The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Description

'...it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband I HATE him!' Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, defends a woman's right to flee a disastrous marriage; a daring subject that her sister Charlotte feared at the time was 'an entire mistake'. When the attractive and mysterious Helen Graham moves into Wildfell Hall with her young son and sets up her artist's studio, she arouses village curiosity as well as the amorous interest of farmer Gilbert Markham. Gilbert finds Helen's resolute independence impossible to understand, until she allows him to read her diary and her troubled past is revealed.

Born on the 17th of January 1820, Anne Bronte was one of six children and the youngest of the Bronte sisters. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was inspired by five years spent working as a governess, and proved itself a commercial success. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne's second and final novel, was published the following summer in 1848. Anne died shortly after, on the 28th of May 1849, while convalescing from tuberculosis at Scarborough.