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  • Published: 1 June 2012
  • ISBN: 9781841593432
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 744
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

Agnes Grey/The Tenant of Wildfell Hall



The two novels by Anne Bronte in one beautiful volume. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Anne Bronte's second and most celebrated novel. Set in the dramatic northern landscape made familiar by the author's more famous sisters, it tells the story of Helen Graham, a mysterious single woman who rents the semi-ruinous Hall of the title. With a child but no husband, Helen divides the community between those who admire her charm and spirit and those who suspect her morals. Chief among her supporters is a local farmer, Gilbert Markham, who tells her story.

Written before The Tenant, Agnes Grey, based on the author's own experience, explores the position of women in Victorian society through the story of a young woman forced to work as a governess when her father is ruined financially.

  • Published: 1 June 2012
  • ISBN: 9781841593432
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 744
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

About the author

Anne Brontë

Anne Bronte was born at Thornton in Yorkshire on 17 January 1820, the youngest of six children. That April, the Brontës moved to Haworth, a village on the edge of the moors, where Anne’s father had become the curate. Anne’s mother died soon afterwards. She was four when her older sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. After that, Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell were taught at home for a few years, and together, they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Anne went to Roe Head School 1835–7. She worked as a governess with the Ingham
family (1839–40) and with the Robinson family (1840–45). In 1846, along with Charlotte and Emily, she published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She published Agnes Grey in 1847 and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. That year, both Anne’s brother Branwell and her sister Emily died of tuberculosis. A fortnight later, Anne was diagnosed with the same disease. She died in
Scarborough on 28 May 1849.

Anne Bronte, who was born in 1820, was brought up in the Yorkshire village of Haworth where her father was curate. She was educated at home and, as a child, she invented with her sister Emily the imaginary world of Gondal, for which she wrote copious chronicles and poems.

She held two positions as governess, with the Inghams at Blake Hall and, from 1840-45, with the Robinson family at Thorp Green. As a religious lyric poet, Anne Brontë's hymns and lyrics rank with those of Cowper. Her first novel Agnes Grey (1847), published under the pseudonym Acton Bell, is in the tradition of fictional spiritual autobiography, written with conciseness, integrity and irony. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) is a powerful feminist testament, attacking the marriage laws, double standards of sexual morality and the education of men and women.

Anne Bronte died at Scarborough in 1849. She was the youngest of the Brontë sisters, whose extraordinary gifts are only now receiving just appraisal.

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