British Literary Manuscripts Online, c. 1660-1900

Next Tuesday takes place the release of a new online resource called British Literary Manuscripts Online, c. 1660-1900 by Gale Cengage Learning:

[A] digitized collection of manuscripts by British authors from the Restoration through the Victorian era. It contains over 400,000 pages of poems, plays, novels, diaries, journals, correspondence, and other papers from major library collections, reproduced in facsimile and searchable via detailed descriptive information.

The collection includes several Brontë manuscripts from the Brontë Parsonage Museum and The British Library:

Complete autograph manuscripts of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the first press reviews of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Poems by Emily Brontë

The Telegraph says:

The collection is the first of its kind and could revolutionise the study of English literature.

Until now, the material, which includes letters, diaries, sketches and early drafts of works by such literary greats as Charles Dickens, William Blake, the Brontës, Robbie Burns, Walter Scott and Wilde, has been scattered across the globe in different libraries and has been impossible to source in a single place.

Highlights of the collection, being launched on Tuesday by "e-research" specialists Gale-Cengage Learning after 10 years of development, include handwritten versions of Blake's The Four Zoas, Emily Brontë's Gondal poems, and complete drafts of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.

As well as the Wilde letters, the collection also includes heartbreaking correspondence by Charlotte Brontë as she struggles to come to terms with the death of her sister, Emily, and the poor health of her younger sister, Anne. (Chris Hastings)

Categories: Brontëana, Websites