Anne was thirteen when this picture was drawn. Many years later, this portrait was described as 'an excellent likeness of Anne Brontë' by two of Martha Brown's sisters.
(Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was a volume of po...)
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was a volume of poetry published jointly by the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne in 1846 and twas heir first work to ever go in print.
(Agnes Grey is the story of its title character who takes ...)
Agnes Grey is the story of its title character who takes up a position as a governess. Anne Bronte's first novel was based on her own experiences as a governess and depicts the loneliness and isolation of the position. Agnes Grey as a governess of the Bloomfield and Murray households experiences hardship and humiliation as a result of the families' snobbery.
(The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second of only two nov...)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second of only two novels written by Anne Bronte. Considered one of the first feminist novels because it challenged the social norms of the Victorian era, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is essentially a romantic novel which is chiefly concerned with the relationship between Gilbert Markham, a prosperous farmer, and the mysterious widow Mrs. Helen Graham, who takes up residence in the nearby tumbledown mansion of Wildfell Hall.
Anne Brontë was a British author and novelist, the youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. She is known for two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Background
Anne Brontë was born on the 17th of January, 1820 Thornton, United Kingdom. She was the last of the six children of a Church of England priest from humble beginnings in Ireland, Patrick, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë from a merchant family in Cornwall. Her siblings, by age, were Maria, Elizabeth, who would both die tragically young, Charlotte, Branwell, and Emily Jane.
Patrick Brontë was the curate of Thornton. Given the size of the family, Patrick actively sought a better clerical appointment. After much difficulty, he was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Haworth. The Brontë family moved to the parsonage there in April 1820. Anne was a year old when her mother became ill of uterine cancer. Patrick Brontë dedicated himself to nursing his beloved wife, while still fulfilling his clerical duties in the new parish. It was a grueling load, one which became nearly unbearable when all six children caught scarlet fever, itself potentially fatal. The children recovered, and help arrived in the form of Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell. After months of physical agony and distress over the future of Patrick and their children, Maria Branwell Brontë died on the 15th of September, 1821. During the next two years, Patrick made several rather desperate attempts to find a second wife.
Education
Anne was educated at home and had little social contact with other children at first. She was taught music and drawing and also piano lessons with her sisters by the organist at the Keighley church. John Bradley of Keighley also gave them some art lessons. With a well stock library of his father, the sisters occupied themselves with reading books on literature, history, biography and geography and also examining articles from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, and Fraser’s Magazine.
Later, Anne received her formal education between 1835 and 1837 at Roe Head School where her sister Charlotte was a teacher.
Straitened family finances compelled Anne to search for employment. She secured a teaching position at the age of 18 with the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield in West Yorkshire. Alas it was an unsuccessful venture and was cut short a year later. Then again for four years, from May 1840 to June 1845, she served as governess to the Robinson family at Thorp Green Hall, near York. She taught the three daughters and may have also taught some lessons to the son. She briefly returned home, unsatisfied with the job, but the family prevailed on her to return in early 1842. Anne returned home in 1845.
In 1846 Anne contributed 21 poems, a joint work with her sisters Charlotte and Emily. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with Emily’s Wuthering Heights in three volumes of which Agnes Grey was the third in December 1847. The reception to these volumes, associated in the public mind with the immense popularity of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre in October 1847, led to quick publication of Anne’s second novel again as Acton Bell.
Anne’s second novel The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall was published in three volumes in June 1848. It is a revolutionary work, dealing unflinchingly with subjects including alcohol and opium addiction, marital cruelty and infidelity, class inequality, and the right of women to choose their own path in life. It has been called the first fully-formed feminist novel, and is still stunning readers with its power and veracity today. Brontë continued writing poems, often representing in them her belief in Christian redemption and salvation, until her final illness. Anne had achieved literary success, and there was the promise of further greatness to come, but within a year tragedy struck as Branwell, Emily, and finally Anne Brontë died of tuberculosis in rapid succession.
(The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second of only two nov...)
1848
Religion
Anne was the only really religious child in the family.
Views
Anne Brontë's books are primarily concerned with morality, she is preoccupied with the ethical principles which, for good or ill, govern human behavior. Her two novels present a closely observed, occasionally satirical, rarely humorous, and often melancholy view of what she regards as a profoundly imperfect world. Her prose frequently achieves elegance through its simplicity, her direct and didactic manner is tempered with a disarming sincerity, so that it succeeds in persuading rather than alienating the reader. The philosophy guiding her intent as a writer is that the end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live and the earlier you become wise and good, the more of happiness you secure. The difference between Anne and her sisters is that she took the stories’ radicalism forward without remaining in thrall to their romantic illusions.
Quotations:
"But he who dares not grasp the thorn. Should never crave the rose."
"I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be."
"It is better to arm and strengthen your hero than to disarm and enfeeble your foe."
"I cannot love a man who cannot protect me."
"My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring and carried aloft on the wings of the breeze."
"I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world."
"My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can."
"I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world, that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single or to take a fancy to me."
"The ties that bind us to life are tougher than you imagine, or than anyone can who has not felt how roughly they may be pulled without breaking."
"Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad."
Personality
Anne was of a very quiet and reserved nature. She had dry humor that became a feature of her novels. She was noted for being always highly considerate of others, she loved animals, as did the rest of her family, and had a particular affinity for cats. She was a very practical-minded person.
Physical Characteristics:
Anne Brontë's hair was fair when she was a child. However, it seems that by 1833, Anne's hair got darker. The painted portraits of her bear this out. Although Anne's height is not recorded, she is known to have been rather small in stature, possibly around five-feet-two inches tall.
Quotes from others about the person
"She was ever fond of dumb things, and would give up her own comfort for them." - Ellen Nussey
"Although Anne has been characterized in Brontë biography as a gentle, fragile being, it would appear that she was in fact far more pragmatic than her sisters." - Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars in their book, The Art of the Brontës.
"Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favorite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes, finely pencilled eyebrows, and a clear almost transparent complexion. She still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the surveillance of her aunt." - Chitham
"I found her well acquainted with the main truths of the Bible respecting our salvation, but seeing them more through the law than the gospel, more as a requirement from God than His gift in His Son, but her heart opened to the sweet views of salvation, pardon, and peace in the blood of Christ, and she accepted His welcome to the weary and heavy-laden sinner, conscious more of her not loving the Lord her God than of acts of enmity to Him." - Barker
"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." - George Smith
"Anne, from childhood on, was the most obviously delicate of the Brontë children. She suffered from asthma and was easy prey to colds and influenza. This weakness caused Charlotte to recall later in life that Anne, since early childhood seemed to prepare for early death. Judgments of Anne's physical infirmity seem to have led Charlotte unconsciously to corollary judgments of the relative weakness of character and intellect. But Anne was, of the sisters, perhaps the most rigorously logical, the most quietly observant, the most realistic, and, in certain spheres, the most tenacious, the most determined, and the most courageous. All of these qualities were to emerge as her life unfolded." - Elizabeth Langland
Interests
Writers
Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott
Connections
Anne fell in love with her father’s assistant curate William Weightman, but this kind man’s life was cut short by cholera before their love could fully blossom. It was this loss that led to Anne’s succession of poems of loss and mourning.
The Oxford Companion to the Brontës
With The Oxford Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith provide a comprehensive volume about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontë sisters, together with their father, Patrick, an author in his own right, and their brother, Branwell who, along with his sister Charlotte, created the imaginary world of Angria.
2003
A Life of Anne Brontë
This is a biography of Anne Brontë, the often underrated sister of Charlotte and Emily. It makes imaginative use of recent research to redefine the personal and artistic relationship between Anne and her sisters, especially Emily.
Anne Brontë: The Other One
Anne Brontë: The Other One is the first full-length study to provide a feminist reading of the life and work of this youngest Brontë.
1989
Anne Brontë
The author of this study seeks to show that it was Anne Brontë, whose departure into the field of the realistic semi-autobiographic novel with a contemporary setting, launched the greatest of her siblings' achievements. P. J. M. Scott considers the whole oeuvre and illuminates its leading, nutritive characteristics. The book studies her poems, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Agnes Grey which, with its quiet realism and unrestrained passion, made a substantial contribution to, and development of, the nineteenth century's greatest literary art form.