The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to her son, while Anne was governess to her daughters. Du Maurier concluded that in childhood years Branwell "shared in his sister's writings; somehow he must continue to live out their characters in the world of his imagination." In her early essays on Anne Brontë's novels and poetry Muriel Spark praised her proficiency. She believed that Charlotte was a "harsh sister to Anne" and "had she taken an impartial view of "Wildfell Hall", she must have discovered its merits." Despite notion that Charlotte and Emily were "more gifted," Spark stated that "[Anne's] writings none the less take no mean place
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Hall", and remember that the writers were two retiring, solitary, consumptive girls! Books, coarse even for men, coarse in language and coarse in conception, the coarseness apparently of violence and uncultivated men – turn out to be the productions of two girls living almost alone, filling their loneliness with quiet studies, and writing their books from a sense of duty, hating the pictures they drew, yet drawing them with austere conscientiousness! There is matter here for the moralist or critic to speculate on". A great success on initial publication, the novel was almost forgotten in subsequent years. When it became