Currer,Ellis,

& Acton Bell

The

Brontë

Sisters

Anne, Emily & Charlotte

by their brother

Patrick Branwell Brontë

(National Portrait Gallery)

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'She was 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.'

George Smith - Smith, Elder & Company

Charlotte’s Publisher

‘Anne, dear gentle Anne, was quite different in appearance to the others. She was her Aunt’s favourite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and in falling curls fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet blue eyes, fine pencilled eye-brows, a clear, almost transparent complexion.’

Ellen Nussey - Charlotte’s friend

Anne Brontë 1820-1848

Anne Brontë,

by Charlotte Brontë

dated June 17th 1834

'I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I should quietly resign myself to the prospect . . . But I wish it would please God to spare me . . . because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practise - humble and limited indeed - but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose.'

Anne Brontë

'Anne's character was milder and more subdued; she wanted the power, the fire, the originality of her sister, but was well-endowed with quiet virtues of her own. Long-suffering, self-denying, reflective, and intelligent, a constitutional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade, and covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which was rarely lifted.'

Charlotte Brontë

Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell

1850 Edition of Wuthering Heights

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Acton Bell, had likewise an unfavourable reception. At this I cannot wonder. The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer's nature could be conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. She had, in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften, or conceal. This well-meant resolution brought on her misconstruction and some abuse, which she bore, as it was her custom to bear whatever was unpleasant, with mild, steady patience. She was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad shade to her brief, blameless life.'

Charlotte Brontë

Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell

1850 Edition of Wuthering Heights

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - published June 1848

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, like its predecessor, suggests the idea of considerable abilities ill applied. There is power, effect, and even nature, though of an extreme kind, in its pages; but there seems in the writer a morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal; so that his level subjects are not very attractive, and the more forcible are displeasing or repulsive, from their gross, physical, or profligate substratum.'

Review in the Spectator - July 1848

'. . . it has been censured with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgement, as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just . . . I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it . . . and if I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.'

Anne Brontë

Preface to the Second Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

'When we lost Emily I thought we had drained the very dregs of our cup of trial but now when I hear Anne cough as Emily coughed, I tremble lest there should be exquisite bitterness yet to taste.'

Charlotte Brontë