The Tenant of Wildfell Hall or poet, but only as the sister of Charlotte and Emily." In 1959, two biographies were published: "Anne Brontë, her life and work" by Ada Harrison and Derek Stanford and "Anne Brontë" by Winifred Gérin. Noting that "The Tenant" was published some ten years before George Eliot's novels, Harrison and Stanford named Anne the "first realist woman writer" in Great Britain. Unlike some early critics, who considered the scenes of debauchery improbable, Harrison and Stanford believed them to be "described in a fashion which Zola might have admired." Winifred Gérin believed Helen Graham to be "one of the first married
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