Publisher Description
“The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” is Anne Brontë’s wildly successful and best-known novel. Written in 1848 under the pseudonym “Acton Bell” (each of the Brontë sisters wrote under pen names), it proved to be the most popular book written by the three sisters during their lifetimes.
It tells the story of Helen Graham, a young woman who is courted by and marries the spoiled and self-involved Arthur Huntingdon, a charming suitor but a disastrous and cruel husband. Told through Helen’s diary entries, the reader is led through her attempts to escape this torturous union as she struggles to raise their only son.
Both controversial in its frankness and immensely popular among the reading public, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” would sadly prove to be Anne’s final book (she died the year after it appeared in print). It is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
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About Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë (1820–1849) was born in Yorkshire, the youngest of six children. Her mother died within a year of her birth, and her two eldest siblings died four years later. The Brontë children were raised in an isolated Yorkshire parsonage, where they thrived in fantasy worlds that drew on their voracious reading of Byron, Scott, Shakespeare, and Gothic fiction. Anne’s first novel, Agnes Grey, was published in a volume together with Emily’s Wuthering Heights in 1847. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall reflects her brother Branwell’s gradual descent into alcoholism, drug addiction, and madness. Both Branwell and Emily died of tuberculosis in 1848; Anne succumbed to the same illness in 1849.