Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë 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.
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 harmed Anne's popularity as a writer. Nonetheless, both of her novels are now considered classics of English literature.
Family background
Anne's father was Patrick Brontë, the oldest of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory, who were poor Irish peasant farmers. 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.Their first child, Maria, 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, was born shortly after. Four more children followed: Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily, and Anne.
Early life
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, 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 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. Maria died on 15 September 1821. Patrick tried to remarry, without success. 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. There was little affection between her and the older children, although according to Ellen Nussey, a family friend, Anne was her aunt's favourite. 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".
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. 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. 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.
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 influenced Anne's personality and religious beliefs. Anne was very close to all her siblings, but remained closest to Emily most of all: Ellen Nussey described them as being "like twins."
Education
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. Their aunt tried to teach the girls how to run a household, but they inclined more to literature. 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.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", 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.
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.
Juvenilia
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. Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey, visiting Haworth in 1833, reported that Emily and Anne were "inseparable companions". She described Anne thus: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, hardworking, and determined to stay to acquire the education that she would need to support herself. 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. 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. Concerned for her sister's health, Charlotte wrote to their father, and he arranged for Anne to be sent home.
Employment at Blake Hall
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 was 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.The children in her charge were spoiled and disobedient. 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. 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.