The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in nineteenth-century literature." However, some forty years later, in introduction to "The Essence of the Brontës", Spark radically changed her views on Anne: "I do not now agree with my former opinion on Anne Brontë's value as a writer. I think her works are not good enough to be considered in any serious context of the nineteenth century novel or that there exists any literary basis for comparison with the brilliant creative works of Charlotte and Emily... She was a writer who could 'pen' a story well enough; she was a literary equivalent of a decent water-colourist." Only in the
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have taken a place beside Jane Austen, perhaps even a higher place." He declared that "The Tenant" had "the rarest literary quality of heat," and blamed Charlotte Brontë for her youngest sister's loss of reputation. Only in 1929 the first dedicated biography of Anne came out – it was a short monograph by W. T. Hale, where he stated that in the "ideas and situations," presented in "The Tenant", Anne "was way ahead of her times" and that "she rushed in where Thackeray dared not thread." However, Hale believed that Anne "will never be known to fame either as novelist