Novel debate concentrating on questions around the moral soundness of the modern novel. Questions about artistic integrity, as well as aesthetics, including, for example. the idea of "art for art's sake", proposed by writers like Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, were also important. Major British writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy were influenced by the romance genre tradition of the novel, which had been revitalized during the Romantic period. The Brontë sisters were notable mid-19th-century authors in this tradition, with Anne Brontë's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights". Publishing at
Helen Graham (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) America as she planned before, Helen, with help from her brother, Frederick, finds a secret refuge at Wildfell Hall. She lives there under an assumed name: Helen Graham (Graham is her mother's maiden name). There she meets Gilbert Markham, a young farmer who falls in love with her. When he begins to believe the filthy gossip that is spread about her, she gives him her diary. From it Gilbert learns than Helen is a runaway wife. Soon after this, Helen goes back to Grassdale Manor where she discovers that Huntingdon has fallen from his horse (in a state of inebriation)