The Tenant of Wildfell Hall last decades of the 20th century "The Tenant" started to get critical acclaim. Elizabeth Langland in her 1989 monograph "Anne Brontë: The Other One" said: "It is worth pausing briefly to reflect on what might have been Anne’s fate had "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" been re-published with "Agnes Grey" so that critics could re-acquaint themselves with Anne’s greater novel and so that critics could take that opportunity to measure the substantial artistic growth between the two novels." Langland argued that the heroines in Anne's novels influenced those of Charlotte, and named Anne among the first women writers to adopt
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which to take a comprehensive view of humanity and the novelist who confines his observation to them is not likely to produce any lasting impression except of horror and disgust". "Sharpe's London Magazine", believing "despite reports to the contrary" that "[no] woman could have written such a work", warned its readers, especially ladies, against reading "The Tenant". While acknowledging "the powerful interest of the story", "the talent with which it is written" and an "excellent moral", it argued that "like the fatal melody of the Syren's song, its very perfections render it more dangerous, and therefore more carefully to be