The Tenant of Wildfell Hall The Tenant of Wildfell Hall The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events connected with the meeting of his wife. A mysterious young widow arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to write; still less has it been a pleasant training which could teach an author such awful facts, or give courage to write them. The fault of the book is coarseness--not merely that coarseness of subject which will be the stumbling-block of most readers, and which makes it utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls..." Despite this, he believed that: "[English] society owes thanks, not sneers, to those who dare to shew her the image of her own ugly, hypocritical visage". "Spectator" wrote: ""The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", like its predecessor ["Jane Eyre"], suggests the idea of