SOURCE: "Anne Brontë at Blake Hall: An Episode of Courage and Insight," in Brontë Society Transactions, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1965, pp. 239-50.

In the following essay, Brooke describes Brontë's experiences as a governess at Blake Hall and the influence they may have had on Agnes Grey.

Blake Hall was my grandmother's old home, so that memories of the house go back to the earliest days of my childhood. For us children it was a place where wonderful Christmas parties were presided over by a genial great uncle and aunt and, like all houses which have been inhabited by the same family for several generations, it was also exciting because of the past associations which clung around its fabric.

There were stories which took one back to the Napoleonic wars, the Luddite risings and other strange happenings of the nineteenth century, but perhaps what interested us most was the fact...