This volume completes the acclaimed Clarendon Edition of the Novels of the Brontes. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte's second (and last) novel, was published in June 1848, less than a year before her death. It is the sombre account of the breakdown of a marriage in the face of alcoholism and infidelity. Writing with a power not usually associated with the youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne portrays the decline of an aristocratic
husband whose drunken excesses and domestic violence force his loving wife into a reluctant rebellion.
The novel enjoyed a modest success that led its publisher, the unscrupulous T. C. Newby, to issue a `Second Edition' less than two months later. The present volume offers a text based on the collation of the first edition with the second (really a re-issue of the first, with a few corrections). The introduction details the work's composition and early printing history, including its first publication in America; and the text is fully annotated. Appendices record the substantive variants in the
first English and American editions, and discuss the author's belief in the doctrine of universal salvation.
There are so many amazing things about this book and I would never be able to give anything Bronte lower than 3 stars. But Gilbert just... sucked. I wish Helen had been the narrator through the whole thing.
I can definitely recognize and understand why this was a revolutionary book when it came out. The debate Helen and Gilbert had towards the beginning about how parents raised boys vs. how they raised girls was on point (and unfortunately still relevant 168 years later).
