The 'daunting task' of saving Charlotte Brontë's little book

It's all over the new: Charlotte's tiny book sold in New York will be returning home to the Brontë Parsonage. Here's the press release from the Brontë Society.

From The New York Times:

The last of the two dozen miniature books made by the young Charlotte Brontë to remain in private hands, which resurfaced last month after nearly a century, will soon be heading home to the remote parsonage on the moors of northern England where it was made. [...]

On Monday, it was revealed that the buyer is the Friends of the National Libraries, a British charity, which is donating it to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire, home to one of the world’s largest collections of Brontë manuscripts.

Ann Dinsdale, the museum’s chief curator, said in a statement that she was “absolutely thrilled” by the turn of events.

“It is always emotional when an item belonging to the Brontë family is returned home and this final little book coming back to the place where it was written after being thought lost is very special for us,” she said.

According to a news release, the book will be put on public display and also digitized, making poems that have been virtually unseen since they were written accessible to readers around the world. (Jennifer Schuessler)

From The Guardian:

Thought lost, it was bought in New York for $1.25m (£1m) with Haworth in mind and given it measures just 10cm by 6cm, it is probably, centimetre for centimetre, the most valuable literary manuscript ever sold.

Its artistic value is also through the roof. “It is phenomenal really,” said Ann Dinsdale, principal curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. “I can’t quite believe it. I haven’t been able to take it all in yet.” [...]

“She’s known for her novels but initially Charlotte wanted to be a poet,” said Dinsdale. “We know that she sent samples of her poetry to the poet laureate and she told him of her ambition to be a poet, which is quite something.” [...]

The titles of the poems have been known to experts and are a long way from an isolated parsonage and the windswept moors of Yorkshire. They include On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel, Songs of an Exile and Meditations While Journeying in a Canadian Forest.

Astonishingly, the poems themselves have never been published, photographed, transcribed or even summarised. [...]

Geordie Greig, the chair of FNL, said they had only two weeks to raise the money to buy the book, which had been a daunting task.

“Saving Charlotte Brontë’s little book is a giant gain for Britain,” he said. “To return this literary treasure to the Brontë Parsonage where it was written is important for scholars and also students studying one of our greatest women writers.”

Among the benefactors giving money to buy the book are the estate of TS Eliot and the Garfield Weston Foundation.

The manuscript is being donated to the Brontë Society whose museum in Haworth has the largest collection of Brontë manuscripts in the world. It already has nine little books, soon to be joined by seven more from the Honresfield Library. (Mark Brown)

From The Yorkshire Post:

While the titles - including “The Beauty of Nature” and “On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel” - have long been known, the book itself has been in private hands for well over a century.

It was last seen in 1916 when it sold at auction in New York for $520 - and nothing had been heard of it since, with Bronte experts fearing it had been lost.

But when the owner found out that some $15m had been raised by charity Friends of National Libraries (FNL) to acquire a separate Bronte collection, part of the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, he instructed his agent to act. 

His agent, James Cummins, approached FNL and offered them the exclusive chance to raise $1.25m to buy the tiny book.

In just a few short weeks, the charity raised the funds with contributions chiefly coming from lead donor the Garfield Weston Foundation.

The charity will donate the manuscript to the Brontë Society. where it will be exhibited at the Parsonage in Haworth.

Ann Dinsdale, principal curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be the recipients of this extraordinary and unexpected donation and wish to thank the generosity of the Friends of the National Libraries and all of the donors who have made it possible.

“It is always emotional when an item belonging to the Brontë family is returned home and this final little book coming back to the place it was written when it had been thought lost is very special for us.”

Geordie Greig, Chairman of FNL, said: “Saving Charlotte Bronte’s little book is a giant gain for Britain.

“To return this literary treasure to the Bronte Parsonage where it was written is important for scholars and also students studying one of our greatest women writers.

“As the leading libraries and literature charity Friends of the National Libraries had the daunting task of raising $1.25m in just two weeks. It is due to wonderfully generous donors that Friends of the National Libraries did raise this sum to buy this rarest of manuscripts and return it to its rightful home.” (Victoria Finan)

Other sites reporting the news include: Independent, Independent (Ireland), Express & Star and many, many others.

A contributor to LitHub claims that, 'Apparently the Brontës all died so early because they spent their lives drinking graveyard water.'.

It is a well known and oft-romanticized fact that the Brontë sisters—and the Brontë brother, for that matter—all died young, one after the other, leaving moody, moor-y masterpieces in their wake. Officially, they all suffered from tuberculosis, or complications thereof, and unofficially, they all died of grief for one another, but as I learned this week, apparently there was a very real and disturbing factor that contributed to their lifelong illnesses and early deaths: they spent their lives drinking water contaminated by the local graveyard—and possibly the local privies, too. (Emily Temple)

That's not true, not a 'very real factor' at all. The Brontës were safe because their well was private and right at the very top, while many of the Haworth inhabitants did drink contaminated water from a well at the bottom whose water drained from the graves when it rained. But not the Brontës.

Also on LitHub has a poem by Arda Collins inspired by Wuthering Heights. Religión en libertad (Spain) approaches Wuthering Heights from a religious point of view. Sicilian Post (Italy) features an Italian band called Helen Burns after Jane Eyre's best friend.