Now, here's a lesson to all Brontëites out there. Never overlook a secondhand edition just because you already have more copies of a book than you think you need.
The Independent (Ireland) reports:
It is one of the best-selling novels of all time. But a sharp-eyed bargain hunter has managed to turn a €8,000 profit on a copy of a book that is found in homes up and down the country.
The tourist spotted the first edition copy of 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë at a flea market in Limerick and quickly snapped it up for just €3.
Jason Ludlow then brought the book to his native South Africa where he was paid 77,000 rand for the copy -- the equivalent of more than €8,000.
Mr Ludlow is keenly interested in antiques and rare books, and couldn't contain his excitement at what he found during this trip to Ireland.
"I was in Ireland and Limerick in March and April, and was very lucky to have found such a great old book at the flea market," he said.
"It was a rare copy of Wuthering Heights printed in 1848 that I've subsequently sold for a substantial amount." [...]
Experts have expressed amazement that the rare American first edition turned up in Ireland.
David Cunningham of antique book dealers Cathach Books said it may have been the only such copy in the country.
"You just don't know how books turn up and how it arrived in this country, but that's the nature of books -- you can find almost anything anywhere."
Local efforts to track down the original seller of the book have been unsuccessful. [...]
The manager of the Milk Market, David O'Brien, described the rare book find as "an incredible windfall. This is one in a million, I don't know what else to say."
Nick Nicholson, Consultant Valuer with Adam's auctioneers in Dublin expressed surprise that the book had not been spotted by local book sellers.
"Books by the Brontes are very sought after, they are sort of hot property," he said.
Mr Nicholson predicted that the book might find its way back to America, where it could fetch an even higher price.
"That's why people still go to auctions and keep hunting because not everything is kept track of and this chap obviously had a bit of luck," he told the Irish Independent.
"Things turn up, so the public should keep looking, they should go to auctions. It's not an exact science, even with computerisation and everything, these things still happen." (Kevin Keane)
The story is also covered by the
Limerick Leader.
Salon has an article on 'Why libraries still matter' which highlights the fact that libraries do not only keep books:
Also, not everything a library collects is a scannable book or document. The NYPL's anniversary exhibit includes such treasures of print culture as [...] Charlotte Brontë's writing desk. (See picture here) (Laura Miller)
And actually, that's only one of the many items of Brontëana that are kept at the New York Public Library. The New Yorker's
Book Bench writes,
Such is the brilliance of the place, and such is the case with a post on Flavorwire about the library's collection of locks of famous writers’ hair, put up in advance part of the library’s centennial celebration, which kicks off on May 14th. The locks are taken from the manes of, among others, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Leigh Hunt, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Walt Whitman. . . (Macy Halford)
And the post on
Flavorwire is definitely worth a look. The proveniance of Charlotte's lock of hair is actually connected to the aforementioned writing desk:
This came with the author’s traveling desk, which is part of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library.(Rozalia Jovanovic)
A piece of Brontëana is also present in Charlotte Raven's thoughts on role models in
The Independent:
My first female role model was Emily Brontë. During the Seventies, my mother and I made regular pilgrimages to Haworth Parsonage in West Yorkshire. Contemplating the sofa on which my heroine died of consumption I felt awe, but no identification. In those days, it was appropriate to pick a role model with qualities you didn't possess. I longed to be fearless and heedless of physical discomfort like Emily was.
The Christian Science Monitor reviews
A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz:
Is there really any good reason, for instance, why today’s teenagers should be required to immerse themselves in the classics? Won’t a 19th-century love story send kids scurrying for the exits? Aren’t the references arcane, the social settings antique? Why not speak to kids where they are by offering them the urban, the hip, the contemporary?
And when it comes to boys, the arguments seem particularly pitched. Sure, writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë could have some appeal to teenage girls. But what young male in the year 2011 is going to find anything he can relate to in an English country parsonage?
I wish I had known William Deresiewicz in those days. His new book A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter is the perfect antidote to such arguments. (Marjorie Kehe)
Another book reviewed today is
Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters by N. John Hall. Michael Dirda writes in
The Washington Post,
Larry Dickerson, “as American as you can get,” is a retired bank clerk who has inherited a cache of letters written to his great-great-grandfather, a 19th-century English bookseller. But these aren’t just any letters. Jeremy MacDowell corresponded with the greatest novelists of the day: Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Butler. As the baseball fan Larry boasts, “How’s that for a line up?” From all of these authors, MacDowell elicited frank statements of their literary aims and opinions. He also managed to snag two letters from Charles Darwin and several from the critic George Henry Lewes, the consort of George Eliot, as well as a few from the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell about the Brontes.
And
remember that Minnesota Public Radio programme Revisiting Jane Eyre which never happened due to the news of Osama Bin Laden's death? Well, fortunately,
it was rescheduled and broadcast yesterday.
Sarah Reads Too Much reviews
Jane Eyre and
Bookwinked writes briefly about
Wide Sargasso Sea. YouTube user kieshypie has uploaded a video arriving at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
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