The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, first published in 1848 under the pseudonym of Acton Bell, was condemned by critics at the time. Acton was the pseudonym of Anne Bronte (1820-1849), a clergyman's daughter living in Yorkshire. Her older sisters Charlotte and Emily were the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively. The three had concealed their identities, aware that in the mid-nineteenth century female authors would struggle to have their work accepted seriously. However, the use of pseudonyms actually increased the level of curiosity, rumour-mongering and eventually the myth-makers, who were to revel in the concept of the literary sisterhood, isolated from the world but producing passionate work. Charlotte Bronte was born in Yorkshire in 1816. She was the third of six children, two years older than Emily, and four years older than Anne. After schooling she worked as a governess, and then taught in Brussels. In 1846 she returned to England and published poems by her and her younger sisters, under the pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. In 1847 she completed Jane Eyre, which was published to considerable acclaim. Both her younger sisters also wrote novels. Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne penned Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Charlotte married in 1854 and died in 1855. Emily Bronte was born in 1818, the daughter of a curate. She was the most enigmatic of the three famous novelist sisters. Losing her mother very early in her life and following her elder sister Charlotte to school, she found life away from the Haworth parsonage extremely hard. Her time as a teacher at Law Hill School near Halifax was similarly trying. Homesickness drew her back to the moors and the life of a reclusive author. It was there, in 1848, that she died of tuberculosis just months after her brother Branwell. Few of her papers survive and her reputation is based on a few surviving poems and one novel, Wuthering Heights.
