and she was the only other mourner at Anne's funeral.^[85] Anne was buried in St Mary's churchyard, beneath the castle walls and overlooking the bay. Charlotte commissioned a stone to be placed over her grave with the inscription:

Here lie the remains of Anne Brontë, daughter of the Revd P. Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire. She died Aged 28 May 28th 1849.

When Charlotte visited the grave three years later she discovered multiple errors on the headstone and had it refaced, but it was still not free of error, for Anne was 29 when she died, not 28 as written.

In 2011 the Brontë Society installed a new plaque at Anne Brontë's grave. The original gravestone had become illegible at places and could not be restored. It was left undisturbed while the new plaque was laid horizontally, interpreting the fading words of the original and correcting its error.^[86] In April 2013 the Brontë Society held a dedication and blessing service at the gravesite to mark the installation of the new plaque.^[87][88]

After Anne's death, Charlotte addressed issues with the first edition of Agnes Grey for its republication, but she prevented republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.^[89] In 1850, Charlotte wrote:^[90]

'Wildfell Hall' it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake – it was too little consonant with the character – tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring, inexperienced writer. She wrote it under a strange, conscientious, half-ascetic notion of accomplishing a painful penance and a severe duty … She had in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail as a warning to others.

Subsequent critics paid less attention to Anne's work because of this and some dismissed her as "a Brontë without genius".^[91] However, since the mid-20th century her life and works have been given better attention. Biographies by Winifred Gérin (1959), Elizabeth Langland (1989) and Edward Chitham (1991), as well as Juliet Barker's group biography, The Brontës (1994; revised edition 2000), and work by critics such as Inga-Stina Ewbank, Marianne Thormählen, Laura C Berry, Jan B Gordon, Mary Summers, and Juliet McMaster has led to acceptance of Anne Brontë as a major literary figure.^[78][92] Sally McDonald of the Brontë Society said in 2013 that in some ways Anne "is now viewed as the most radical of the sisters, writing about tough subjects such as women's need to maintain independence and how alcoholism can tear a family apart."^[88] In 2016 Lucy Mangan championed Anne Brontë in the BBC's Being the Brontës.^[93]

• Bell, Currer; Bell, Ellis; Bell, Acton (1846). Poems.
• Bell, Acton (1847). Agnes Grey.
• Bell, Acton (1848). The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

• List of feminist literature – 1840s

• Alexander, Christine & Smith, Margaret, The Oxford Companion to the Brontës, Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-19-861432-2
• Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, St. Martin's Pr., ISBN 0-312-14555-1
• Chitham, Edward, A Life of Anne Brontë, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991, ISBN 0-631-18944-0
• Fraser, Rebeca, The Brontës: Charlotte Brontë and her family, Crown Publishers, 1988, ISBN 0-517-56438-6
• Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, Allen Lane, 1976 (first published 1959), ISBN 0-7139-0977-3
• Harrison, Ada and Stanford, Derek, Anne Brontë – Her Life and Work, Archon Books, 1970 (first published 1959). ISBN 0-208-00987-6

• Allott, Miriam, The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, 1984
• Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, 2000 (revised edition)
• Chadwick, Ellis, In the Footsteps of the Brontës, 1982
• Chitham, Edward, A Brontë Family Chronology, 2003
• Chitham, Edward, A Life of Anne Brontë, 1991
• Eagleton, Terry, Myths of Power, 1975
• Ellis, Samantha, Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life, 2016
• Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë: A Biography, 1959
• Langland, Elizabeth, Anne Brontë: The Other One, 1989
• Miller, Lucasta, The Brontë Myth, 2001
• Scott, P. J. M., Anne Brontë: A New Critical Assessment, 1983
• Summers, Mary, Anne Brontë Educating Parents, 2003
• Wise, T. J. and Symington, J. A. (eds.), The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondences, 1932

• Anne Brontë's grave in Scarborough
• Anne Brontë – The Scarborough Connection Archived 12 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, biographical materials and complete poems of Anne Brontë
• Anne Brontë – Writer Of Genius, biographical materials on Anne and her family
• Anne Brontë at Northwestern University, information about Anne and Victorian society, critical reception of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Anne Brontë at the Internet Book List
• Anne Brontë's biography and works at A Celebration of Women Writers
• Website of the Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
• Anne Brontë papers, circa 1840s–1895, held by the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library
• Manuscripts of Anne Brontë in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum

• Anne Brontë eText Archive
• Works by Anne Brontë in the online library ARHEVE.org and in the free ARHEVE app
• Music On Christmas Morning – Audio Poem
• Works by Anne Brontë at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Anne Brontë at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Anne Brontë in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by or about Anne Brontë at the Internet Archive