Manuscript will not come home

The Brontë Society has been thwarted in its attempts to return an important Charlotte Brontë manuscript to the writer’s home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The manuscript, which went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday 15 December, was previously untraced and unpublished. It was expected to fetch between £200,000 - £300,000, though in the end sold for £580,000. The Society had been awarded a grant of £613,140 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), the UK’s fund of last resort for saving great heritage at risk. There was also support from the John Murray Archive, who pledged £20,000, the Friends of National Libraries, £10,000, and many donations in response to a public appeal launched by the Society. 

Unfortunately, this was not enough on the day as the hammer price plus the significant buyer’s commission took the final price to above the amount of money we could raise. Read more: bronteparsonagemanuscript-will-not-come-home

Bonnie Greer, President of the Brontë Society, said:

This 'Little Book' puts down in luminous prose not only the daydreams of a little Yorkshire girl, but it also contains the seed of the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language, Charlotte Bronte. It will not be going home, back to the place where it all began, the Parsonage at Haworth. Its presence there would have placed it not only at the heart of the proud community in which she was born and raised, but would have brought full circle a Yorkshire story, a Northern story, a British story, a world story. We are hugely grateful to all those who supported our bid to bring this wonderful manuscript back to Haworth, especially the National Heritage Memorial Fund.