It’s the birthday of Anne Brontë (1820-1849, #diedtooyoung), youngest of the Brontë sisters and usually in their shadow but the first of them—not Charlotte—to write a brilliant novel featuring a plain governess as the heroine, Agnes Grey (1847).

Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the youngest of six children, and raised in Haworth Parsonage; her father was a curate. Her mother died the next year, and when Brontë was about five, her two eldest sisters died suddenly of tuberculosis while away at school. After that, all the children were mostly educated at home and rather isolated from the world (though Brontë did attend boarding school for a couple of years in her teens). Fortunately, the Brontë children had each other and their father’s excellent library, and there’s nothing to raise the spirits like those bleak English moors that surrounded them. Brontë and her sister Emily were particularly close and wrote prose and poetry for many years about the made-up kingdom of Gondal.

The family struggled financially, and when Brontë was 19, she worked briefly as a governess for the Ingham family. The children were rotten little monsters (let’s just say it) and Brontë was fired. Her next post was with the Robinsons and lasted five years; the work was difficult but Brontë was somewhat more successful, until her brother Branwell arrived to tutor the son. He ended up having an affair with Mrs. Robinson (for Pete’s sake, Branwell) and Brontë resigned, possibly because she knew about it, and Branwell was soon found out and fired.

All this time, Brontë had been writing her first novel, Agnes Grey, pouring all her experience with snooty employers and cruel children into it and creating a beautifully written and accurate portrayal of the difficult life of a governess in a class-ridden society. Unfortunately, the novel was overshadowed by Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre, which was written after Agnes Grey but published first. Brontë’s second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), was then published in tandem with Emily’s Wuthering Heights, which again got far more attention than Brontë’s book. Charlotte didn’t help: she publicly condemned Wildfell Hall, considering it coarse and inappropriate (it depicted a debauched husband and opposed some aspects of Calvinism), and even declined to have the novel reprinted. (For Peter’s sake, Charlotte.)

The Brontë siblings began dropping like flies: first Branwell, dying at 31 from probably tuberculosis (and the drinking didn’t help); then Emily, dying at 30, and which death devastated Brontë; and finally Brontë herself, dying at 29, probably also from tuberculosis. Brontë’s literary reputation has improved greatly in recent years and she finally has the respect she deserves.

Have a fine, extremely cold Thursday, for goodness’ sake get that persistent cough seen to, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.