The poetry of Anne Brontë readily conforms to the palimpsestual model outlined by Armstrong in the epigraph above, appearing on its surface thoroughly conventional in both form and content. First published alongside the work of her sisters, it brought satisfaction to at least one contemporary reviewer, who welcomed Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846) with the following:

These comments inadvertently highlight those aspects of the poetry which subsequent commentators have found to be less laudable. Until recently, Brontë's contribution to the volume in question, along with her more extensive poetic output, has been viewed with something less than enthusiasm by her critics. As Edward Chitham notes, Brontë's ‘relative lack of vivid image and metaphor, her terseness and archaic yet simple vocabulary and style, may cause her work to be dismissed by seekers after the spectacular’. The apparent simplicity of Brontë's style is matched by the seemingly ‘wholesome’ sentiments of a poetry which focuses on the vicissitudes of emotional and spiritual life. Frequently, the poetry expresses the various crises which beset the subject and seeks to resolve them by drawing upon spiritual or religious discourses. It therefore seems to participate in what Armstrong calls the ‘dominant poetics of expression’ in order to affirm Christian faith and the doctrines with which such faith is associated.

Critics have responded to this aspect of Brontë's poetry by placing it firmly within the Christian literary tradition and, more particularly, by tracing within it the influence of John Bunyan, George Herbert and William Cowper. Elizabeth Langland suggests, for example, that Brontë's religious poetry ‘expresses a generous Christian sensibility’, whereas P. J. M. Scott argues that in the least successful of Brontë's devotional poems ‘Christian doctrines are merely versified’.