Anne Brontë

Gilbert Markham is fascinated by Helen Graham, the beautiful and enigmatic woman who has recently moved into Wildfell Hall. He is swift to befriend her, but when local gossip calls Helen’s character and behaviour into question, Gilbert begins to repent of his congeniality. It is only when Helen presents Gilbert with her diary and instructs him to read it that...

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...

This volume completes the acclaimed Clarendon Edition of the Novels of the Brontës. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë's second (and last) novel, was published in June 1848, less than a year before her death. It is the sombre account of the breakdown of a marriage in the face of alcoholism and infidelity. Writing with a power not usually...

'He looked up wistfully in my face, and gravely asked – "Mamma, why are you so wicked?"' The mysterious new tenant of Wildfell Hall has a dark secret. But as the captivated Gilbert Markham will discover, it is not the story circulating among local gossips. Living under an assumed name, Helen Graham is the estranged wife of a dissolute rake,...