This new essay collection brings together some of the top Brontë scholars working today, as well as new critical voices, to examine the many layers of Anne Brontë's fiction and other writings and to restore Brontë to her rightful place in literary history. Until very recently, Brontë's literary fate has been to live in the critical shadow of her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, in spite of the fact that her two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were widely read and discussed during her lifetime. From a variety of fields-including psychology, religion, social criticism and literary tradition-the contributors to New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Brontë re-assess her works as those of an artist, which demand the rigorous scholarship and attention that they receive here.

Anne Brontë, the youngest and most enigmatic of the Brontë sisters, remains a bestselling author nearly two centuries after her death. The brilliance of her two novels – Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – and her poetry belies the quiet, yet courageous girl who often lived in the shadows of her more celebrated sisters. Yet her writing was the most revolutionary of all the Brontës, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. This revealing new biography opens Anne's most private life to a new audience and shows the true nature of her relationship with her sister Charlotte.

This new essay collection brings together some of the top Brontë scholars working today, as well as new critical voices, to examine the many layers of Anne Brontë's fiction and other writings and to restore Brontë to her rightful place in literary history. Until very recently, Brontë's literary fate has been to live in the critical shadow of her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, in spite of the fact that her two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were widely read and discussed during her lifetime. From a variety of fields-including psychology, religion, social criticism and literary tradition-the contributors to New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Brontë re-assess her works as those of an artist, which demand the rigorous scholarship and attention that they receive here.

From the bestselling Bridget Jones's Diary that started the trend to the television sensation Sex and the Citythat captured it on screen, "chick lit" has become a major pop culture phenomenon. Banking on female audiences' identification with single, urban characters who struggle with the same life challenges, publishers have earned millions and even created separate imprints dedicated to the genre. Not surprisingly, some highbrow critics have dismissed chick lit as trashy fiction, but fans have argued that it is as empowering as it is entertaining. This is the first volume of its kind to examine the chick lit phenomenon from a variety of angles, accounting for both its popularity and the intense reactions-positive and negative-it has provoked. The contributors explore the characteristics that cause readers to attach the moniker "chick" to a particular book and what, if anything, distinguishes the category of chick lit from the works of Jane Austen on one end and Harlequin romance novels on the other. They critique the genre from a range of critical perspectives, considering its conflicted relationship with feminism and postfeminism, heterosexual romance, body image, and consumerism. The fourteen original essays gathered here also explore such trends and subgenres as "Sistah Lit," "Mommy Lit," and "Chick Lit Jr.," as well as regional variations. As the first book to consider the genre seriously, Chick Lit offers real insight into a new generation of women's fiction.

Many female Victorian-era heroines find themselves expressing a form of loneliness directly connected to their lack of agency. Loneliness is defined by a lack, and it is this that is prevalent to these characters’ discussion of the social structures that define their lives. As there is no way to easily discuss a lack of agency without stating that there is something missing from the root agency, loneliness is an expression of missing components. This work analyses this “lack” found in loneliness as a trope to discuss a social lack. Many novels are crucial to this discussion, and this book focuses on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892), Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897) and Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman (1894) to trace the evolution of the double use of lack in the nineteenth-century novel.

Very few families produce one outstanding writer. The Brontë family produced three. The works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne remain immensely popular, and are increasingly being studied in relation to the surroundings and wider context that formed them. The forty-two new essays in this book tell 'the Brontë story' as it has never been told before, drawing on the latest research and the best available scholarship while offering new perspectives on the writings of the sisters. A section on Brontë criticism traces their reception to the present day. The works of the sisters are explored in the context of social, political and cultural developments in early-nineteenth-century Britain, with attention given to religion, education, art, print culture, agriculture, law and medicine. Crammed with information, The Brontës in Context shows how the Brontës' fiction interacts with the spirit of the time, suggesting reasons for its enduring fascination.

Although previous scholarship has acknowledged the importance of the visual arts to the Brontës, relatively little attention has been paid to the influence of music, theatre, and material culture on the siblings' lives and literature. This interdisciplinary collection presents new research on the Brontës' relationship to the wider world of the arts, including their relationship to the visual arts. The contributors examine the siblings' artistic ambitions, productions, and literary representations of creative work in both amateur and professional realms. Also considered are re-envisionings of the Brontës' works, with an emphasis on those created in the artistic media the siblings themselves knew or practiced. With essays by scholars who represent the fields of literary studies, music, art, theatre studies, and material culture, the volume brings together the strongest current research and suggests areas for future work on the Brontës and their cultural contexts.