Never home to Charlotte Brontë

The Guardian reports that Judi Dench, as Honorary President of the Brontë Society, is appealing to the public to help bring Charlotte's little book home. Click here to help.

Judi Dench, Jacqueline Wilson and Tracy Chevalier are among several names throwing their weight behind the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s bid to keep one of Charlotte Brontë’s tiny manuscripts from being “shut away in a private collection”, with public donations topping £50,000 with just a week to go before the miniature book is auctioned. [...]
The manuscript last came up for auction in 2011, when the museum was outbid by an investment scheme; the institution is now desperate to acquire what it called an “extremely rare, immensely significant piece of history” when it is auctioned in Paris on 18 November, so it can make it available to visitors and scholars.
The book is expected to sell for at least £650,000, and the museum has been applying to trusts and foundations to raise the funds, with an additional public crowdfunder topping £50,000.
“There are just a few days to go before Charlotte’s little book goes to auction in Paris and we are urging everyone, literature lover or not, to be part of this historic moment to bring this literary gem home to where it was written 189 years ago,” said a spokesperson for the museum.
Dench, who is honorary president of the Brontë Society, called for members of the public to help “bring it back to Yorkshire where it belongs”.
“These tiny manuscripts are like a magical doorway into the imaginary worlds they inhabited and also hint at their ambition to become published authors,” she said. “It’s very moving to think of 14 year-old Charlotte creating this particular little book at home in Haworth Parsonage.”
The museum said that the story about the murderer, who has an “immense fire” burning in his head which causes his bed curtains to set alight, was a “clear precursor” of a scene between Bertha and Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre, which Brontë would publish 17 years later. “We want to be able to look after it, learn from it and use it to inspire future generations how and why Charlotte started writing, and would hate to see it shut away in a private collection,” said its spokesperson. “This is the first time we have run a Crowdfunder campaign as part of this process and we have been incredibly touched by comments left by those who have already supported us. We want to bring the book back for all of them.”
Jacqueline Wilson also threw her weight behind the campaign. “Fourteen-year-olds often write little books. I did myself, and many young girls send me their own literary efforts. But Charlotte Brontë’s little book is so very different - a handwritten delightful miniature work from a 14-year-old who would grow up to be a literary genius,” she said.
Actor Sarah Lancashire, musician Cerys Matthews, and writers Audrey Niffenegger, Tracy Chevalier and Bonnie Greer are also among those backing the campaign. “These little books are a unique insight into the 14-year-old Charlotte and to be privy to their content feels so intimate and such a privilege,” said Lancashire. “The little book coming up for auction in Paris belongs here in Haworth, and I ask everyone who can to support the campaign to bring it home.”
“I love the idea of something so iconic to the Brontës’ lives going back to the place where it was created, rather than tucked away in some private collector’s safe,” added Chevalier. “Charlotte and her siblings learned how to create worlds as teenagers, and the little books were a crucial part of that training.” (Alison Flood)

iNews carries the story, too.

We wonder whether the following is an actual blunder or a deceitful marketing strategy. Offaly Express (Ireland) reports that Charlotte's Way, up until now a guesthouse, is up for sale. Charlotte's Way is the current name for what used to be known as Hill House and according to this newspaper,

A Georgian house once home to famed author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, is up for sale in Banagher.
It is a little known fact that she once lived in Banagher with her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, briefly staying in this beautiful house, which is now run as a guesthouse. (Justin Kelly)

Such a little known fact that it isn't even true as there isn't any record of Charlotte Brontë setting foot in it, not to mention living there. From The Oxford Companion to the Brontës by Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith:

Banagher, Ireland, c.80 miles west of Dublin, in King's County (now Offaly), home to the Revd A. B. Nicholls. From the age of 7 when he was adopted by his uncle and aunt [...] Nicholls lived with them at Cuba House [...]
Nicholls took his wife Charlotte Brontë to visit his former home during their honeymoon in Ireland. Charlotte was impressed by the elegant Georgian Cuba House [...] After Revd Patrick Brontë's death, Nicholls returned to Banagher to live with his aunt and her daughter Mary Anna who had moved from Cuba House to the smaller Hill House, at the top of a rise overlooking the town and Shannon River [...]. In 1864 he married Mary Anna and continued to live at Hill House, Banagher (still in existence), until his death.

Apple-picking (gourmet edition) in The Times:

Although we are focusing on just apples, [Raymond Blanc] says they are in a way the root of everything. A kind of symbol for Britain to move forward by reconnecting with the past: from Shakespeare dropping so many mentions of so many varieties of apple you can almost guess his favourites, Charlotte Brontë extolling the “blossom blanched orchard trees whose boughs droop like white garlands”, to a future where trees are back at the heart of our landscape. (Helen Rumbelow)

The Guardian celebrates the 50th anniversary of Northern Ballet.

The archive has handwritten logbooks of visits to the various theatres and school halls where Northern Dance Theatre, as it was first known, performed. There is promotional material trumpeting “the north’s own ballet company” which comprised 11 dancers – seven women, four men – and now has four times that number. There are glamorous shots of Northern’s illustrious artist laureate, Rudolf Nureyev, in 1986 and desperate campaigning letters from that decade, railing against proposed Arts Council cuts. A look through the company’s posters reveals a striking consistency of vision: the same company that staged dance-drama The Brontës in 1995 went on to perform Nixon’s version of Wuthering Heights in 2003 and recently enjoyed one of its biggest hits with another prestigious literary adaptation, Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre. (Chris Wiegand)

New Statesman America asks a good many writers and literary people to pick their favourite reads of 2019.

Kit de Waal
[...] The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Viking) by Sara Collins is a brilliant story of a slave, Frannie, who leaves a Jamaican plantation and comes to London to become technically “free”, being gifted to a man trying to prove that Africans are lesser humans. This is a gothic novel in the style of Jane Eyre, but far darker and more humorous.