Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë (IPA: [ˈbɹɒntɪ]) (January 17, 1820 – May 28, 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest of the Brontë literary family. She used the pen name Acton Bell.

She was born in the village of Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, England, the last of six children. After the family moved to Haworth in 1821 where her father, Patrick Brontë, was appointed perpetual curate, Anne's mother, Maria Branwell Brontë, died of cancer. In 1825, her two eldest siblings, Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis contracted at the Clergy Daughters' boarding school at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. Much has been written about the influence of these deaths on Brontë and her remaining siblings as well as its possible influence on their writings.

Anne was educated at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield. Between 1839 and 1845 she worked as a governess while writing in her spare time, which she had begun to do in early childhood with her two surviving sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Their first publication, a volume of poetry, was released under a pseudonym in 1846, a year after she began her first novel, Agnes Grey. It was published within a month of Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre and was bound in three volumes with her sister Emily's novel Wuthering Heights. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848, shortly before the deaths of her brother Branwell and her sister Emily in September and December of 1848 respectively.

Anne died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the seaside resort of Scarborough, England, where she had gone to convalesce after a prolonged illness. A blue plaque on the wall of the town's Grand Hotel marks her place of death. She was buried in the town's Saint Mary's Churchyard


Published works
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, published 1846
Agnes Grey, published 1847
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published 1848