This is the definitive edition of the poems by the leading modern editor. It makes the work fully accessible to all.
This new edition is essential to understanding Anne Brontë''s life, her entire literary works, and her relationships with her sisters.
Anne Brontë`s poems have in the past been overshadowed by the marvellous productions of her elder sister Emily, whose leadership she accepted for many years during her youth. In commenting on both the novels and the poetry, however, the increasingly different aims of the two are only just now being clearly recognised. Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are not both simply `Gothic novels` and the poetic work of Anne and Emily cannot be subsumed under the heading ''Gondal''.
As this editor shows, we have to grasp how different Anne Brontë`s life experiences were from those of her sisters. Charlotte and Emily shared a bedroom in their childhood (indeed, a bed). They made up their plays which Charlotte called `strange`. Anne slept with her Aunt Elizabeth, a lively, intelligent woman coming from the Wesleyan hotspot of Cornwall. She was steeped in Wesleyan Methodism and had nothing to do with Calvinism. Elizabeth inducted Anne into Evangelical Christianity, a view congenial to Patrick, Anne`s father. Without understanding Anne`s continuous and heartfelt attachment to this mode of thought, feeling and action, we cannot understand her work. As a Methodist, Elizabeth ins
