On January 17, 1820, Anne Bronte, the youngest of the six
Bronte children was born in Yorkshire, England. Their mother died when Anne was
still an infant, and the children were left largely to their own devices in the
bleak parsonage in Haworth, a remote village in Yorkshire, where their father
was a clergyman. Anne's four older sisters all went to boarding school, but the
two eldest died, and Emily and Charlotte returned home. The girls, along with
their brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate
stories about mythical lands. Anne Bronte was educated at home and worked as a
governess from 1841 to 1845, during which time Emily and Charlotte went to
Brussels to study school administration with the hopes of opening a school in
Haworth. The school idea failed, but another project took its place: poetry. In
1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written, and the three sisters
discovered they had all been secretly writing verse. They self-published Poems
by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846. Although the book sold only two
copies, the sisters continued writing. Charlotte's Jane Eyre appeared in
1847, an instant success. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes
Grey were printed later that year. Anne's next novel, The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall (1848), explored the effects of a young man's unchecked
debauchery. Anne died of tuberculosis in 1849, at the age of 29.
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