Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë (1820 to 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest of the Brontë siblings and the younger sister of Charlotte, Emily and Branwell. She is known for two novels, Agnes Grey of 1847 and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall of 1848, the second of which is often counted among the first feminist novels for its account of a wife who leaves her abusive husband to protect their son. She grew up at Haworth in Yorkshire, worked as a governess for several families, and in 1846 joined her sisters in a shared book of poems published under the pseudonyms Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. She died at twenty nine, most likely of pulmonary tuberculosis. After her death Charlotte discouraged republication of the second novel, which damaged her reputation for a time, but both books are now regarded as classics of English literature.