As the daughter of a modest minister, Agnes Grey has low prospects in life. After her father loses most of the family’s savings, Agnes is determined to help out and takes a position as governess for a wealthy family. Being a governess turns out to be more challenging than she could have predicted as she has to manage spoiled children and petty parents, while dependent on their approval for her livelihood. Agnes Grey is the first novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1847, and today considered an everlasting classic. Like the famous Jane Eyre, by Anne’s sister Emily Brontë, it deals with the precarious position of the governess and how the young women taking on that role were treated. It is a poignant and insightful novel that explores rigid class structures and the challenges it poses to women. ANNE BRONTË [1820-1849] was an English poet and novelist. She was the youngest of the three Brontë authors, her older sisters being Emily and Charlotte. Anne died young, probably from tuberculosis, having published the novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the latter hailed today as one of the first feminist novels.

Agnes Grey Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for five years. 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 choice of central character allows Anne to deal with issues of oppression and abuse of women and governesses, isolation and ideas of empathy. An additional theme is the fair treatment of animals. Agnes Grey also mimics some of the stylistic approaches of bildungsromans, employing ideas of personal growth and coming to age, but representing a character who in fact does not gain in virtue. The Irish novelist George Moore praised Agnes Grey as "the most perfect prose narrative in English letters,"and went so far as to compare Anne's prose to that of Jane Austen. Modern critics have made more subdued claims admiring Agnes Grey with a less overt praise of Brontë's work than Moore.

‘This collection is stormy, romantic, strong – the Full Brontë’ The Times A collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Brontë, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre.

'How delightful it would be to be a governess!' When the young Agnes Grey takes up her first post as governess she is full of hope; she believes she only has to remember 'myself at their age' to win her pupils' love and trust. Instead she finds the young children she has to deal with completely unmanageable. They are, as she observes to her mother, 'unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures'. In writing her first novel, Anne Brontë drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect by her employers, yet expected to control and educate her young charges. Agnes Grey looks at childhood from nursery to adolescence, and it also charts the frustrations of romantic love, as Agnes starts to nurse warmer feelings towards the local curate, Mr Weston. The novel combines astute dissection of middle-class social behaviour and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Ranked 2nd [after James Joyce's Ulysses] on the Modern Library's list of "The 100 Best Novels" Ranked 46th on the French Le Monde's list of "The 100 Best Novels in the World” The Great Gatsby is the anthem of the Jazz Age, the decadent twenties' seminal work, and the ultimate novel about the American Dream. It doesn't matter how many times it's adapted into film. Or theater. Or opera. It's through F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterful prose that the story of the ruthless and extravagant Jay Gatsby, narrated by the honest Nick Carraway, continues to live on as the great American classic. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD [1896-1940] was an American author, born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His legendary marriage to Zelda Montgomery, along with their acquaintances with notable figures such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, and their lifestyle in 1920s Paris, has become iconic. A master of the short story genre, it is logical that his most famous novel is also his shortest: The Great Gatsby [1925].

The extraordinary works of the three sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë have entranced and challenged scholars, students, and general readers for the past 150 years. This Companion offers a fascinating introduction to those works, including two of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century - Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights. In a series of original essays, contributors explore the roots of the sisters' achievement in early nineteenth-century Haworth, and the childhood 'plays' they developed; they set these writings within the context of a wider history, and show how each sister engages with some of the central issues of her time. The essays also consider the meaning and significance of the Brontës' enduring popular appeal. A detailed chronology and guides to further reading provide further reference material, making this a volume indispensable for scholars and students, and all those interested in the Brontës and their work.