The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne Brontë

Feb 2017 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

The novel of love, betrayal, and a woman’s longing for independence universally acclaimed as Anne Brontë’s greatest work.

When the widow Helen Graham arrives at Wildfell Hall with her young son, Gilbert Markham is intrigued by her beauty and mystery. But as scandalous rumors begin to circulate, Gilbert fears his affection may be misplaced. So that he can know the truth about her, Helen gives Gilbert her diary. From it, he learns that Helen Graham is no widow at all, but a woman named Helen Huntington, who has fled from her cruel and debauched husband in order to protect her son.
 
First published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was both a popular phenomenon and a bold challenge to Victorian morals. Its sympathetic portrayal of a woman who chooses to leave her husband—an act that violated English law—made it one of the first feminist novels in the English language.
 
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
 

Ratings and reviews

This edition is incomplete. the opening letter to Jack Halford, chapter headings and many paragraphs are omitted here. I strongly advice to seek another edition. The free one here is complete. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is not your average love story. It's a story of a young woman with a child, who runs away from her husband and finds true love when she least expects it. However, the major theme of the novel is failed marriage. Anne Bronte bravely explores the forbidden (at that time) ground of married life and makes a strikingly modern novel. Despite being written in a different style from her sisters, The Tenant of WIldfell Hall deserves to be as well known and widely read as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

About the author

Anne Brontë (1820–1849) was an English poet and novelist—the youngest of the famous Brontë sisters. Throughout her brief career, she developed a reputation as an unwaveringly realistic writer in an era when candor was uncommon. Brontë was first published with her sisters under a pseudonym, with the poetry collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell in 1846. She then wrote the semiautobiographical Agnes Grey and followed that with the daring Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Soon after the deaths of her sister Emily and her brother, Branwell, Brontë succumbed to tuberculosis and died.