SOURCE: "Agnes Grey," in The Brontë Novels, Methuen, 1968, pp. 202-27.

In the following essay, Craik offers an overview of Agnes Grey, surveying its characterization, theme, narrative technique, and style. In addition, Craik compares the work with those of Brontë's sisters Emily and Charlotte, suggesting that it bears stronger affinities with the eighteenth-century novel than it does with their writings.

No one could call Anne Brontë's two novels masterpieces; but she deserves neither to be ignored, nor to be regarded only as a pale copy of her sisters. She is absorbing on at least three, though not equal, counts: as the first novel writer of the family, using material later used by Emily and Charlotte; as a norm from which to judge the powers of her sisters in using such material; and as a novelist in her own right with a mode and flavour of her own...