Anne Brontë

Written when women-and workers generally-had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteenth century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess's life. At the Bloomfields and later the Murrays, she suffers under...

When the beautiful widow Helen Graham moves into the derelict Wildfell Hall with her son, she arouses great curiosity from the local villagers. Gilbert Markham is a handsome young farmer who finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Helen and encourages her to open up to him. But even the sympathetic Markham is unprepared for the secrets Helen will ultimately reveal, secrets which the repressed Victorian society would rather bury forever.