Anne Brontë: The Other One

by Elizabeth Langland

A study of Anne Bronte dealing with her life and influences, this text forms part of a series which is designed to help in the reassessment of women's writing in the light of today's understanding.

Genres: Biography, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Elizabeth Langland is a scholar of Victorian literature and culture, with expertise in women and women's literature, critical and feminist theory, theory of the novel and cultural studies.

Reviews

[Moira]

A slim little gem of a book. Carefully reasoned and thoughtfully written, and especially impressive since it was written in 1989 well before some of the more recent and important Bronte scholarly work by women (Barker, Miller, Smith). Langland spends as much time on Anne's poems - her "pillars of witness" - as she does on the two novels, and refreshingly refuses to reduce either Agnes Grey to autobiography or Wildfell Hall to the portrait of Branwell Charlotte claimed it was (indeed, as Charlotte's own publisher pointed out, Huntingdon's resemblance to Mr Rochester is striking). Her judicious analysis throws more light on Anne's life and work than some much thicker volumes (The Brontes, The Bronte Myth). She also refreshingly refrains from the Charlotte-bashing some revisionist critics have indulged in, while justly criticizing Charlotte's rewriting and suppression of Anne's work, and showing clearly how Charlotte underestimated her sister's talent and misunderstood her personality. This book's only real fault is that it is too short, and, having been printed in China, there are occasional proofreading errors or poor pagination. In a good world, the author would be given the opportunity to revise, enlarge and update her work, but it is a pleasure to read regardless.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

There is, definitely, some interesting stuff in here - I wouldn't be rating it so high otherwise. But I also think the fact that this is such an early attempt to give Anne Brontë means it suffers somewhat; I'm not particularly interested in litcrit that feels like it's trying to prove that its subject is a great artist - I wouldn't be reading about them if I didn't at least think they were interesting! - and there are tones of that here. I also wasn't keen on the biographical section (it was possibly a bit too speculative for my taste). Plus, and this is a minor point compared to the others - Langland makes the claim for Anne Brontë that she's the first female author to write from a first person female perspective (while this is qualified at the end as her being ONE of the first, initially it's not) which is verifiably untrue; even if we're going to ignore more obscure examples, she mentions Frances Burney in the same section and I don't know what Evelina is if it's not a novel (predominantly) from a first person female perspective! It's such a minor slipup but it's a shame because it does shake my trust in what a literary critic has to say about the uniqueness of their subject if they get an easily verifiable fact like that wrong.

[Katie R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography was the best of the ones I had-- it was almost fiction in the way it read. It was analytical, but it did start with information on Anne's life, so I did have some background!

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this monograph in the clearance section of a bookstore. Sad really because it's an excellent study.
Anne Bronte wrote beautiful poetry.

[Edwin John Moorhouse Marr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, but makes some extremely bold claims that are easily disprovable.