The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Annotated Edition (Alma Classics Evergreens)

by Anne Brontë

I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.

I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear.

Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works.

All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would be less interesting.” “And so you prefer her faults to other people’s perfections?” “Just so –

She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else.