Agnes Grey (Arcturus Classics) - Softcover

‘Patience, Firmness, and Perseverance were my only weapons.’

Agnes Grey (1847) was Anne Bronte’s first novel and a poignant account of her own experience as a struggling governess, obliged to earn her living in one of the few ways open to an educated Victorian girl. Agnes is not a romantic heroine such as those we find in the books of Anne’s sisters Charlotte and Emily, but her story paints a more realistic picture of what happens when an intelligent, sensitive young woman has to endure months of isolation and frustration in an unsympathetic household that is not her home.

Charlotte Bronte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48) and Anne (1820-49) were daughters of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, a Church of England clergyman born in Northern Ireland. They had two other sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, and a brother, Branwell. Their mother died in 1821. Educated largely by their father's library at Haworth parsonage, the sisters worked as governesses and teachers, Charlotte spending some time in Brussels, accompanied on occasion by Emily. They published their books under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, and did not reveal their true identities until July 1848. Emily died of tuberculosis, followed by Anne eight months later. Charlotte began to move in literary circles, meeting Thackeray, Harriet Martineau and her future biographer Elizabeth Gaskell. In 1854 she married her father's curate, but died nine months later in early pregnancy.