The document is tiny. Its 19 pages are the size of your credit card. Its author was 14 years old. And it is expected to reach in the region of £300,000 when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s auction house on December 15.

For this is a lost story by none other than Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre, and a member of the famous family who lived in the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

Our fascination with the Bronte sisters is seemingly inexhaustible. This autumn alone, there have been new films of Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights. Director Andrea Arnold’s brooding, silent Wuthering Heights is the 27th film adaptation of this book.

The-Brontes