The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

The mysterious new tenant of Wildfell Hall has a dark secret. Living under an assumed name, 'Helen Graham' is the estranged wife of a dissolute rake, desperate to protect her son from his destructive influence. Her diary entries reveal the shocking world of debauchery and cruelty from which she has fled. Combining a sensational story of a man's physical and moral decline through alcohol, a study of marital breakdown, a disquisition on the care and upbringing of children, and a hard-hitting critique of the position of women in Victorian society, this passionate tale of betrayal is set within a stern moral framework tempered by Anne Brontë's optimistic belief in universal redemption.

Josephine McDonagh is the author of De Quincey's Disciplines (Clarendon Press, 1994) and Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900 (CUP, 2003).