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9 of our favourite mothers in classic books

Anne Brontë: the radical sister history overlooked

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Anne Brontë: the radical sister overlooked by history

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Where to start with the Brontës

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Villette

The Brontë Sisters (Boxed Set)

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-clothbound-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Banner&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Clothbound_Series_26_06" target="_blank">Buy 3 classics for £33 on the Penguin Shop</a>

Jane Eyre | Wuthering Heights | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Villette 
 
This stunning box set brings together the Brontë sisters' four greatest novels in beautiful Penguin editions designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
 
From the bleak moors of Wuthering Heights to the Belgian capital in Villette, and the mysterious, gloomy country estates of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, these four novels of passion and struggle show the most famous siblings in literature at the peak of their powers.

Jane Eyre | Wuthering Heights | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Villette 
 
2016, the bicentennial of Charlotte's birth, will be the big anniversary year for the Brontë sisters. To celebrate, we're publishing their four greatest works in this boxed set of lavish, clothbound editions, designed by Penguin's own award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
From the bleak moors of Wuthering Heights to the Belgian capital of Villette, and the mysterious, gloomy country estates of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, these four novels show the most famous siblings in literature at the peak of their powers.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

'Frighteningly up-to-date tale of single motherhood and wife-battering' Independent

The title of "the first feminist novel" has been awarded to other books, perhaps with less justice... a cracking page-turner

A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal

Anne Brontë was born at Thornton in Yorkshire on 17 January 1820, the youngest of six children. That April, the Brontës moved to Haworth, a village on the edge of the moors, where Anne’s father had become the curate. Anne’s mother died soon afterwards. She was four when her older sisters were sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. After that, Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell were taught at home for a few years, and together, they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Anne went to Roe Head School 1835–7. She worked as a governess with the Ingham 
family (1839–40) and with the Robinson family (1840–45). In 1846, along with Charlotte and Emily, she published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She published Agnes Grey in 1847 and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. That year, both Anne’s brother Branwell and her sister Emily died of tuberculosis. A fortnight later, Anne was diagnosed with the same disease. She died in 
Scarborough on 28 May 1849.

'A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal' Daily Mail 
 
 When the mysterious and beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her. As her neighbour Gilbert Markham comes to discover, Helen has painful secrets buried in her past that even his love for her cannot easily overcome. 
 
 'Courageous and controversial' The Times 
 
 **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Agnes Grey

The lesser-known but brilliant novel by the hugely under-appreciated Anne Brontë

Agnes Grey is the most perfect prose narrative of English letters... Simple and beautiful... The only story in English literature in which style, characters, and subject are in perfect keeping

For too long [Anne] has been undervalued as the third-best Bronte. But her fiction, exploring the lamentably still current themes of addiction and domestic violence and the abuse of vulnerable women working away from home, has a vigour and bracing satirical intelligence which places her in the first rank of what is arguably the greatest ever generation of novelists in English

Brontë depicts in detail the isolation inherent in a governess's life, as an educated – but by necessity not too educated – woman trapped in an awkward halfway world between the classes

Discover the lesser-known but brilliant novel by the hugely under-appreciated Anne Brontë. 
 
When Agnes’s father loses the family savings, young Agnes determines to make her own living – as a governess. Working for the Bloomfields, her enthusiasm is soon dampened by isolation and the cruelty of the children in her charge. Agnes hopes for better in her second job, but when the scheming elder daughter Rosalie makes designs on Agnes’s new friend, the kind curate Mr Weston, she feels herself silenced and sidelined. Becoming a governess is one thing, becoming invisible is quite another. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SAMANTHA ELLIS

Penguin Classics

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
A beautiful edition of Anne Brontë's most enduring novel, to accompany her sisters' greatest books in Penguin Clothbound Classics. 
 
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom. 
 
 The Penguin Classics edition of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith and is edited with an introduction and notes by the novelist Stevie Davies.

Anne Brontë was born in 1820, the youngest of the Brontë family. She was educated at home in the Yorkshire village of Howarth, and later held two positions as a governess, difficult experiences which inspired her first novel, Agnes Grey, in 1847. This was followed by The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. Anne died of tuberculosis in 1849, aged twenty-nine.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Vintage Classics Bronte Series)

Part of the Vintage Classics Brontë Series: three sisters, three major novels, beautifully designed

'A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal' Daily Mail 
 
 When the mysterious and beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her. As her neighbour Gilbert Markham comes to discover, Helen has painful secrets buried in her past that even his love for her cannot easily overcome. 
 
 'Courageous and controversial' The Times 
 
 **One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
 VINTAGE CLASSICS BRONTE SERIES - beautiful editions, three iconic stories, three extraordinary women.

A beautiful gift, and perfect gems for bookworms.

Frighteningly up-to-date tale of single motherhood and wife-battering

Anne Brontë was born at Thornton in Bradford on 17 January 1820. Her father was curate of Haworth, Yorkshire, and her mother died when she was a baby, leaving five daughters and one son. Anne was the youngest of the Brontë children. In 1824 Charlotte, Maria, Elizabeth and Emily were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergymen's daughters, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. The children were taught at home from this point on and together they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Anne worked as a governess between 1840 and 1845 and in 1846, along with Charlotte and Emily, published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. After this Anne published Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) before her death on 28 May 1849.

'A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal' Daily Mail 
 
 When the mysterious and beautiful young widow Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall rumours immediately begin to swirl around her. As her neighbour Gilbert Markham comes to discover, Helen has painful secrets buried in her past that even his love for her cannot easily overcome. 
 
 'Courageous and controversial' The Times 
 
 **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
VINTAGE CLASSICS BRONTE SERIES - beautiful editions, three iconic stories, three extraordinary women.

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-penguin-english-library/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_English_Library_Series_26_06">Choose 5 classics for £25 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 
 
'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it' 
 
In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son. Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty and debauchery from which Helen flees, Anne Brontë wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society and her belief in universal redemption, but scandalized readers of the time. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

The youngest of the illustrious Brontë siblings, Anne (1820-1849) wrote poetry and fiction throughout her childhood and went on to become a governess, religious lyric poet and novelist, publishing under the pseudonym Acton Bell. The realist and often ironic tone of her novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is strikingly different from the more romantic style of her sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Anne died of pulmonary tuberculosis a year after the publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, at only twenty-nine years old.

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 
 
'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it' 
 
In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son. Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty and debauchery from which Helen flees, Anne Brontë wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society and her belief in universal redemption, but scandalized readers of the time. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Agnes Grey/The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

The two novels by Anne Bronte in one beautiful volume. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Anne Bronte's second and most celebrated novel. Set in the dramatic northern landscape made familiar by the author's more famous sisters, it tells the story of Helen Graham, a mysterious single woman who rents the semi-ruinous Hall of the title. With a child but no husband, Helen divides the community between those who admire her charm and spirit and those who suspect her morals. Chief among her supporters is a local farmer, Gilbert Markham, who tells her story. 
 
Written before The Tenant, Agnes Grey, based on the author's own experience, explores the position of women in Victorian society through the story of a young woman forced to work as a governess when her father is ruined financially.

Anne Bronte's first novel, offering a compelling insight into the world of the Victorian governess

Anne Brontë's first novel is the compelling autobiographical tale of a young woman desperately seeking a place in the world 
 
When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë's first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë's first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.

Charlotte Brontë

Anne Brontë

Emily Brontë

Rachel Joyce

Juliet Aubrey

Ella Kendrick

Tom Burke

Lesley Sharp

Jemima Rooper

Anna Maxwell-Martin

Full Cast

Emma Fielding

Seven full-cast dramatisations

The complete canon of the Brontë sisters' classic novels, dramatised by bestselling author Rachel Joyce 
 
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
Orphan Jane falls in love with the enigmatic Rochester, but he is concealing a dark secret. 
 
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 
On the bleak Yorkshire moors, Heathcliff and Cathy’s elemental passion runs wild – but their obsession has devastating consequences. 
 
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë 
Determined to make her way in the world, penniless young Agnes Grey becomes a governess. 
 
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 
Gentleman farmer Gilbert Markham is powerfully drawn to Helen Graham, the mysterious resident of Wildfell Hall. 
 
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë 
A poignant tale of friendship, romantic entanglements and turbulent times, set in Yorkshire in 1811. 
 
Villette by Charlotte Brontë 
Leaving England to teach in Villette, Lucy Snowe experiences the pangs of unrequited love. 
 
The Professor by Charlotte Brontë 
As a teacher at a boarding-school in Belgium, William Crimsworth encounters trouble and true love. 
 
Adapted by Rachel Joyce, these radio dramas boast star casts including Ellie Kendrick, Amanda Hale, Tom Burke, Lesley Sharp, Paul Venables, Robert Lonsdale, Anna Maxwell Martin, Ben Batt and Chloe Pirrie. 
 
Also included is a one-hour bonus programme featuring Rachel Joyce in conversation with producer Tracey Neale.

The Bronte BBC Radio Drama Collection

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9 of our favourite mothers in classic books

Anne Brontë: the radical sister overlooked by history

Where to start with the Brontës

The Brontë Sisters Boxed Set

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