Anne Bront\u00eb\u2019s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall<\/a> and Agnes Grey<\/a> occasionally receive an honourable mention, but are often nowhere in sight. Like their author, they have been too frequently overlooked. Googling for articles on Anne Bront\u00eb brings up very few hits. I began to wonder: why is that? <\/p>\n Agnes Grey, A Novel was the name of Anne\u2019s first book, published in December 1847. She had been working on the text for many months before sending it off to the publisher Thomas Cautley Newby in July of that year. Emily\u2019s Wuthering Heights was also accepted by Newby at the same time. It was a painful two months later that Charlotte finally found a publisher for her book, Jane Eyre.<\/p>\n Unluckily for her sisters, Charlotte\u2019s publisher was more proactive than their own, and Jane Eyre became a sensation. Newby then decided to print Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, riding on the coattails of Charlotte\u2019s success. More naturalistic than Charlotte\u2019s Jane Eyre, but similarly focused on the life of a poor governess, Anne\u2019s novel had been upstaged and was received, as the author Samantha Ellis notes<\/a>, as a \u201cpale imitation of Jane Eyre\u201d.<\/p>\n Even worse, the gender-neutral pseudonyms the sisters had chosen to hide their identities (Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell), had ensured that the three books were thought to have been by only one author. Anne was not disheartened by Charlotte\u2019s success or these authorship disputes however, and soon embarked on her second literary project.<\/p>\n Appallingly, many editions of Anne second and most famous work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, have been abridged. In 1854, overzealous publisher Thomas Hodgson slashed huge chunks of text which featured controversial subject matter detailing the protagonist\u2019s concerns about her husband\u2019s depraved behaviour, so that the novel would fit neatly into a single volume.<\/p>\n Bront\u00eb scholars declare this to be a \u201ccorrupt text\u201d, which cuts four pages of the novel\u2019s opening, all expletives (filler words), 25 additional paragraphs and most of chapter 28. While more recent editions of the novel have reprinted the original 1848 text, many of us, without knowing, have read the potted version.<\/p>\n This censorship of Anne\u2019s text is frankly unacceptable, as poor editing aside, much contextual information which she included for a reason has been removed. Charlotte\u2019s opinion of her sister\u2019s book, writing in a letter in 1850 that it \u201chardly appears desirable to preserve\u201d, also damaged Anne Bront\u00eb\u2019s reputation further.<\/p>\n Another factor in her neglect is that Anne\u2019s grave is miles away from the rest of her family\u2019s. She travelled to Scarborough in 1849 in an attempt to ease the symptoms of the tuberculosis that killed her only three days after her arrival.<\/p>\n Only a very dedicated Bront\u00eb fan would follow in her footsteps and make the pilgrimage to Scarborough in addition to Haworth. This Yorkshire town will always be the main site of the Bront\u00eb sisters fandom as long as their home, now the Bront\u00eb Parsonage Museum, remains. Anne Bront\u00eb does not have a formal memorial in Haworth, while the rest of her family is buried there. This sets her apart even more. <\/p>\n Perhaps it is simply that Anne was the youngest in a remarkable family, and so in death is overlooked as she may have been in life. Or her stories are not the gothic fantasies featuring troubled and problematic literary heroes like Rochester and Heathcliff we immediately associate with the Bront\u00eb name. <\/p>\n Instead, Anne Bront\u00eb\u2019s works are visceral and real, commenting unflinchingly on the dark sides of human nature: cruelty and violence to children and women, adultery, alcoholism, and coercive control being just some of the topics she covers. Contemporary reviewers<\/a> called the novel \u201cbrutal\u201d and \u201ccoarse\u201d.<\/p>\n Utterly shocking at the time, with its descriptions of alcohol abuse and a female protagonist leaving her unhappy marriage, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often hailed as a feminist masterpiece. Yet, this does not tie into the romantic ideal readers expect. Wuthering Heights grapples with many of the same themes, but while that novel is viewed as a gothic romance, Anne Bront\u00eb\u2019s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered by many as a social-realist text.<\/p>\nFinding Anne<\/h2>\n
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\n Wikepedia<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFar from Haworth<\/h2>\n
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