Happy birthday, Anne Brontë !

[MsAmerica]

It's her two hundredth birthday this year.

Long ago, when I was ruefully wishing for someone like Jane Austen, a friend suggested Anne Brontë, which wasn't at all on target, but I gave it a try. I was sorely disappointed at the time, but am now re-reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall many years later, and can better appreciate it with diminished expectations.

What an amazing family, to have produced the three writers, all doomed to die so young.

Happy Birthday to the late Anne! She's very underrated in my opinion - she deserves to come out of Emily and Charlotte's shadow.

It’s all individual but in content terms my least favourite of the Bronte’s. I don’t like the moralising!

I loved the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I also tried to read it years ago and found the main character a bit too self-righteous and I still think this about Agnes Grey. But I re-read Wildfell a year or so ago, and what really struck me this time was that it seemed very modern psychologically in the way the husband, with help from his drunken mates, controls Helen by bullying and humiliating her. I didn't particularly like her, but I don't think that matters, because the relationships and psychology seemed to make sense.