CMP Review 2026-04-16

April 16, 2026

“I discovered there were essentially two camps of supporters: ‘Charlottes’ and ‘Emilys’.”

Bestselling author Tracy Chevalier made this discovery in 2016 while working as a creative partner with the Brontë Parsonage to celebrate the bicentenary Charlotte Brontë’s birth.

“I am a Charlotte,” she wrote: “serious and focused and rather traditional. Emilys are much stranger, more romantic and unpredictable.”

But then she had to ask: why was there no third camp? “Why, though, are there so few ‘Annes’?”

One reason might be that Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall only saw two published editions in the Brontë sisters’ lifetime — at Charlotte’s direction. And then a controversially abridged edition was finally released which remains in circulation even to this day. The abridgment, however, resulted in the loss of passages that are said to be critical to the strength and impact of the novel.

Little did I know when I set out to read my first Anne Brontë novel that I would encounter intrigue before reaching the first page. I would have to decide which edition to read. I settled on the 1848, which includes Anne’s Second Edition Preface.

I have always thought of myself as a “Charlotte.” But the continual emergence of the strange and unpredictable makes me wonder. I start page 1 tomorrow. Will I end up an “Emily”? Or perhaps even an “Anne”?

@artmiddlekauff