Restoring Anne Brontë to her rightful place among literary greats

The target of playwright Samantha Ellis’ Take Courage is just that, history’s unfair dismissal of Anne’s work, her relegation to the role of the ignored “other sister”.

It’s a robust, emotionally charged defence of the writer, whose death aged 29 left us with just a handful of poems and two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall.

Ellis’ main problem is that there is very little information, and very few certified facts, on which to build a whole picture of Anne – her hair colour can’t even be agreed upon – but the one she does manage to draw is of a woman misunderstood by historians and obscured by her sisters (Charlotte burned a lot of her work after she passed away), despite Anne having a blindingly sharp and progressive mind.

This is a poignant and often surprising journey into the life and work of a woman who emerges as a strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time and who has much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.

If Ellis set out to right history’s wrongs in Take Courage she certainly begins to right the balance.

However, if there is one criticism it is that Ellis distractingly puts a bit too much of herself in at times – and becomes another voice that quietens Anne’s.