Written when she was twenty-six, Agnes Greyis Anne Brontë's first novel. It tells the story of a rector's daughter who has to earn her living as a governess. Drawing directly from her own experiences, Anne Brontë set out to describe the immense pressures that the governess's life involved: the frustration, the isolation, and the insensitive and cruel treatment on the part of employers and their families. Mature, insightful, and edged with a quiet irony, this debut displays a keen sense of moral responsibility and a sharp eye for bourgeois attitudes and behavior. "May makes the young protagonist come to life in her nuanced first-person reading; her crisp and educated voice conveying the narrator's energy and persistent optimism, while renderings of Agnes' masters, mistresses, and young charges show them for the uncouth bullies that they actually are, despite their superior airs and flaunted gentility." --Kliatt Anne Brontë was born in Yorkshire in 1820. The Brontë children were raised in an isolated parsonage, where they thrived in fantasy worlds that drew on their voracious reading of Byron, Scott, Shakespeare, and Gothic fiction. Anne's first novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with her sister Emily's Wuthering Heightsin 1847. She died of tuberculosis in 1849, shortly after Emily and brother Branwell died of the same illness. Nadia May is one of the pioneers of audiobook narration, with twenty-five years of recording and over 600 titles to her credit. Named one of AudioFile'sGolden Voices, she has won fourteen Earphones Awards. She is also a well known stage actor in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her husband and two badly behaved dogs. Excerpted from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
