The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (The Penguin English Library)

by Anne Brontë (Author)

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  Paperback
  2007

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  This volume completes the acclaimed Clarendon Edition of the Novels of the Brontes. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall , Anne Bronte'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 associated with the youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne portrays the decline of an aristocratic husband whose drunken excesses and domestic violence force his loving wife into a reluctant rebellion.

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  1942

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  $7.05

  With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant, Canterbury Christchurch University College The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon, the mysterious 'tenant' of the title, and her dissolute, alcoholic husband. Defying convention, Helen leaves her husband to protect their young son from his father's influence, and earns her own living as an artist. Whilst in hiding at Wildfell Hall, she encounters Gilbert Markham, who falls in love with her. On its first publication in 1848, Anne Bronte's second novel was criticised for being 'coarse' and 'brutal'. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall challenges the social conventions of the early nineteenth century in a strong defence of women's rights in the face of psychological abuse from their husbands. Anne Bronte's style is bold, naturalistic and passionate, and this novel, which her sister Charlotte considered 'an entire mistake', has earned Anne a position in English literature in her own right, not just as the youngest member of the Bronte family. This newly reset text is taken from a copy of the 1848 second edition in the Library of the Bronte Parsonage Museum and has been edited to correct known errors in that edition.