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INTRODUCTION

Anne Bronte serves a twofold purpose in the study of what the Brontes
wrote and were. In the first place, her gentle and delicate presence,
her sad, short story, her hard life and early death, enter deeply into
the poetry and tragedy that have always been entwined with the memory of
the Brontes, as women and as writers; in the second, the books and poems
that she wrote serve as matter of comparison by which to test the
greatness of her two sisters. She is the measure of their genius--like
them, yet not with them.

Many years after Anne's death her brother-in-law protested against a
supposed portrait of her, as giving a totally wrong impression of the
'dear, gentle Anne Bronte.' 'Dear' and 'gentle' indeed she seems to have
been through life, the youngest and prettiest of the sisters, with a
delicate complexion, a slender neck, and small, pleasant features.
Notwithstanding, she possessed in full the Bronte seriousness, the Bronte
strength of will. When her father asked her at four years old what a
little child like her wanted most, the tiny creature replied--if it were
not a Bronte it would be incredible!--'Age and experience.' When the
three children started their 'Island Plays' together in 1827, Anne, who
was then eight, chose Guernsey for her imaginary island, and peopled it
with 'Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, and Sir Henry Halford.' She and
Emily were constant companions, and there is evidence that they shared a
common world of fancy from very early days to mature womanhood. 'The
Gondal Chronicles' seem to have amused them for many years, and to have
branched out into innumerable books, written in the 'tiny writing' of
which Mr. Clement Shorter has given us facsimiles. 'I am now engaged in
writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon's Life,' says Anne at
twenty-one. And four years later Emily says, 'The Gondals still flourish
bright as ever. I am at present writing a work on the First War. Anne
has been writing some articles on this and a book by Henry Sophona. We
intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us, which I
am glad to say they do at present.'

That the author of 'Wildfell Hall' should ever have delighted in the
Gondals, should ever have written the story of Solala Vernon or Henry
Sophona, is pleasant to know. Then, for her too, as for her sisters,
there was a moment when the power of 'making out' could turn lonelines