The Professor And Agnes Grey: The Only Two Brontë Novels Without A Film Or TV Adaptation

From Wuthering Heights to Jane Eyre, Brontë novels seem to perform remarkably well on screen.

There are more than 50 TV and movie Jane Eyre adaptations. And Wuthering Heights has at least 10 English-language screen versions.

But not all of the books penned by sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne have been given the same degree of attention from studios (here, we’re only talking about English-language versions).

Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, for instance, has only had one major TV adaptation – the BBC’s 1996 series, which lasted for only three episodes.

The broadcaster is also alone in creating a TV drama (five episodes long, in the ’70s) from Charlotte’s Villette.

And the Jane Eyre author’s other book, Shirley, saw its last major screen adaptation in 1922, when it became the basis for a silent movie. 

But neither silent films nor major “talkies” have yet taken on Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor, a book published after her death, or Anne’s Agnes Grey.

What is Charlotte Brontë’s book The Professor? 

It’s the first novel the author ever wrote, and it was published in 1857, two years after she died. 

She probably wrote the book in her late 20s after returning to England from her studies in Brussels. Originally, it seems to have been titled The Master. 

Charlotte had pitched it to multiple publishers under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1846 and 1847, but it was refused by all of them. Even after the success of Jane Eyre, her publisher refused the author’s pleas to release her first book. 

Only after her death, when her widower made some amendments to the book, did The Professor finally hit the shelves. 

The Professor has been compared to Jane Eyre, but in this book, Charlotte wrote from a man’s perspective. 

The protagonist William Crimsworth, who is parentless, leaves England to pursue a career as a professor in Brussels (Charlotte had just returned from her studies in the Belgian capital when she wrote The Professor). 

There, he teaches all-boys and all-girls schools; the relationships he forms there provide the conflict, as well as the joy, in the story.

What about Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey?

This was Anne’s first novel. It was the only one she wrote aside from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Unlike Charlotte’s The Professor, though, Agnes Grey was published in Anne’s lifetime. It came out in 1847, the year before The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

That means it was released when her sister was likely pitching and being rejected for The Professor, and in the same year Emily’s Wuthering Heights was published. This was also the year before both Brontë’s only brother, Branwell, and Emily died.

Anne would have been in her late 20s at the time. 

The novel focuses on Agnes Grey, who becomes a governess after her family falls on hard times. The families she works with, however, prove hostile and unkind, with only a kind curate present to make her changed life easier.

Readers seem keen for screen adaptations

Writing to Reddit’s r/PeriodDramas, site user u/victoria_jam asked, “Why aren’t there any adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s other novels?”

u/EveryDamnChikadee replied, “I would do some seriously serious things to get a good adaptation of The Professor.” 

Meanwhile, writing for publisher Wordsworth Editions, author and playwright David Stuart Davies said of Agnes Grey: “because of the issues raised in the book regarding the treatment of women and their rights, perhaps now is the time for some enterprising producer/writer to grasp this intriguing nettle and bring us a fully realised screen adaptation of this most fascinating of novels”. 

Only time will tell if their wishes will be fulfilled.