Preparing Charlotte's 'Thackeray' dress for transit to New York

Bronte Parsonage Museum: We are really looking forward to the opening of the Celebrating Charlotte exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum next month. Here is Sarah, our Curator, with Ann, our Principal Curator, preparing Charlotte's 'Thackeray' dress for transit to New York.

I wish Charlotte could have known this. Her dress to a museum in New York. And I wish I was curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum and could touch all these wonderful memories of the Brontes.

Two manuscripts from the library’s ‘Ashley Collection’

From Nick Hollands weblog Anne Bronte:

annebronte/the-treasures-of-the-bronte-sisters/

Thanks to a letter from my publisher, The History Press, I was privileged to be allowed access to two manuscripts from the library’s ‘Ashley Collection’ – manuscripts that are normally kept securely locked away and out of bounds to the public, hand written documents by Emily Brontë herself.

The first lines in the book are:

‘If I might hear thy voice in the hall

But thou art now on a desolate sea

Thinking of Gondal, and grieving for me;

Longing to be in sweet Elbe again,

Thinking and grieving and longing in vain.’

Read all annebronte/the-treasures-of-the-bronte-sisters/

Ashley Manuscripts

A17 — 5768
Collected by T. J. Wise (b 1859, d. 1937) and purchased from his executors after his death. Mainly 19th century literary manuscripts which have since been divided into Ashley MSS (complete manuscripts) and Ashley A and B series (individual items extracted from books into which they had been inserted by Wise).
Catalogue
T. J. Wise, The Ashley Library. A Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Autograph Letters collected by Thomas James Wise, 11 vols. (London, 1922—1936). Wise's own catalogue of his entire collection of manuscripts (except the B series) and books annotated by hand with Ashley MS numbers.

bl.uk/collection-items/emily-bronts-poetry-notebook

Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will, a new exhibition opening at the Morgan Library & Museum.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S LIFE AND WRITINGS

SHOWCASED  IN MAJOR NEW EXHIBITION AT THE MORGAN 
ORGANIZED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM  AND THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON 

Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will September 9, 2016 through January 2, 2017

New York, NY, August 17, 2016 — From the time Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre was first published in 1847, readers have been drawn to the orphan protagonist who declared herself “a free human being with an independent will.” Like her famous fictional creation, Brontë herself took bold steps throughout her life to pursue personal and professional fulfillment. Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will, a new exhibition opening at the Morgan Library & Museum on September 9, traces the writer’s life from imaginative teenager to reluctant governess to published poet and masterful novelist.
 
The exhibition celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of Brontë’s birth in 1816, and marks an historic collaboration between the Morgan, which holds one of the world’s most important collections of Brontë manuscripts and letters, and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, in Haworth, England, which will lend a variety of key items including the author’s earliest surviving miniature manuscript, her portable writing desk and paintbox, and a blue floral dress she wore in the 1850s. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a portion of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, on loan from the British Library and being shown in the U.S. for the first time, open to the page on which Jane asserts her “independent will.” Also shown for the first time in America will be the only two life portraits of Brontë, on loan from London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Read more: themorgan//BrontePressRelease
themorgan/charlotte-bronte

The Morgan Library

JP Morgan was famous for being a rich and powerful financier.  He arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric.  He was a big player in the steel and rail road industries, negotiating with such players as Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab.   But, as many wealthy power men of the day, JP had other passions besides money.  For JP, it was the written word.  So much so that he built himself a private library to house his insanely large and valuable collection of rare books and ancient manuscripts.

The Morgan Library was completed in 1906 but it wasn’t until after JP’s death (1913, see photo below) that the library was opened to the public, around 1924.  The library still houses many rare books, music manuscripts and has a considerable collection of Victoriana, including one of the most important collections of Gilbert and Sullivan manuscripts and related artifacts but many of the more valuable pieces from his original collection now reside in major museums and other institutions.

One of the most interesting things about the library is its former librarian.  Morgan, a man who never allowed women employees to work at his bank, hired a twenty-something African American woman, Belle de Costa Greene.  Greene became Morgan’s trusted friend and a powerful woman in the world of rare books, manuscripts and art.  She enjoyed a colorful life moving between bohemia and the elite in NYC and beyond.  An enormous accomplishment for a young Victorian woman of color.  However, she was fair skinned, she presented herself as Portuguese and people seemed to look the other way.  You can visit the office where she worked in the North Room of the library.  She later became the first Director of the Morgan Library.
Read all: travelingmom/historical-hotspots-in-nyc-morgan-library-a-museum/