Agnes Grey, novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1847. The strongly autobiographical narrative concerns the travails of a rector’s daughter in her service as governess, first to the unruly Bloomfield children and then to the callous Murrays. Her sole consolations in an otherwise dreary and constricted life are the natural environment and her blossoming relationship with Weston, the local curate, whom she eventually marries.