Publisher's Synopsis
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is one of the great classics of English literature from the Victorian Era. It was the most popular and the most widely read of all the books by the Bronte sisters during the lifetime of the author. However, after Anne Bronte died, it became not as well known as the other works by the Bronte sisters, mainly because after Anne Brontë died at the young age of only 29, her remaining sister, Charlotte, suppressed this work and would not allow it to be reprinted.
Long a nearly forgotten work, this has come back twice to be a TV series. It is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS. There are video clips of it on youtube dot com.
This book is in Large Print Edition. The Fonts are 16-point type, nearly double the size of typical book printing. This is to make the book more comfortable and easier to read. It also makes the book appear to be longer. We hope the reading public appreciates our efforts to make the great classics more readable.
It is said that the reason that the work was suppresed was the scandalous nature. At the time of its writing, under the laws of the Victorian Era, a woman was virtualy owned by her husband. She could not leave him or divorce him, but he could divorce her. In the case of divorce, custody of the children belonger to him, not to her.
Thus, when the protagonist who calls herself Helen Graham (coincidentally almost the name of my mother) escapes from her husband Arthur with her son and goes into hiding, she had violated the laws. She goes into hiding in Wildfell Hall, the place of her birth and where she grew up, but nobody recognizes her so she keeps her true identity concealed. So she is the Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
