Anne Brontë was born on January 17, 1820. She worked as a governess for a brief period in 1839, and then from 1841-45, to help solve the financial troubles of her family. This experience inspired her to write Agnes Grey, a bildungsroman about the life of a governess and her struggles. This was Brontë’s first novel, published in 1847. Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848. These two works of Anne Brontë are well-regarded by readers and critics alike. Anne Brontë was also a poet. In 1845, she and her sisters contributed poems for a collection and decided to get it published. They called it Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Adoption of pseudonyms was required because they did not want their work to be disregarded—it was the nineteenth century, literature had been dominated by male writers who often looked upon women writers with condescension. The last few months of Anne Brontë’s life were filled with tragedy. Her brother Branwell and sister Emily died of tuberculosis in 1848. The following year, at the age of 29, Anne contracted the same illness as her siblings and breathed her last on May 28, 1849.