Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant.[1] He resembles Branwell Brontë in three ways: physical good-looks, sexual adventures (before his affair with Mrs Robinson, Branwell is thought to have fathered an illegitimate child who died at birth[4]), and especially in his alcoholism.[1] Another character in the novel, Lord Lowborough, has an association with opium that may also reflect Branwell's behaviour.[5]
Another possible source for The Tenant is the story of Mrs Collins, the wife of a local curate, who in November 1840 came to Anne's father Patrick Brontë seeking advice regarding her alcoholic husband's abusive conduct. Mr Brontë's counsel was that she should leave her husband. Mrs Collins returned to Haworth in the spring of 1847, while Anne was writing The Tenant, and told how she had managed to build a new life for herself and her two children.[1]
The Brontё biographer Winifred Gérin believed that the original of Wildfell Hall was Ponden Hall,[6] a farmhouse near Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Ponden shares certain architectural details with Wildfell, including latticed windows and a central portico with a date plaque above.
Blake Hall at Mirfield, where Anne had been employed as a governess, was suggested as the model for Grassdale Manor, Arthur Huntingdon's country seat, by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, to Edward Morison Wimperis, an artist commissioned to illustrate the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872. However, neither Blake Hall nor Thorpe Green, another house where Anne was employed as a governess, corresponds exactly with Grassdale.[6]
Linden-Car, the village that Wildfell Hall stands close to, is in Yorkshire. Car in northern dialect means pool, pond or low-lying and boggy ground. Lindenhope hope in Northeastern English means a small enclosed valley.