Poor Anne Bronte has always been the third wheel in the famous trio of sister-writers. In the introduction to my edition of her novel Agnes Grey, Anita Desai says Anne is the youngest, the palest, the most elusive and the most easily overlooked.

I couldn’t understand how that had happened when I read Agnes Grey. It shows us a governess hell that far outstrips the relatively mild experiences of Jane Eyre with Adele, her adorable but spoilt little charge.

Agnes’ student, Tom, is a vile, cruel boy, clearly destined to grow up to be a sociopath, and to get away with it because he’s a privileged and overindulged male. Violence begets violence: Agnes is forced to destroy a nest of young birds because she knows Tom will torture them if she doesn’t kill them first. This is much stronger stuff than we’ve been led to expect in past impressions of a reticent, conventional writer.

Finally, Anne is having a moment that may release her from the shadow of Charlotte and Emily. For one thing, she has just had her 200th birthday, and the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire, has been leading the last of the five-year bicentenary celebrations for perhaps the most amazing family in literature.