Anne Bronte Biography and List of Works

English writer, sister of Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë. Anne Brontë is best-known for her novels AGNES GREY (1847), and THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1848), which are generally considered more conservative than her sisters works.

'If you loved as I do,' she earnestly replied, 'you would not have so nearly lost me - these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you - you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathizing heart and souls.'
(from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall)

Anne Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, the youngest of the six children of Patrick and Maria Brontë, and was educated largely at home. After the death of her mother in 1821, and two other children, Maria (d. 1825) and Elizabeth (d. 1825), Anne was left, with her sisters and brother, to the care of their father and aunt, Elisabeth Branwell. The girls' real education was at the Haworth parsonage, in which Mr. Brontë settled the year before his wife's death. They studied the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others, and examined articles from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, and The Edinburgh Review. Inspired by a box of 12 wooden soldiers, the children wove tales and legends associated with remote Africa. Emily and Anne created their own Gondal saga, and Charlotte and Branwell recorded their stories in minute notebooks.

In 1839 Anne worked for a short period as a governess to the Inghams at Blake Hall, and later in the same position to the Robinsons at Thorpe Green Hall from 1841 to 1845. Her brother Branwell joined her there as a tutor in 1843. Unfortunately, he fell in love with Mrs Robinson, and Anne was forced to leave.

In 1846 Anne published, with her sisters, a collection of poems, POEMS BY CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, a story about the life of a governess, appeared in 1847. It is based on Anne's experience with the over-indulged young children, and the worldly older children, of the Ingham and the Robinson families. The novel did not gain the success of Emily's Wuthering Heights , or Charlotte's Jane Eyre. Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848 in three volumes and sold well. It portrays, in the character of Arthur Huntingdon, a violent drunkard, who is clearly drawn from her brother Branwell, who died in September 1848. In the story the young and beautiful Helen Graham has taken refuge at Wildfell Hall from her husband Huntingdon. Gilbert Markham, a local farmer, falls in love with her. When Helen's husband dies, the way is clear for Gilbert to win her hand.

The frank depiction of Huntingdon's alcoholism and Helen's struggle for freedom, was considered by some critics an inappropriate subject for a woman. Anne Brontë fell ill with tuberculosis after the appearance of the book. She died the following May, in 1849, at Scarborough, where she was buried.

For further reading: The Brontë's Web of Childhood by Fannie Ratchford (1941); Anne Brontë: A Biography by W. Gérin (1959); Their Proper Sphere by Inga-Stina Ewbank (1966); The Brontës and Their Background by Tom Winnifrith (1973); Myths of Power by Terry Eagleton (1975); The Poems of Anne Brontë by E Chitham (1979); Anne Bronte: A New Critical Assessment by P.J.M. Scott (1983); Anne Bronte: The Other One by Elisabeth Langland (1989); The Brontës by Juliet Barker (1994); Anne Bronte by Maria H. Frawley (1996).

Museums and places to visit: Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Keighley; Brontë Way - a forty mile walk in four section to sites associated with the Brontës; Oakwell Hall County Park, Nutter Lane, Birstall - house features as "Fieldhead" in Charlotte's Shirley; The Red House Museum, Oxford Rd, Gomersal, Cleckheaton - House appears as "Briarmains in Charlotte's Shirley; Wuthering Heights Walk, a six mile walk to Top Withins, the setting for Wuthering Heights.

Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848) - collaborated with Charlotte in creating the imaginary world of Angria. After failing as a painter and writer he took to drink and opium,and worked as a tutor and assistant clerk for a railway company. In 1842 he was dismissed and joined Anne at Thorp Green Hall as a tutor. His affair with his employer's wife ended disastrously. Patrick Brontë returned to Haworth in 1845, where he rapidly declined and died three years later.

Books by Anne Bronte