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.
I thought I would read Anne Brontë before reading Charlotte Brontë; Why? Because I didn’t want to go with the most popular of the three; before exploring Anne and Emily. I loved Wuthering Heights for its unexpected story, with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I was secretly hoping from more of that. But instead I was presented with a book that while it with very much a Victorian novel; it did push topics, like Divorce, Abuse, Alcoholism, Feminism, Adultery and many more issues to do with morels.
I’ve heard this to be one of the better books on Marriage, Love, Social Realism, Piety, Alcoholism, Status and identity of its time and while I do agree. I sometimes felt as if the story dragged on more than it really had to. I know many books in the 1800’s like to go off in many directions without moving the story forward, and I’m fine with that; if the story was interesting and the plot wasn’t predictable. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a beautifully written book and I highly recommend it to everyone, I just think predictability stopped me from loving this book.
Reading updates
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23 April, 2011:
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23 April, 2011:
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