Agnes Grey: Anne Bronte's Masterpiece (Timeless Classic Books)

Agnes Grey is a novel written by the English author Anne Brontë and first published in 1847. The novel is about a governess of that name and is said to be based on Anne Brontë's own experiences. It was her first novel. Like her sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre, it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman. The Irish novelist George Moore praised Agnes Grey as "the most perfect prose narrative in English letters." Agnes Grey is the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early Victorian era, as a governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families, the Bloomfields and the Murrays, she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values.