Brontë, Anne. (1820 - 1849).
L i f e
- a younger sister of Branwell, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë
- educated at home by discussing poetry, history, and politics
- all the three sister writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne led a solitary life in a relative seclusion x but: possessed an informed view of the wider world
W o r k
- Branwell and Charlotte led a childhood series of book-length manuscripts about the fantasy kingdom Angria
- Emily and Anne later kept on writing separate series about the imaginary island Gondal: oriental and Gothic extravaganzas mixed with contemporary political realities and personalities
Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846):
- Currer, Ellis, and Acton = genderless pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne respectively
- sold only two copies x but: inspired each of them to write a novel
Agnes Grey (1847):
- concerned with the restrictions of middle-class women on the only respectable form of paid employment
- the governess narrator endures a loss of status, humiliation, snobbery, and insult x but: retains a calm sense of her own moral justification
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848):
- concerned with a drastically unhappy marriage and the woman’s escape
< the graphic and ‘coarse and disgusting’ description of the alcoholic brutality based on the language and behaviour of her brother Branwell
Quote
"But I can't devote myself entirely to a child," said she; "it may die--which is not at all improbable." / "But, with care, many a delicate infant has become a strong man or woman." / "But it may grow so intolerably like its father that I shall hate it."
From Agnes Grey (1847).
Basics
(Drawing: Charlotte Brontë. 1845. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Anne Brontë. (1820 - 1849). British. -
Work
Novelist. Poet. Author of Agnes Grey (1847).
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Genres
Victorian novel and poetry.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.