Young Men's Magazine at Sotheby's

When Charlotte Brontë listed her plays in the manuscript Catalogue of my Books with the periods of their completion up to August 3, 1830 (now at the Morgan Library, fragment on the right) she included  six numbers of The Young Men's Magazine. Now, it seems that Number two has resurfaced and it will be auctioned at Sotheby's next December 15, according to The Times :

It is one of the most powerful images in English literature — a mad, wronged wife driven by thoughts of revenge sets fire to the home of her husband. Yet the inspiration for Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of a blaze in Mr Rochester’s bedroom in Jane Eyre came not in adulthood but when she was just 14, a newly discovered manuscript reveals. The document, heralded by scholars as one of the most important literary finds in years, has until now been hidden in a private collection. Brontë wrote the tale of murder and madness that prefigured Jane Eyre in August 1830, 17 years before the novel was published. It is part of a 19-page 4,000-word manuscript entitled The Young Men’s Magazine, Number 2. Still in its original red folder, it is written in minuscule script on pages measuring just over 6cm by 3.5cm. It is the missing second volume in a series of six she created that year. On Brontë’s death in 1855 her surviving manuscripts passed her widower, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, who later sold them. The manuscript only emerged when its owners approached Sotheby’s, the auctioneer, which realised its significance. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in scholarly and monetary value. It is expected to make about £300,000 when it is sold on December 15.
Literary experts, meanwhile, are excited by what it reveals about the young Brontë. Gabriel Heaton, senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s, said: “This minute manuscript marks Charlotte Brontës first burst of creativity and, significantly, provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history’s great literary minds.”
In her classic novel, Jane Eyre falls in love with Mr Rochester, not knowing he is already married. His insane wife, imprisoned in an attic, sets fire to the bed curtains in his chamber in an early chapter and later burns down his home. Heaton noted that though the thought of a 14-year-old girl in a Yorkshire parsonage in 19th-century England knowing about murder and madness may seem astonishing, Brontë’s imagination seems to have thrived on being allowed free access to her father’s library.  (Dalya Alberge)

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