The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the general dismissiveness of the late 19th–early 20th century critics, Anne still had supporters in literary circles. Esther Alice Chadwick, while believing that Anne lacked "the fire and passion of her sisters" and was "inferior" to them, claimed that she is still "a character well worth studying." Chadwick also considered "The Tenant" to be "probably the first temperance novel." George Moore, an Anglo-Irish writer, was an admirer Anne Brontë's novels; he believed that Anne "had all the qualities of Jane Austen and other qualities," that "she could write with heat," and if "she had lived ten years longer she would
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which to take a comprehensive view of humanity and the novelist who confines his observation to them is not likely to produce any lasting impression except of horror and disgust". "Sharpe's London Magazine", believing "despite reports to the contrary" that "[no] woman could have written such a work", warned its readers, especially ladies, against reading "The Tenant". While acknowledging "the powerful interest of the story", "the talent with which it is written" and an "excellent moral", it argued that "like the fatal melody of the Syren's song, its very perfections render it more dangerous, and therefore more carefully to be