Anne was the sixth and youngest child of Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman, and Maria Branwell, a merchant’s daughter. Her mother died when Anne was one, and when she was five, her two older sisters died of tuberculosis (then called consumption). Anne grew up with her brother Branwell and sisters Charlotte and Emily at the parsonage of Haworth in West Yorkshire, where her father was perpetual curate. Inspired by their father’s library, the four children entertained themselves by writing stories and poems set in vivid imagined worlds. While Charlotte and Branwell collaborated on the world of Angria and Glass Town, Emily and Anne invented Gondal, a fictional island in the North Pacific. While Anne’s Gondal stories have been lost, her poetry survives, and many of the poems share the theme of separated lovers who long to be reunited.

At age 15, Anne enrolled at Roe Head School in Mirfield, where Charlotte was a teacher. While there she reportedly experienced a spiritual crisis that impacted her health. Biographer Winifred Gérin has noted Anne’s belief in the doctrine of universal salvation, which was a controversial belief within the Anglican Church in which she was raised. In spring of 1839, Anne took a post as governess to the Ingham family of Blake Hall, Mirfield.