A crucial national endeavour

Daily Mail on the common effort to try and save the Honresfeld Library.

But the auction house has now agreed to postpone the auctions to give Friends of the National Libraries (FNL) charity the chance to raise the £15million necessary to keep the Honresfield Library collection together and stop it disappearing from public view.

A private library of English literature of such significance has not been placed on the open market for many decades and is unlikely to appear again.

The charity, the only one in the UK that focuses on saving written and printed heritage, hopes the collection can be shared across Britain. If successful, FNL says it would pass ownership of each item to the appropriate national, regional and specialist institution to ensure the widest possible public benefit.

The Honresfield collection has been largely inaccessible for the last 80 years, its contents examined only by a few trusted scholars. FNL's ambitious bid is the first national arts appeal of its kind. [...]John Scally, trustee of the FNL and chief executive of the National Library of Scotland, said: 'Once in a generation, a collection of books and manuscripts appears from almost nowhere that is met with a mixture of awe and stunned silence, followed by concerted action to bring it into public ownership.'The UK-wide consortium is determined to raise the funds to ensure we can save the Honresfield Library for everyone.'Richard Ovenden, trustee of the FNL and Bodley's Librarian at the Bodleian Libraries, said: 'Literature and the creative use of the English language and its dialects have been among the great contributions made by the people of these islands.'Now is a time to act together, to preserve and share some of the greatest examples of this heritage.'Charles Sebag-Montefiore, trustee and treasurer of FNL, said: 'FNL is thrilled to be able to take the lead in saving the Honresfield Library. FNL is working with a consortium of institutional funders and individual philanthropists to raise the substantial funds need to secure this extraordinary collection for the benefit of everyone in the UK.'This is a crucial national endeavour to raise enough funds to keep this unique treasure trove in Britain. This is cultural levelling up, as the items will be spread across the UK from Yorkshire to Edinburgh, Oxford and London.' (Jennifer Ruby)

Yorkshire Live lists several reasons why living in Bradford is cool and one of them is

The dramatic surrounding hills which inspired the resident Brontë sisters (Dave Himelfield and Helen Whitehouse)

The Boston Globe interviews poet Michael Robbins.

Books: Do you read novels as well?

Robbins: I read a lot earlier in the pandemic. I had all this time so I read a bunch I’d been meaning to for years. Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” some Balzac and I reread Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” I started reading Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” but everyone started dying of a disease. I couldn’t deal with that at the time. (Amy Sutherland)

InfoLibre (Spain) reviews the Spanish translation of Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read.

En ellos se encuentran las impresiones de Woolf sobre Charlotte Brontë, a la que veía como una pionera y un referente, o sobre George Eliot, pero no parece hablar tanto en ellos la escritora como la lectora. Si es que ambas identidades pueden disociarse. (Clara Morales) (Translation)