Anne Brontë
1820-1849 19th century
Ordinary courage, asked for quietly and with no one watching.
Who was Anne Brontë?
The youngest of the Brontë sisters spent five years as a governess in other people's houses, work out of which she wrote Agnes Grey. She then wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a novel about a husband's drinking, which her sister Charlotte found too raw and let go out of print. She nursed her brother Branwell until his death, then tuberculosis took her at twenty-nine, at Scarborough, where she had come to see the sea. Her poems, kept apart from her novels, are almost all prayers.
In their own words
Believe not those who say the upward path is smooth, lest thou shouldst stumble in the way and faint before the truth.
My God, O let me call Thee mine, weak, wretched sinner though I be; my trembling soul would fain be Thine, my feeble faith still clings to Thee.
I hoped that with the brave and strong my portioned task might lie; to toil amid the busy throng with purpose pure and high.
Take courage, Charlotte, take courage.