You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections; there is nothing like it in this world.
~ Charlotte Brontë
You have surely read – or at least heard about – the novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, by two of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Bibliophiles and fans of the Brontës' writing will be pleased to know that a private library containing books and manuscripts belonging to the sisters is now in public view after almost 100 years. It will be offered up for auction at Sotheby's from 2-13 July.
The Brontë papers are part of the Honresfield Library, a collection initially put together by Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte Brontë's husband. Nicholls sold most of the Brontë manuscripts in 1895 to the bibliophile and literary forger Thomas James Wise. Collector brothers Alfred and William Law later acquired some of the memorabilia from Wise.
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The Law Brothers Library at Honresfield House disappeared from public view in 1939 and remained inaccessible even to academics. "Over the past 90 years, only one or two (very discreet) scholars have had access to fragments of the material, so essentially only two living people have seen anything of it," said a spokesperson for Sotheby's, which will host the auction of more than 500 manuscripts, first editions and letters from the Honresfield library.
In addition to the manuscript of Emily Brontë's poems, the rich collection also includes a copy of the first original edition of her novel Wuthering Heights with the original fabric cover and an annotated copy of the book A History of British Birds by Thomas Bewick, mentioned in Jane Eyre.
The Brontë sisters' signed materials are very rare and, before this sale, very little of theirs has appeared at auction. In 2011, there was a bidding battle between collectors for a mini-book written by Charlotte when she was fourteen, which ended up selling for over $1 million.
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Sotheby's will also be auctioning off a collection of notes exchanged between Emily Brontë and her sister Anne, including a small sketch of them sitting at a writing table, and a letter from Charlotte Brontë to her publisher George Smith discussing Jane Eyre's reviews, as well as speculation about the identity behind the surname 'Bell', the literary pseudonym used by the sisters.
The manuscript with Emily Brontë's verses offers us an insight into the collaborative and supportive relationship between her and her sister Charlotte. Emily had written poems in secret without any intention of publishing them, but in 1845 Charlotte found them and convinced her to put them in a self-financed booklet, which the Brontë used male pseudonyms to publish. The manuscript, in addition to testifying to Emily's creative genius, features several pencil annotations made by Charlotte.
Sotheby's has valued the manuscript with Emily's poems between £800,000-1.2 million because, according to Sotheby's, "almost nothing of Emily survived – she essentially wrote Wuthering Heights and then died without a trace."
The first edition of the novel Wuthering Heights is estimated at £200,000-300,000 and the copy of A History of British Birds will be auctioned with a target price between £30,000-50,000.
