After years of chasing an “incredibly rare” little book by the teenage Charlotte Brontë, the Brontë Society has succeeded in acquiring it at auction, after fears that it would disappear into private hands again.
At a Paris auction on Monday, the charity paid €600,000 (£512,000) plus auction costs to acquire the book, which measures just 35mm x 61mm. Written in 1830, when Charlotte was 14, it is part of a series of six produced by the author in her teens. Only five are known to have survived, with one missing since around 1930.
The book will go to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the former family home in Haworth, Yorkshire, which already holds the other four surviving miniature books entitled “The Young Men’s Magazines”.
The unpublished manuscript features three handwritten stories, including one regarded as a precursor to a scene in Jane Eyre. It last came up for auction in 2011 when the Brontë Society lost out to an investment scheme. The society had feared the manuscript would fall into private hands again, but thanks to a four-week public campaign backed by names including Judi Dench and Jacqueline Wilson, the society received more than £85,000 in public donations, as well as grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and other trusts.
“We were determined to do everything we could to bring back this extraordinary ‘little book’ to the Brontë Parsonage Museum and now can’t quite believe that it will be coming home to where it was written 189 years ago,” said Kitty Wright, executive director of the Brontë Society. “We have been truly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from people from all over the world backing our campaign and can’t wait to have it in place with the others and on public view to the world.”
Ann Dinsdale, principal curator, said the return of the unique manuscript was “an absolute highlight of my 30 years working at the museum”.
“Charlotte wrote this minuscule magazine for the toy soldiers she and her siblings played with and as we walk through the same rooms they did, it seems immensely fitting that it is coming home and we would like to say an enormous thank you to everyone who made it possible,” Dinsdale added.