The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) by Anne Brontë Read Free Book Online Page A

The latter is essential to the emotional forcefulness and immediacy of Anne Brontë’s style, and is another form held in common with the authors
of Jane Eyre
and
Wuthering Heights
, working with the dashes to suggest the rhythms of minds freely and intenselyexpressing themselves. The following spellings are now obsolete or obsolescent and have been amended accordingly in the text: blythe (blithe), canvass (canvas), chesnut (chestnut), controul (control), dyed (died), exstatic (ecstatic), illude (elude), irradicate (eradicate), expence (expense), phrensy (frenzy), gulph (gulf), gingling (jingling), P jacket (pea-jacket), pretensious (pretentious), recompence (recompense), referrible (referable), skreen (screen), secresy (secrecy), shew (show), snoose (snooze), teaze (tease), tremour (tremor), vengibly (vengeably (see Chapter 13, n. 2)), villan (villain), visiter (visitor), wo (woe). Words with prefix ‘in–’ or ‘im–’ (e.g., incased, ingaged, imbowered) have been amended where appropriate to ‘en–’ or ‘em–’ in accordance with modern usage.

    Facsimile title page of the first edition of
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
    While I acknowledge the success of the present work 1 to have been greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit that from some other quarters it has been censured 2 with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just. It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions, but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or be content to judge it by a hasty glance.
    My object in writing the following pages, was not simply to amuse the Reader, neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust she raises, than commendation for the clearance she effects. 3 Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim, andif I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.
    As the story of ‘Agnes Grey’ was accused of extravagant overcolouring 4 in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work, I find myself censured for depicting
con amore
, with ‘a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal,’ 5 those scenes which, I will venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of my critics to read, than they were for me to describe. I may have gone too far, in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the