Certainly it was also fortuitous that Patrick was an author himself, a writer not only (necessarily) of weekly sermons, but a published poet and essayist of some genuine local repute. They read widely in the standard works of English literature; they subscribed to leading periodicals; and they had access to a lending library an easy walk away in the next town, Keighley. Anne could not have known this at first, but she was receiving excellent training to be a governess, learning music, drawing, and even Latin along with more general studies in literature, history, and geography.

Another key event in their lives was the seemingly inauspicious arrival of a set of toy soldiers purchased by Patrick in 1826. The eldest children, Charlotte and Branwell, apparently soon began transforming the figures into favorite semi-historical characters and inventing plays and tales involving them; the youngest, Emily and Anne, were brought in on the game as well. The writings developed over time into a remarkable series of extended prose manuscripts relating to a fictional kingdom called Glasstown, which the children located at the mouth of the Niger in Africa. Eventually, Emily and Anne split off to form a rival kingdom in the North Pacific known as Gondal. Here they imitated and wove together elements from all of their reading—newspapers and magazines, histories, poetry (including George Gordon, Lord Byron), and fiction (principally Sir Walter Scott)—in a series of interlinked narratives and poems.

Clearly, this was not an unhappy family, despite many adversities, yet there was one impediment to any prospect. Patrick Brontë was fortunate in his rise from humble circumstances to become a gentleman in England, yet he had few financial resources beyond his stipend as perpetual curate at Haworth. Moreover, his income must cease with his demise; and, with a family as large as his, he had no opportunity to save in order to provide a professional or university education for Branwell or dowries for the girls. No doubt from an early age all the children were aware of the fragility of their social and economic standing, and all were driven to a greater or lesser degree to establish some security against their father’s inevitable death. (It was sadly ironic that he was to outlive all of his children by many years.)

Anne’s character seems to have been distinct from a relatively early age. Anecdotes about her as a child show her as tenacious and determined—qualities that were tested later in her service as a governess. As adolescents and young adults, her sisters and brother—whatever the reasons—had difficulty settling upon any situation or project for very long. Branwell in particular drifted from career to career and position to position without success. Anne alone appears to have had the ability to adapt to her circumstances, beginning in 1835, when she was sent to replace Emily at Roe Head School, where Charlotte was serving as a teacher. She stayed until 1837, when illness (perhaps the first active episode of TB infection) forced her return to Haworth.

It was during this illness that she appears to have undergone a spiritual crisis over the nature of salvation. Anne’s religious devotion cannot be doubted—her faith informs almost all of her poetry, which is largely autobiographical, and much of her fiction as well. Anne took from her father (and probably from her Aunt Branwell’s Methodism) a firm evangelical cast of mind, that is, a belief in the immediacy of Christ’s message, a desire to transform one’s whole life into an act of worship, and a commitment to good works. In her illness, she was attended by the Reverend James La Trobe, a Moravian bishop, and probably at this time she adopted (or confirmed) her universalist convictions (shared by Charlotte). This was a belief of universal salvation—in other words, that every soul was potentially capable of good, and that God allowed even the most abject sinner multiple opportunities to repent, to accept Christ, and to be saved.

She was at the time of her leaving Roe Head just about to turn eighteen, but despite her place as the “baby” of the family, she evidently was quite determined to go off and earn her own keep. The family record was not encouraging: At this time, Emily had only recently returned from a short engagement as a governess; Charlotte had several times gone off to teach and come back as well. What was it, then, that drove Anne at this age to seek employment as a governess? Patrick now was sixty-two, quite an elderly man by the standards of the day, and with three daughters and a wayward son in his household, he must have worried ceaselessly about the future. Anne seems to have been gifted (or cursed) with a premature sense of responsibility to her family, no doubt reinforced by her evangelical inclination. Her decision expressed her determination to make her life meaningful in all ways; a life devoted to work not only removed her as a cause of worry to her family but allowed her to do the work of God in the world in her own right.

Her first family (found through a distant connection) were the Inghams of Blake Hall, Mirfield, supposedly the originals of the Bloomfields of Agnes Grey. The children, apparently, were both dull and undisciplined, and it would seem that Anne was never given the authority to reign them in; she was summarily dismissed at the end of the year. At home there was, perhaps, the distraction of what may have been affectionate attentions from her father’s curate, William Weightman, though there is now no way to know how serious he might have been or how she may have responded. But even if she were attracted to him, Anne was never one to shirk responsibility: By May 1840 she was on her way to the family of Reverend Edmund Robinson at Thorp Green, near York, where she would remain until the summer of 1845. (In any event, Weightman died suddenly in 1842 without their relations having advanced greatly in the interim.)

At the beginning no happier there than in her first post, over the years Anne seems to have become close to the Robinson children, and she remained in contact with the elder girls even after she left the house. But her last year was clouded by yet another of Branwell’s employment disasters. Her brother had come to Thorp Green as a tutor to the son (presumably on Anne’s recommendation) in January 1843. But by the summer of 1845, Branwell apparently convinced himself that he was in love with Mrs.