BRONT, ANNE

born Jan. 17, 1820, Thornton, Yorkshire, Eng. died May 28, 1849, Scarborough, Yorkshire pseudonym Acton Bell English poet and novelist, author of Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), generally considered less brilliant than the novels of her two sisters, Charlotte and Emily Bront. The youngest of six children of Patrick and Marie Bront, Anne was taught in the family's Haworth home, chiefly by her sister Charlotte. She took a position as governess briefly in 1839 and then again for four years, 184145, with the Robinsons, the family of a clergyman, at Thorpe Green, near Boroughbridge, Yorkshire. There her irresponsible brother, Patrick Branwell, a drunkard and opium addict, joined her in 1845, intending to serve as a tutor. Anne returned home soon after but was followed shortly by her brother, who had been dismissed, charged with making love to his employer's wife. In 1846 Anne contributed 21 poems to Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, a joint work with her sisters Charlotte and Emily. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with Emily's Wuthering Heights in three volumes in December 1847. The reception to these volumes, associated in the public mind with the immense popularity of Charlotte's Jane Eyre (October 1847), led to quick publication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published in three volumes in June 1848; it sold well. She fell ill with tuberculosis toward the end of the year and died the following May. Anne is commonly described as gentle and pious. In chaste and shapely verse she examines her thoughts and feelings in the light of moral and religious truth. Her novel Agnes Grey, probably begun at Thorpe Green, records with limpidity and some humour the life of a governess. George Moore called it simple and beautiful as a muslin dress. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall presents an unsoftened picture of a young man's debauchery and degradation and sets against it her Arminian belief, opposed to Calvinist predestination, that no soul shall be ultimately lost. Her outspokenness raised some scandal, and Charlotte deplored the subject as morbid and out of keeping with her sister's nature, but the vigorous writing indicates that Anne found in it not only a moral obligation but also an opportunity of artistic development.