'This is the Holy Grail'

The Daily Mail takes a look at the Honresfeld Collection which after visiting New York is back in the UK:

Picture Credits: @Murray Sanders-Daily Mail

Spread across a huge table in Sotheby’s auction house in London are stacks of immaculately preserved 19th- century first editions and manuscripts, a slew of letters in Jane Austen’s rigorously disciplined script and a small collection of Charlotte Brontë’s hand-sewn books, barely 3in high and filled with writing so teeny it had to be written with a single hair dipped in ink and can only be deciphered under a microscope. (...)

 No wonder Ovenden’s hands are shaking and, alongside, Bronte expert Professor Kathryn Sutherland of St Anne’s College, Oxford, is fizzing
with excitement.Because today is the first chance for generations for anyone to get a proper look at it. And it’s all here. (...)

Meanwhile, the first editions — some annotated by their authors — include everything from Jane Austen’s Emma, Persuasion and Pride And Prejudice to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

But what has really got Ovenden’s heart racing is a set of manuscripts of the Brontë siblings.

The collection includes seven of Charlotte Brontë’s famous ‘little books’ or magazines written at the kitchen table in the Brontë parsonage — alone worth an estimated £5 million — a manuscript collection of poems by sister Anne and a small autographed diary note by Emily and Anne.

The real treasure, however, is a small, slim, red-bound exercise book of Emily Brontë’s poems, annotated by her sister Charlotte and valued at between £800,000 and £1.2 million.

‘This is the Holy Grail,’ says Professor Sutherland. ‘There is another in the British Library and that’s it. This one was for many years considered lost or destroyed. Almost nothing of Emily survived. We can’t believe it’s here.’

Such is the library’s significance that, when it suddenly popped up, largely intact, for sale by Sotheby’s earlier this year, it was hailed as the ‘Tutankhamun’s Tomb of literature’. (...)

But what has really got Ovenden’s heart racing is a set of manuscripts of the Brontë siblings.

The collection includes seven of Charlotte Brontë’s famous ‘little books’ or magazines written at the kitchen table in the Brontë parsonage — alone worth an estimated £5 million — a manuscript collection of poems by sister Anne and a small autographed diary note by Emily and Anne.

The real treasure, however, is a small, slim, red-bound exercise book of Emily Brontë’s poems, annotated by her sister Charlotte and valued at between £800,000 and £1.2 million.

‘This is the Holy Grail,’ says Professor Sutherland. ‘There is another in the British Library and that’s it. This one was for many years considered lost or destroyed. Almost nothing of Emily survived. We can’t believe it’s here.’

Such is the library’s significance that, when it suddenly popped up, largely intact, for sale by Sotheby’s earlier this year, it was hailed as the ‘Tutankhamun’s Tomb of literature’. (Jane Fryer)

Also in The Daily Mail books about freedom (because you know, today in the UK the pandemic is supposedly over):

Women’s charities have spoken about what a terrifying period lockdown has been for those in abusive relationships. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall tells the story of Helen Graham, who’s fled to Yorkshire with her son from a violent, drunken, dissipated husband. (Patricia Nicol) 

The Otago Daily Times talks about the recent Most Wuthering Heights Ever Day event: 

The Yorkshire moors came to Dunedin at noon on Saturday as a flash mob assembled in the Octagon for The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.

About 50 aspiring Cathys clad in red dresses attended the event, which had participants perform the dance routine from the music video to Kate Bush’s 1978 No1 hit Wuthering Heights.

The song is based on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of the same name about the turbulent relationship between the volatile Heathcliff and his childhood friend Catherine. (Andrrew Marshall)

This is Reno also talks about its local event.

Il Torinese (Italy) reviews the book Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth:

Roth aveva cercato una donna giovane e bella che si prendesse cura di lui (come Jane Eyre accudì Rochester)….e invece trovò Taylor: sensibile conoscitore della letteratura, grande capacità di ascolto che lo rese il confidente perfetto e speciale. (Lura Goria) (Translation)

AnneBrontë.org has a brief post about a trip to Scarborough.