zaterdag 29 mei 2021
‘Priceless’ Brontë manuscripts could be lost to private buyer, warn experts
The Brontë Society is calling for immediate government intervention to prevent the “priceless” literary treasures of the Honresfield Library, which include a rare notebook of Emily Brontë’s poetry, from disappearing back into private hands at auction.[...]
But the trustees of the Brontë Society are calling on MPs to take action to save the “unique” collection for the nation. Describing the library as “unrivalled in its holdings of northern British literary treasures”, the society has written to all northern MPs and elected mayors warning that the Sotheby’s auctions will see “trophy items” acquired “at prices beyond the reach of British museums and libraries”, with many liable to “disappear into the bank vaults of international private investors”.
“This calculated act of heritage dispersal has no regard for matters of curation, conservation, scholarly access or public benefit,” writes chair Trish Gurney. “The Honresfield Library is not just paper and ink, but cultural good.”
Oxford academic Professor Kathryn Sutherland, who is working with the society, warned that “without immediate government intervention in the public interest a national collection hidden for 100 years will soon be scattered piecemeal across the world – perhaps never to be seen”. Sutherland suggested that the library would be “the perfect founding collection for projected developments at British Library North”, which is being planned for Leeds. “We urge its purchase intact and whole in the national interest. Retained as a coherent collection, it will repay scholarly investigation and provide enjoyment for all lovers of literature for the next 100 years,” said Sutherland.
Ann Dinsdale, the principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum where the family lived, described the manuscripts as priceless. “My ideal would be for it all to be kept together and for it to be at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, but the main thing is that it goes to a public collection, where it can be cared for appropriately, and where it will be available for generations to come,” Dinsdale said she found it heartrending to think about the collection returning to private hands. “I’ve heard of wealthy collectors framing literary artefacts and hanging them on the walls where they’re exposed to light,” she said. “There’s nothing to govern how those things are cared for.”
Sotheby’s said that while the material going up for sale had always been in private ownership, it had all been “fully published and the contents are therefore freely available to those interested in the Brontës”.
“The decision was therefore made to offer it at auction, while ensuring that relevant institutions, including the Brontë Parsonage, were given advance notice of the projected sale in order to allow them time to raise funds should they wish to acquire the originals,” it said in a statement. “It is also worth pointing out that when material like this is acquired by collectors abroad, it often ends up on public view, as an ambassador for British culture.” The auction house added that “private collectors can be great custodians of such material, and these items have been very well cared for by a private family for almost 130 years. Often private collectors are very happy to allow scholars access to their holdings, and in this case there has been some scholarly access maintained throughout the long line of ownership.” (Alison Flood)
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE HONRESFIELD LIBRARY COLLECTION.
- A rare handwritten manuscript of Emily’s poems, mentioned in the preface to Wuthering Heights, with pencil corrections by Charlotte (est. £800,000-1,200,000
- The well-loved Brontë family copy of a book immortalised in Jane Eyre (est. £30,000-50,000
- Presentation copies of novels gifted to family friend Martha Brown
- An exceptional letter from Charlotte to her publisher George Smith
- Three letters from Charlotte to her oldest friend Ellen Nussey in 1850
- Two letters from Branwell Brontë to Hartley Coleridge, 1840 (est. £6,000-8,000)
- The auction also offers eleven pages worth of letters written by fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell on Charlotte and Haworth in 1853 (est. £3,000-5,000), several of Charlotte’s drawings, including one of their aunt Elizabeth Branwell (est. £5,000-7,000), and charming notes passed between Anne and Emily, including a little sketch of them writing at the table – all of which provide evocative glimpses of life at Haworth parsonage
Read more and see photographs: sothebys/honresfield-library-highlights
The greatest highlight of this first selection from the Honresfield Library is an autograph manuscript volume of poetry by Emily Brontë.
The greatest highlight of this first selection from the Honresfield Library is an autograph manuscript volume of poetry by Emily Brontë. Written in her miniature hand between 1844 and 1846, this slim volume contains 31 poems, many with pencil revisions by her sister Charlotte, and is the sole manuscript witness to many of her greatest poems. Autograph material by Emily Brontë is exceptionally rare. Very little has appeared at auction in recent decades and this is much the most important manuscript to remain in private hands.
The sale also includes the finest copy of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, to have been seen at auction in recent decades: a first edition in original cloth inscribed by the Rev. Patrick Brontë to the family housekeeper Martha Brown.
Other Brontë treasures in the sale include the family copy of Bewick’s History of British Birds – the book that brings solace to the lonely young Jane at the beginning of Jane Eyre – and fascinating letters by Branwell Brontë to Hartley Coleridge.
vrijdag 28 mei 2021
Beginning next month, notes BBC News, literary lovers will be able to see items from the private collection at exhibitions in London, Edinburgh and New York.
“In the last 90 years, only one or two (very discreet) scholars have had access to slivers of the material, so essentially, only two people alive have seen any of it,” a Sotheby’s spokesperson tells the Guardian’s Alison Flood.
Beginning next month, notes BBC News, literary lovers will be able to see items from the private collection at exhibitions in London, Edinburgh and New York. Where the trove will end up after the auction remains to be seen, but as the Brontë Society notes in a statement, it “believes that the rightful home for these unique and extraordinary manuscripts, unseen for a hundred years, is at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where they can be enjoyed by visitors, explored by scholars and shared with Brontë enthusiasts around the world for generations to come.”
Given the financial challenges posed by Covid-19, however, the society acknowledges that it is “faced with the very real possibility that this immensely significant collection will be dispersed and disappear into private collections across the globe.”
Other items in the Honresfield Library include:
Other items in the Honresfield Library include:
- Jane Austen first editions, including Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice
- A copy of Don Quixote printed in 1620 for Shakespeare publisher Edward Blounte
- An annotated copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems showing his changes
- The complete manuscript for Sir Walter Scott's 19th century novel Rob Roy
- Little-seen letters to and from the likes of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Hartley Coleridge (son of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and George Smith - publisher and champion of The Bells, which was the Bronte's secret pseudonym
- Works from Homer, Ovid, the Grimm Brothers, Montaigne, Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, Charles Dickens and Mary Wollstonecraft also make an appearance
Statement in response to Sotheby's announcement re the sale of the Honresfeld Library.
The Brontë Society exists to collect and preserve Brontë manuscripts and artefacts for the public benefit. The manuscripts in the Honresfeld Library were written in Haworth and, as a collection, they bear witness to the intense collaboration and creativity that bound Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë together and to their home at Haworth Parsonage.
The Society believes that the rightful home for these unique and extraordinary manuscripts, unseen for a hundred years, is at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where they can be enjoyed by visitors, explored by scholars and shared with Brontë enthusiasts around the world for generations to come.
Regrettably, we are faced with the very real possibility that this immensely significant collection will be dispersed and disappear into private collections across the globe. We are determined to save as much as we can, but due to the dramatic financial impact of the pandemic, the timing is unfortunate. While Covid has reinforced the comfort and hope that we find in literature and culture, museum revenue has fallen away to almost nothing and competition for public funds has become fiercer than ever.
We all have a stake in these remarkable treasures. We need to look beyond the narrow commercialisation and privatisation of heritage and work together to protect and share what we all value. As our campaign takes shape, we urge all with an interest in saving this remarkable collection intact to contact us. bronte/rare-bronte-manuscripts-to-be-sold-at-auction
A Lost Brontë Library Surfaces A trove of manuscripts acquired from the Brontë family in the 19th century, all but unseen for the past century, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s.
via Sotheby’s
A trove of Brontë family manuscripts — all but unseen for a century — will be auctioned by Sotheby’s as part of what the auction house is billing as the sale of a legendary “lost library” of British literature treasures.
The Honresfield Library, a private collection assembled by two Victorian industrialists that vanished from public view in the 1930s, contains more than 500 manuscripts, letters, rare first editions and other artifacts from a number of canonical authors, including the manuscripts of Walter Scott’s “Rob Roy” and Robert Burns’s “First Commonplace Book.”
via Sotheby’s
But it is the Brontë material — based on hoopla surrounding past Brontë auctions, and the estimates for this one — that is likely to cause the biggest stir. Highlights, which will be exhibited at Sotheby’s in New York from June 5 to 9, include a handwritten manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems, with pencil edits by Charlotte. It carries an estimate of $1.3 million to $1.8 million.
The trove also includes family letters, inscribed first editions and other relics that offer a glimpse into life in the Brontë household, like the family’s heavily annotated copy of Bewick’s “History of British Birds” (which features in the opening scenes of “Jane Eyre”).
Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s specialist in English literature and historical manuscripts, called the Honresfield Library the finest he had seen in 20 years, and the Brontë cache the most important to come to light in a generation.
The Honresfield Library took shape not far from the parsonage at the edge of the West Yorkshire moors, where Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother, Branwell (born between 1816 and 1820), grew up creating elaborate shared imaginary worlds. It was assembled starting in the 1890s by Alfred and William Law, two self-made mill owners who had grown up less than 20 miles from the Brontë home in Haworth (which is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum).
The Laws’ collection, held in the library at their home, Honresfield House, included what Heaton called “grand country-house books” like a Shakespeare First Folio (long since sold off). But the brothers, less typically, were also keen collectors of manuscripts, acquiring the Brontë cache from a dealer who had bought them directly from Charlotte’s widower. William, the more serious collector, also paid frequent visits to Haworth to buy family relics that had been saved by neighbors and relatives.
After the deaths of the brothers (who never married), the collection passed to a nephew, who granted access to select scholars, and had facsimiles made of some items. But after his death in 1939, the originals fell out of public view.
Read all: nytimes/bronte-library-sothebys-auction