Samantha Ellis has written an article in
Town & Country about Charlotte's little book (
click here to help bring it home to Haworth).
There was once a series of six Little Books. Four are on public view in the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth; I held one once, read a page (I had to use a magnifying glass) and found it thrilling. One is missing, and another was previously lost but turned up in 2011. It had been sequestered away in a private collection all that time and went up for auction. Sadly, the Parsonage was outbid by a Paris museum and the book has since been largely inaccessible. The stories inside are unpublished, including one about a murderer who is driven insane by being haunted by his victim, so that an “immense fire” burns in his head; he imagines it catching his bed curtains and setting fire to his bed – just like in Jane Eyre.
But how did the Little Book end up in a private collection in the first place? And why do Brontë manuscripts and possessions keep just turning up? One answer is that the Brontës themselves very generously gave some of their property away to friends and servants, so a surprising number of things have turned up in Yorkshire attics over the years.
Another, sadder, reason that Brontëana keeps turning up in random places is because of two Victorian scammers: the journalist Clement King Shorter and the book-dealer and forger Thomas J Wise. They promised Charlotte’s best friend that they would prevent the Brontë archive from being “scattered to the winds and lost to the world”. She sold them all her letters from the family, which they proceeded to sell off, sometimes sliced into bits so they could get more money for them. When Margaret Smith started work on her epic edition of Charlotte’s letters, she had to pursue them through sale-rooms and private collections; one epistle, which had been cut up for autograph hunters, had to be pieced together from scraps in five different places. Shorter and Wise confused things further by saying everything was Charlotte’s (because she was more popular, and her property was therefore more lucrative). They conned Charlotte’s widower too, claiming they would be saving the manuscripts and Little Books for the nation, but actually exploiting them for their own financial gain. The pair even sweet-talked him into lending them a lock of Charlotte’s hair, returning it to him “sadly reduced in size... a few hairs instead of a long thick tress”. After that he started burning papers, and who knows what was lost?
But just as it’s both frustrating and heartbreaking that the Brontëana is so dispersed, it’s also tantalising, because things can reappear. And that’s just what has happened – again –with the Little Book in Paris. The Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits has run into financial trouble and closed down, and the Little Book will be up for auction in November. Hopefully, this time the Parsonage will be able to bring it home.
Remember: you can be part of Brontë history by
contributing towards bringing it home where it belongs, making sure that it will never ever get lost again.
An article in
The Yorkshire Post welcomes the announcement of the renovations to be undertaken at Keighley Station.
Graham Mitchell, Keighley Station Adopter and Chairman of Friends of Airedale Line, added: “Keighley Station is not only an important commuter hub, it is the gateway to Brontë Country and the current state of the building is not a good advertisement for the town or the district.
“The 1.7m people who use Keighley Station each year have waited a long time for renovation and refurbishment, so this announcement is certainly to be welcomed.” (Geraldine Scott)
This Is Local London features young writer AJ Fogden.
Annie is amongst some of the youngest published authors in history at age 14 and hopes to continue writing in the future. She is an avid reader and has always especially enjoyed reading Historical fiction and fantasy. Some of the authors Annie finds most inspirational are; Rebecca Ross, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, Keira Cass and Charlotte Brontë. She is a great famn of the Harry Potter, Selection and Hunger Games series.
Female First has writer Kelly Heard share 10 things she'd like her readers to know about her.
I love tattoos! I have three: a barn swallow, a thaumatrope, and a cat. My best friend and I have plans to get matching tattoos of our favorite quotation from Wuthering Heights.
Londonist recommends 'English-Themed Cocktails At Instagram-Friendly Coral Room' because
It falls on every cocktail bar now to churn out one seasonal cocktail menu after the next, and A Sip of England [...] is the catchall theme of The Coral Room's latest (think Brontë’s moors, the Cornish Riviera). It's hardly groundbreaking — we remember something similar at the Savoy a few years ago — but the proof's in the pudding. (Will Noble)
Jane Eyre is one of five classic novels recommended by
Republic World (India) and
The Bobsphere posts about it too. Mary Beard also refers to the novel in the
Books of My Life podcast by The National:
Books of My Life host Rupert Hawksley spoke to Beard about her early obsession with a frightening tale, her evolving appreciation of Jane Eyre and allegiance to Germaine Greer.
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