£114,000

The first edition of Wuthering Heights that was to be auctioned today, November 13, at Bonhams has been sold for £114,000 (£95,000 plus Premium and tax):

A rare first edition of Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights has been sold at auction for £114,000 - more than twice the estimated price.
The 1847 edition of Bronte's tragic love story had been expected to fetch between £30,000 and £50,000.
A spokeswoman for auction house Bonhams said it had been bought by a private client and would be staying in the UK. (BBC News)

The Guardian provides some more details:

The book, first published in 1847, was bought in the house by the antiquarian bookseller Robert Kirkman, on behalf of a an unnamed British client who is a keen collector of Brontë works. Only three copies of this edition have come up for auction in the last 35 years, according to Bonhams. (Michelle Pauli and agencies)

Other Brontë-related items that were auctioned today included:

Lot No: 411*
BRONTË (BRAMWELL) (sic)
Portrait in oils of Maria Taylor of Stanbury (later Mrs James Ingham), showing her head-and-shoulders, with dark chestnut hair pinned to the top of her head with loose ringlets hanging in front of her ears (as was fashionable in the first years of Victoria's reign), with bare neck and shoulders and in a turquoise blue gown, bearing a small gold brooch pinned at the top; with dark red draperies in the background, oil on canvas, in a twentieth-century lacquered frame, oval, approximately 589 x 498mm. [3 Fountain Street, Bradford, c.1838-1839]

Sold for £5,500 plus Premium and tax to the Brontë Society (with the support of the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and The Art Fund)

Footnote:
THE NEIGHBOUR WHO LIVED BELOW TOP WITHENS: A STRIKINGLY EVOCATIVE FEMALE PORTRAIT BY BRANWELL BRONTË. Maria Taylor, the sitter, was the eldest daughter of Stephen and Mary Taylor of the Manor House, Stanbury; this being the small village lying on a hill beyond the heather moors outside Haworth and the usual starting point for walks up to the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens, made famous by Wuthering Heights. The Taylors were a family of local gentry and on good terms with the Brontës; Maria's father Stephen being responsible, as church trustee, for appointing Patrick Brontë to the Haworth living. Maria was also a friend of Charlotte's, eight years her junior, as is testified by the letter in the following lot. She was later to marry James Ingham.
This portrait was almost certainly executed some four years after Branwell's famous pictures of his sisters, and is painted in the same forceful if naïve - and instantly recognizable - style. It dates from between June 1838 and May 1839, the period in which Branwell was attempting to make his living as a portrait-painter. He had set up his studio and digs at 3 Fountain Street, Bradford, the house of Mr Kirby, a respectable ale and porter merchant, vouched for by William Morgan, a long-time friend of Branwell's father and resident of the same street. After less than a year, Branwell was to abandon this long-cherished ambition and instead begin training with his father to become a tutor. A succession of jobs, all more-or-less disastrous, was to follow.
It is thought that the painting was originally full-length (c.1839 x 1220 mm.) and was cut down to its present size in the 1930s (when the present Victorian-revival frame appears to have been made). As such it would have been the only such commission Branwell is known to have executed: "If the estimated original size of the painting is accurate, this must have been an unusually large, and lucrative, commission for Branwell, certainly a full-length portrait. All Branwell's other known works are either head and shoulders, half or three-quarter length... From the evidence of this portrait commission it is obvious that Branwell used his local contacts in order to obtain work. No doubt his father put in a good word for his artist son in the time-honoured Yorkshire way. This information underlines the fact that Branwell was well-connected with a host of potential clients via family and friends, which makes it all the more likely that his studio in Bradford was abandoned not because of lack of custom, but because of his own failure to pursue the business available to him" (Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Brontës, 1995, no.256, where it is reproduced). This portrait was left by Maria Ingham to her daughter, Margaret Anne Richardson, who left it in turn to her daughter, Mabel; passing thence by descent to the present owner.

Lot No: 412*

BRONTË (CHARLOTTE)
Autograph letter signed ("CBrontë"), to Maria Taylor of Stanbury ("Dear Miss Taylor"), regretting that she has to go from home the next day ("...I cannot therefore accompany you to call on Miss Metcalf as I intended to have done - I shall probably be from home a fortnight, when I return we can if you please fix another d[ay]..."), and giving best regards to her mother; autograph address ("Miss Taylor/ Stanbury") on verso of second leaf, 2 pages, 16mo, wafer-seal tear affecting the "ay" of "day", slight spotting and dust-staining to address-panel, "Wednesday Evening" [Haworth, ?4 or 11 September 1839]

Sold for £4,400 plus Premium and tax to the Brontë Society

Footnote:
For Branwell's portrait of Maria Taylor, Charlotte's neighbour at Stanbury, see the previous lot. It seems that Charlotte wrote Maria many letters, of which this is the only survivor, the rest having been destroyed: see The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, edited by Margaret Smith, i (1995), 201. Her absence from home was occasioned by the memorable holiday she spent with Ellen Nussey at Bridlington, when she saw the sea for the first time; something that was, she later told Ellen, "one of the pleasantest recollections of my life - one of the green spots that I look back on with real pleasure" (4 March 1845).

We know that the Brontë Society was going for these last couple of items. Fortunately, they have been successful.

Categories: Brontëana, In the News