The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall - Wordsworth Classics

Product Description

With an Introduction & Notes by Peter Merchant, Canterbury Christchurch University College.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful & sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion & betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon, the mysterious ‘tenant’ of the title, & her dissolute, alcoholic husb&. Defying convention, Helen leaves her husband to protect their young son from his father’s influence, & 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 Brontë’s second novel was criticised for being ‘coarse’ & ‘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 Brontë’s style is bold, naturalistic & passionate, & 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 Brontë family.

This newly reset text is taken from a copy of the 1848 second edition in the Library of the Brontë Parsonage Museum & has been edited to correct known errors in that edition.