‘Patience, Firmness, and Perseverance were my only weapons.’ Agnes Grey (1847) was Anne Bronte’s first novel and a poignant account of her own experience as a struggling governess, obliged to earn her living in one of the few ways open to an educated Victorian girl. Agnes is not a romantic heroine such as those we find in the books of Anne’s sisters Charlotte and Emily, but her story paints a more realistic picture of what happens when an intelligent, sensitive young woman has to endure months of isolation and frustration in an unsympathetic household that is not her home.