SOURCE: "Agnes Grey, " in Twin Spirits: The Novels of Emily and Anne Brontë, Peter Owen, 1990, pp. 79-91.

In the following essay, Liddell compares Brontë's development with that of her fictional counterpart, Agnes Grey.

In Emily [Brontë's] birthday paper of 1845 (written a day late, on 31 July) Anne wrote: 'I have begun the third volume of Passages from the Life of an Individual. I wish I had finished it.' This is reasonably conjectured to have been her novel Agnes Grey, which was sent to the publisher a year later, or an earlier draft of it.

Anne is profoundly depressed: 'I for my part cannot well be flatter or older in mind than I am now.' She has recently returned to Haworth, thankful to have left her position as governess with the Robinson family at Thorp Green, but deeply distressed by Branwell's dismissal from the position of...