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With a specially commissioned Introduction and Notes by Kathryn White, Assistant Curator/Librarian of the Bront Museum, Haworth, Yorkshire.

‘The name of governess, I soon found, was a mere mockery … my pupils had no more notion of obedience than a wild, unbroken colt’ When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes’s enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë’s first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society. This edition also includes Charlotte Brontë’s memoir of her sisters, theBiographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell. Angeline Goreau examines Anne Brontë’s complex relationship with her sisters and her unhappy career as a governess as influences in writing Agnes Grey.

The story of a woman who leaves her abusive, dissolute husband, and who must then support herself and her young son. By challenging the prevailing morals of the time the novel caused a critic to pronounce it ''utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls''. It is considered to be one of the first feminist novels.Anne Bront� (17 January 1820 - 28 May 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Bront� literary family. The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Bront� lived most of her life with her family at the remote village of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels: Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847; her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's creative life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was only twenty-nine years old. Anne Bront� is often overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre, and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style. Her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature.

Through a series of letters, Gilbert Markham, a wealthy farmer, discusses his love affair with Helen Graham, the wife of an abusive husband. After an altercation with another man who is vying for Helen's affections, Gilbert comes across Helen's journal and is deeply moved by the woman's harrowing past.

The story of a woman who leaves her abusive, dissolute husband, and who must then support herself and her young son. By challenging the prevailing morals of the time the novel caused a critic to pronounce it ''utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls''. It is considered to be one of the first feminist novels.

Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Bront� (writing under the pen name of Acton Bell), first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850.[1] The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Bront� suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Bront�'s own experiences as a governess for five years. Like her sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre, it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman.The choice of central character allows Anne to deal with issues of oppression and abuse of women and governesses, isolation and ideas of empathy. An additional theme is the fair treatment of animals. Agnes Grey also mimics some of the stylistic approaches of bildungsromans, employing ideas of personal growth and coming to age, but representing a character who in fact does not gain in virtue.The Irish novelist George Moore praised Agnes Grey as "the most perfect prose narrative in English letters, and went so far as to compare Anne's prose to that of Jane Austen. Modern critics have made more subdued claims admiring Agnes Grey with a less overt praise of Bront�'s work than Moore.

Careful selection of 47 poems by talented literary siblings. Twenty-three poems by Emily (including "Faith and Despondency" and "No Coward Soul is Mine"), 14 poems by Anne (including "The Penitent" and "if This Be All") and 10 poems by Charlotte (including "Presentiment" and "Passion"). Reproduced from standard editions. Publisher’s Note.