Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

ANNE BRONTË (1820–1849), pseudonym Acton Bell, was an English poet and novelist, the youngest daughter of the Reverend Patrick and Maria Brontë and younger sister of Charlotte and Emily. Because of family finances, Anne worked as a governess for several years and was a keen observer of the life of those with wealth and privilege, noting what she saw as the lack of morality they espoused.

Brontë wrote two novels: Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Brontë’s mission in her writing, as she said in the preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was “to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it … I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.”

Anne never married and died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis.