Anne Bronte (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of 19 she left Haworth and worked as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is considered to be one of the first sustained feminist novels, appeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short when she died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 29.
Mainly because the re-publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was prevented by Charlotte Brontë after Anne's death, she is less known than her sisters Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre, and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. However her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature.
Anne's father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), was born in a two-room cottage in Emdale, Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland. He was the oldest of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory, poor Irish peasant farmers. The family surname mac Aedh Ó Proinntigh was Anglicised as Prunty or Brunty. Struggling against poverty, Patrick learned to read and write and from 1798 taught others. In 1802, at the age of 26, he won a place to study theology at St. John's College, Cambridge where he changed his name, Brunty, to the more distinguished sounding Brontë. In 1807 he was ordained in the priesthood in the Church of England. He served as an assistant priest or curate in various parishes and in 1810, published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems. In 1811, he became vicar of St. Peter's Church in Hartshead in Yorkshire. The following year he was appointed an examiner of Bible knowledge at Woodhouse Grove School, a Wesleyan academy where, aged 35, he met his future wife, Maria Branwell, the headmaster's niece.
Around 1831, when Anne was eleven, she and Emily broke away from Charlotte and Branwell to create and develop their own fantasy world, Gondal. Anne was particularly close to Emily especially after Charlotte's departure for Roe Head School, in January 1831. When Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey visited Haworth in 1833, she reported that Emily and Anne were "like twins", "inseparable companions". She described Anne: "Anne, dear gentle Anne was quite different in appearance from the others, and she was her aunt's favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown, and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes; fine pencilled eyebrows and a clear almost transparent complexion. She still pursued her studies and especially her sewing, under the surveillance of her aunt." Anne took lessons from Charlotte, after she returned from Roe Head. Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher on 29 July 1835 accompanied by Emily as a pupil; her tuition largely financed by Charlotte's teaching. Within a few months, Emily unable to adapt to life at school, was physically ill from homesickness. She was withdrawn from school by October, and replaced by Anne.
In 1839, a year after leaving the school and aged 19, she was seeking 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 governess for a family were among the few options available to poor but educated women. In April, 1839, Anne started work as a governess for the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield.
The children in her charge were spoilt and wild, persistently disobedient and tormented her. She had great difficulty controlling them, and little success in instilling any education. She was not empowered to inflict punishment, and when she complained about their behaviour received no support, but was criticised for not being capable. The Inghams, dissatisfied with their children's progress, dismissed Anne. She returned home at Christmas, 1839, joining Charlotte and Emily, who had left their positions, and Branwell. The episode at Blake Hall was so traumatic that she reproduced it in almost perfect detail in her novel, Agnes Grey.
Anne obtained a second post as governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green, a wealthy country house near York. Thorp Green appeared as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey. Anne had four pupils: Lydia, age 15, Elizabeth, age 13, Mary, age 12, and Edmund, age 8. Initially, she encountered similar problems as she had experienced at Blake Hall. Anne missed her home and family, commenting in a diary paper in 1841 that she did not like her situation and wished to leave it. Her quiet, gentle disposition did not help. However, despite her outwardly placid appearance, Anne was determined, and with experience, made a success of her position, becoming well liked by her employers. Her charges, the Robinson girls, became lifelong friends.
For the next five years, Anne spent no more than five or six weeks a year with her family, during holidays at Christmas and in June. The rest of her time was spent with the Robinsons at Thorp Green. She was obliged to accompany them on annual holidays to Scarborough. Between 1840 and 1844, Anne spent around five weeks each summer at the resort, and loved the place. A number of locations in Scarborough were the setting for Agnes Grey 's final scenes and for Linden-Car village in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall..
Whilst working for the Robinsons, Anne and her sisters considered the possibility of setting up a school. Various locations, including the parsonage, were considered. The project never materialised and Anne chose to return to Thorp Green. She came home on the death of her aunt in early November 1842, while her sisters were in Brussels. Elizabeth Branwell left a £350 legacy for each of her nieces.
Anne returned to Thorp Green in January 1843 where she secured a position for Branwell. He was to take over as tutor to the Robinsons' son, Edmund who was growing too old to be in Anne's care. Branwell did not live in the house as Anne did. Anne's vaunted calm appears to have been the result of hard-fought battles, balancing deeply felt emotions with careful thought, a sense of responsibility, and resolute determination. All three Brontë sisters worked as governesses or teachers, and all experienced problems controlling their charges, gaining support from their employers, and coping with homesickness—but Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of her work.
Anne took Emily to visit some of the places she had come to know and love in the five years spent with the Robinsons. A plan to visit Scarborough fell through, and the sisters went to York, where Anne showed her sister York Minster.
In summer 1845, the Brontës were at home with their father. None had any immediate prospect of employment. Charlotte came across Emily's poems which had been shared only with Anne, her partner in the world of Gondal. Charlotte proposed that they be published. Anne revealed her own poems but Charlotte's reaction was characteristically patronising: "I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own". Eventually the sisters reached an agreement. They told neither Branwell, nor their father, nor their friends about what they were doing. Anne and Emily contributed 21 poems and Charlotte 19 and with Aunt Branwell's money, they paid to have the collection published.
Afraid their work would be judged differently if they revealed they were women, the book appeared using three pseudonyms—or pen-names, the initials of which were the same as their own. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily, Ellis Bell and Anne, Acton Bell. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell was available for sale in May 1846. The cost of publication was about three-quarters of Anne's salary at Thorp Green. On 7 May 1846, the first three copies were delivered to Haworth Parsonage. It achieved three somewhat favourable reviews, but was a dismal failure, with only two copies being sold in the first year. Anne, however, found a market for her more recent poetry. The Leeds Intelligencer and Fraser's Magazine published her poem "The Narrow Way" under her pseudonym, Acton Bell in December 1848. Four months earlier, in August, Fraser's Magazine had published her poem "The Three Guides".
In July 1848, to dispel the rumour that the "Bell brothers" were all the same person, Charlotte and Anne went to London to reveal their identities to the publisher George Smith. The women spent several days in his company. Many years after Anne's death, he wrote in the Cornhill Magazine his impressions of her, describing her as: "...a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy."
Only in their late twenties, a highly successful literary career appeared a certainty for Anne and her sisters. However, an impending tragedy was to engulf the family. Within the next ten months, three of the siblings, including Anne, would be dead.
The family had suffered from coughs and colds during the winter of 1848 and Emily next became severely ill. She deteriorated rapidly over two months, persistently refusing all medical aid until the morning of 19 December, when, being so weak, she declared: "if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now". It was far too late. At about two o'clock that afternoon, after a hard, short conflict in which she struggled desperately to hang on to life, she died, aged 30.
Emily's death deeply affected Anne and her grief undermined her physical health. Over Christmas, Anne caught influenza. Her symptoms intensified, and in early January, her father sent for a Leeds physician, who diagnosed her condition as consumption, and intimated that it was quite advanced leaving little hope of recovery. Anne met the news with characteristic determination and self-control.
Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines, and responded to the advice she was given. That same month she wrote her last poem, " A dreadful darkness closes in", in which she deals with being terminally ill. Her health fluctuated as the months passed, but she progressively grew thinner and weaker.
In February 1849, Anne seemed somewhat better. She decided to make a return visit to Scarborough in the hope that the change of location and fresh sea air might initiate a recovery. On 24 May 1849, Anne said her goodbyes to her father and the servants at Haworth, and set off for Scarborough with Charlotte and Ellen Nussey. En route, they spent a day and a night in York, where, escorting Anne around in a wheelchair, they did some shopping, and at Anne's request, visited York Minster. However, it was clear that Anne had little strength left.
On Sunday, 27 May, Anne asked Charlotte whether it would be easier if she returned home to die instead of remaining at Scarborough. A doctor, consulted the next day, indicated that death was close. Anne received the news quietly. She expressed her love and concern for Ellen and Charlotte, and seeing Charlotte's distress, whispered to her to "take courage". Conscious and calm, Anne died at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Monday, 28 May 1849.
Over the following days, Charlotte made the decision to "lay the flower where it had fallen". Anne was buried, not in Haworth with the rest of her family, but in Scarborough. The funeral was held on Wednesday, 30 May, which did not allow time for Patrick Brontë to make the 70-mile (110 km) journey, had he wished to do so. The former schoolmistress at Roe Head, Miss Wooler, was in Scarborough and she was the only other mourner at Anne's funeral. She was buried in St. Mary's churchyard, beneath the castle walls, overlooking the bay. Charlotte commissioned a stone to be placed over her grave, with the simple inscription "Here lie the remains of Anne Brontë, daughter of the Revd. P. Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire. She died, Aged 28, 28 May 1849". Anne was 29 at the time of her death.
A year after Anne's death, further editions of her novels were reprinted but Charlotte prevented re-publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In 1850, Charlotte wrote "Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." Subsequent critics paid less attention to Anne's work, although in recent years, with increasing critical interest in female authors, her life is being re-examined and her work re-evaluated leading to her acceptance, not as a minor Brontë, but as a major literary figure in her own right.