In Conversations in Ebury Street (1924), George Moore declared that "if Anne Brontë had lived ten years longer, she would have taken a place beside Jane Austen, perhaps even a higher place"; in addition, he described her first novel, Agnes Grey (1847), as "the most perfect prose narrative in English literature."

If Moore's estimation of Brontë's work and potential was somewhat inflated, his claims for her served as an overdue and refreshing corrective to the trend--long established by biographers and critics--of either damning her with faint praise or making her the subject of frankly disparaging remarks. Typical of the latter were May Sinclair's dismissal of her as "the weak and ineffectual Anne" and George Saintsbury's pronouncement that "the third sister Anne is but a pale reflection of her elders." The cumulative effect made Brontë appear a nebulous figure in the history of English letters; and led...