Anne Brontë (January 17, 1820 – May 28, 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest of the Brontë literary family.
She was born in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the last of six children. Anne’s mother, Maria Branwell Brontë, died of cancer a year later in 1821, after the family had moved to Haworth where her father, Patrick Brontë, was appointed perpetual curate. In 1825 her two eldest siblings, Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis contracted at the Clergy Daughters’ boarding school at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire and much has been written about the influence of these deaths on her and her siblings and its possible influence on their later writings.
Anne was educated at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Huddersfield and between 1839 and 1845 worked as a governess while in her spare time continued to write, which she had begun to do in early childhood with her two surviving sisters, Charlotte Bronte and Emily Bronte. Their first publication, a volume of poetry, was released pseudonymously in 1846 a year after she began her first novel, Agnes Grey which was published together in three volumes with her sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, within a month of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848 shortly before the deaths of her brother Branwell and her sister Emily in September and December of 1848.
Anne herself died at the seaside resort of Scarborough, England, where she had gone to convalesce after a prolonged illness. She was buried there at Saint Mary’s Churchyard.