Anne Bronte is 187 Today
Acton Bell is alive and well in our literature…

…as long as we keep telling the next generation about her and her sisters and their works. As the author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Acton Bell (Anne’s pseudonym) received a variety of reviews while she lived—some were cruel and incendiary. Time has proved her reviewers but specks of dust on the proverbial wind whose names have survived in conjunction with the Brontes.

Anne has persevered.

There is a poignant story of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne seated by the fire at Haworth Parsonage toward the last days of Emily’s life, which were merely months before Anne’s passing. The two younger sisters are weak with illness and Charlotte weighs whether or not to read them a review she has received from the states. They agree to hear it, and so she tells this individual’s opinion of ‘The Bells’. Emily merely smiles it away. Anne gives a little gasp of surprise at the person’s rudeness. But Charlotte’s reaction is the one that moves me. Charlotte looks at her frail sisters and later records her thoughts for history. She wonders what the reviewer would think if he could see the real people, the real women that he has vilified with his callous words, and see them reduced as they are.

I dread what critics will say when it’s my turn with Choices Meant for Gods, but I’m thankful I have no older sister to watch me slowly slipping from life as I hear negativity and accusations against my character flung at me. My younger sister likely won't be reading my reviews to me, either.

But let us use this article to glorify Anne a moment longer.

My favorite poem from Anne is not her best. She has some that will blow you away, and I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Professor (by sister Charlotte) with The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell in the back, or any of the more modern adaptations and compilations of the girls’ poems to see just what treasures they provided us. But on this historic day, I couldn’t help posting here for everyone to see a poem that is believed to have been inspired by a dashing curate by the name of William Weightman…a man Anne never got to profess her love for, as far as we know.

“Oh, they have robbed me of the hope
My spirit held so dear;
They will not let me hear that voice
My soul delights to hear.
They will not let me see that face
I so delight to see;
And they have taken all thy smiles,
And all thy love from me.
Well, let them seize on all they can;
One treasure still is mine,
A heart that loves to think on thee,
And feels the worth of thine.”
--Anne Bronte, circa 1845
(although I would argue for closer to late 1841, early 42)

Happy Birthday to Anne Bronte, January 17, 1820.

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”