Anne Brontë

Agnes Grey

The youngest of the famed Brontë sisters, and usually considered the meekest and least important, Anne, born in 1820, was in fact quite advanced for her time. And, despite her subdued demeanor, she is the only sister who had a sustained career (as a governess). In addition, she wrote a novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which was so disturbing and controversial that her sister Charlotte refused to have it republished after Anne’s death.

From Agnes Grey:

“…when I got free of the town, when my foot was on the sands and my face toward the bright, broad bay…no language can describe the effect of the deep, clear azure of the sky and ocean, the bright morning sunshine on the semi-circular barrier of craggy cliffs surmounted by green swelling hills, and on the smooth, wide sands, and the low rocks out at sea…”

Like her sisters Emily and Charlotte, Anne Brontë grew up impoverished in Yorkshire. At nineteen, Anne became a governess for some impossibly unruly children, and was dismissed when she couldn’t control them. (She made good use of the episode in her first novel, Agnes Grey.) She then found a much more congenial post with a wealthy family near the city of York and her charges became her lifelong friends.

Eventually, however, homesickness brought her back to her family’s house, where she started writing in earnest. Her bestselling second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is about a debauched alcoholic and his strong-willed wife. In Victorian England, the heroine’s bid for independence was not only scandalous, but illegal.

Sadly, Anne was unable to write much more. It is said that her grief at Emily’s death may have hastened her own. She succumbed to tuberculosis at age twenty-nine.

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. A woman makes the unconventional decision to leave her abusive husband, a book framed by Anne’s belief in universal salvation (the doctrine that all sinful souls will ultimately be reconciled to God because of divine love and mercy).

Brandy Eggnog

In Agnes Grey, Sir Thomas Ashby, husband of Lady Ashby, formerly Miss Murray, drinks “bottles of wine and glasses of brandy.”

1¼ oz. milk

1 oz. brandy

1/2 oz. simple syrup*

1 egg yolk

Ground cinnamon

*Simple syrup is equal parts sugar and water. Boil until sugar dissolves and allow to cool.

Pour all ingredients except ground cinnamon into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a stemmed cocktail glass. Dust cinnamon on top and serve. Serves 1.