Anne Brontë

British novelist and poet Anne Brontë, the youngest of the Brontë siblings was born January 17, 1820 in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire, England. A year after she was born, her mother Maria Branwell Brontë, died of cancer.

While she was a child her two eldest siblings, Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis and much has been written about the influence of these deaths on her and her siblings and how it may have affected their later writings.

In her writing she was using pseudonym "Acton Bell". Shortly after the deaths of her brother Branwell and sister Emily in the winter of 1848, Anne Bronte died in May 28, 1849, after a prolonged illness. Two of her sisters, Charlotte and Emily, were also authors and poets.

Books credited to Acton Bell: Agnes Gray, published 1847, and Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published 1848.

"All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man." ~

~ Anne Brontë

Related Links:

Anne Bronte Poems

Selection from Poems by Acton Bell

The Brontë Sisters

Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte

Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell

Charlotte Bronte

Emily Bronte

Editor's Preface to the New Edition of 'Wuthering Heights'

Education Pages