Anne Bronte

"Anne was the least-read and -admired of the remarkable Bronte sisters, but the fact remains that she was one of the remarkable Bronte sisters and her novels are brilliant in spots, competent elsewhere. Agnes Grey...published in 1847 (ed: author age--27)...has a large autobiographical background of course: Anne, like her heroine Agnes, was a poor clergyman's daughter, was docile to a fault, and worked as a governess. But unlike the novel, Anne's life had no happy ending--not even in a literary sense, for Agnes Grey was never well received during her lifetime...Agnes Grey is quite a short novel, under 150,000 words."--I.W.E.

The other novel of Anne Bronte (who died at age 29), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was not chosen for the I.W.E. Hall of Fame, though currently it appears to be regarded with at least equal esteem to Agnes Grey.

This is not my copy of the book--I haven't read it--but I have a lot of these 1995-2003 or so era Penguin Classics with which it would be at home.

The Brontes are such central and beloved figures in the popular history of English literature that I feel I have little enough to contribute to the general understanding where they are concerned, and as I also prefer to wait to write about Emily and Charlotte, whom I have read and am thus at least somewhat familiar with, when their turns on the list come up, there seems little to say about Anne. I checked Winnifred Gerin's dusty 1959 biography of her out the State Library (the first person to do so since 1984) looking for any of the interesting anecdotes that are sometimes found in such works, but the book tends to be both idolatrous towards the whole family and completely pre-60s middlebrow in outlook (i.e., no discernible humor or even speculation regarding sensualism) that I could find nothing in it worth using. I don't believe the family could really have been that boring, though maybe Anne was.

One does wonder what possessed these creatures in their isolation and apparently innocent--especially sexually so--youth to set for themselves the task of 'instructing' the nation through the writing of novels; not to mention largely succeeding in doing so. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are both secure among the top 100 most read and probably most esteemed English novels, perhaps among the top 50. Our current society of 300 million people, with its thousand universities and hundreds of graduate level creative writing programs and publishing houses turning out 6,000 novels a year and constant mass traveling to every corner of the earth has little hope of ever producing two such books, which was the work of a single fairly poor and informally educated household in rural Yorkshire in the 1840s. They also of course doubtless encourage the idea that anybody can become an author, however provincial their background or paltry their connections to the literary world, which I guess is bad for society, since most people who aspire to a literary career seem to be very poor at assessing their literary talents, as well as figuring out anything they might actually be able to perform usefully and competently and earn an income from. But let us not forget that mediocrity and failure, the common lot, are dreary and neverending, and achievement and success, even posthumous, are inspiring to those who come after. So I hope the Brontes do not fade into oblivion as irrelevant to the new age of man yet.

Anne Bronte was born in 1820, the youngest of a family of six and the fifth daughter, in the same house as her famous sisters, 74 High Street in Thornton, West Yorkshire. Anne only lived here for a few months before the family moved to nearby Haworth. The building still stands, though altered over the years, and is commemorated by a plaque. The house was actually acquired by devotees of the Brontes and turned into a museum from the late 1990s until 2007, but they were unable to keep it open and it has reverted back to a private residence again. The train station in Thornton closed in 1955. If you are traveling by rail you will have to take the bus the last few miles from Bradford.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, according to the 1996 edition of Lonely Planet Britain (I don't care for their guidebooks since about 2000, but I fear that is because the world has changed and I have not been able to change enough with it), 'rivals Stratford-upon-Avon as the most important literary shrine in England'. They were enthusiastic about the museum and indeed the whole town, which was far from a sure thing with their hip young travelers at the time--this was still kind of back in the young Justine Shapiro era, I believe. Among other things you could, and presumably still can, see "one of (Charlotte's) dresses and a pair of her tiny shoes." I always had something of a crush on Charlotte, among all the Victorian lady writers.

The nearest real train station to Haworth is in Keighley, from which during the week you would have to take the bus. However on the weekends there is a tourist line running trips via steam engine on the hour between the two towns which is at least an option for the non-driver.

While most of the family, including the two more famous sisters, are buried in the churchyard adjacent to Haworth Parsonage, Anne died at the formerly fashionable and now faded North Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church there, near both the ruins of the ancient castle and the sea. The town is the terminus of several train lines and has regular direct service to York, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool.