Agnes Grey

by Anne Brontë

Overview

Concerned for her family’s financial welfare and eager to expand her own horizons, Agnes Grey takes up the position of governess, the only respectable employment for an unmarried woman in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Agnes cannot anticipate the hardship, humiliation, and loneliness that await her in the brutish Bloomfield and haughty Murray households. Drawn from Anne Brontë’s own experiences, Agnes Grey depicts the harsh conditions and class snobbery that governesses were often forced to endure. As Barbara A. Suess writes in her Introduction, “Brontë provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting.”

Author Biography:

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788867442461
Publisher:	Kitabu
Publication date:	05/08/2014
Series:	Evergreen
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	571 KB

About the Author

Anne Brontë (1820-1849) published Agnes Grey in 1847 and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. Samantha Ellis is a playwright, a journalist, and the author of How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading too Much.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Anne Brontë: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

Agnes Grey

Appendix A: Other Writings by and about Anne Brontë

• 1. From Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey (letter, 15 April 1839)
• 2. From Anne Brontë, Diary Paper (30 July 1841)
• 3. From Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey (letter, 7 August 1841)
• 4. From Anne Brontë, Diary Paper (31 July 1845)
• 5. Anne Brontë, “The Bluebell” (22 August 1840)
• 6. Acton Bell [Anne Brontë], “Appeal” (28 August 1840)
• 7. Anne Brontë, “Lines Written at [Thorp] Green” (19 August 1841)
• 8. Acton Bell [Anne Brontë], “Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day” (30 December 1842)
• 9. From Ellen Nussey, “Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë” (1871)
• 10. From Currer Bell [Charlotte Brontë], “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” (1850)

Appendix B: Contemporary and Early Reviews and Responses

• 1. From Spectator (18 December 1847)
• 2. From Henry F. Chorley, Athenaeum (25 December 1847)
• 3. From Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper (15 January 1848)
• 4. From New Monthly Magazine (January 1848)
• 5. From Atlas (22 January 1848)
• 6. From Portland [Maine] Transcript (5 January 1850)
• 7. From Graham’s Magazine [Philadelphia] (1 February 1850)
• 8. From W.C. Roscoe, “Miss Brontë,” National Review (July 1857)
• 9. From Mary Augusta Ward, “Introduction,” The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1900)
• 10. From George Moore, Conversations in Ebury Street (1910)

Appendix C: The Governess in Society

• 1. Maria Smith Abdy, “A Governess Wanted,” Metropolitan Magazine (May 1836)
• 2. From George Stephen, The Guide to Service: The Governess (1844)
• 3. From “Hints on the Modern Governess System,” Fraser’s Magazine (November 1844)

Appendix D: Humane Treatment of Animals

• 1. From Isaac Watts, A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth (1725)
• 2. From Thomas Erskine, Speech … On … Preventing … Cruelty to Animals (1809)
• 3. From “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” Times (17 June 1824)
• 4. From Sarah Burdett, The Rights of Animals (1839)
• 5. From Charlotte Elizabeth [Tonna], Kindness to Animals (c. 1845)
• 6. C.S., “The Lost Nestlings,” A Mother’s Lessons in Kindness to Animals (c. 1862)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"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." —George Moore

From the Publisher