ABSTRACT
What, Where, and How Shall I Be When I Have Got Through?’1 With this notso-simple question before her, Anne Bronte embarked on a mission to read and study the Bible. Her notes indicate that her project was ‘begun about December 1841’. Twenty years old, Bronte was likely at the time to have been working as a governess for the Robinson family of Thorp Green, although contemplating a permanent return home to establish a school with her sisters. Although she had begun to write poetry, both on her own and as part of the collaborative project known as the Gondal and Angrian Chronicles, it would be six more years before she published her first novel, Agnes Grey. All that we now know of this Bible-reading project is what can be deduced from the notes made on the Bible’s flyleaves. She evidently worked her way through the entire text of the Old Testament, diligendy noting the chapters and verses of particular interest to her. The first such entry notes passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, and the last from the Book of Malachi. The end page is dated ‘April 30, 1843’, and is followed by a passage from the Book of Proverbs (16.23), which reads, ‘A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth and a word spoken in due season. [H]ow good is it’.
