This April 21, a Charlotte Brontë book of poetry will resurface in the public eye for the first time since 1916.
This miniature manuscript was written by Charlotte Brontë when she was only 13 years old and is smaller than a deck of playing cards. Titled “A Book of Rhymes by Charlotte Brontë, Sold by Nobody and Printed by Herself,” the small book contains ten poems that were never published.
The collection of poetry was written in December of 1829 and was last seen in 1916 when it was sold in New York for $520. The book was recently rediscovered in someone’s private collection, Henry Wessells reports. Wessells is an associate at James Cummins Bookseller. According to Wessells, the manuscript is a “beautiful little thing” and a “once-in-a-career item.”
Within the book’s fifteen tiny pages are ten new poems that have never before been seen by the modern public. The text is still bound in its original brown paper cover and tells of the Brontë sibling’s imaginary adventures in their youth.
“Just think of the Brontë children telling and writing stories among themselves, “Wessells mused. “Learning at home in a remote village, and then blossoming, briefly, to write the books that have been read by millions ever since, and also leaving behind hand-made things such as this manuscript.”
This book is one of many miniature manuscripts from the Brontë sisters. According to the release, “They [the Brontë sisters] wrote adventure stories, dramas, and verse in hand-made manuscript books filled with tiny handwriting intended to resemble print.”
The book will be publically displayed for the first time since 1916 on April 21st, 2022. April 21st is the opening night of the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, as well as Charlotte Brontë’s birthday.
The book’s selling price is $1.25 million.
While the book and the poems themselves have never been published or documented in any way, the titles have been public knowledge since 1857 when Charlotte Brontë biographer Elizabeth Gaskell transcribed Brontë’s catalog of her writings. Some titles include “The Beauty of Nature,” and “On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel.”
While neither Wessells nor anyone else with access to the manuscript can share the contents until April 21st, whoever buys the text will thereafter be able to publish or share the poems. To quote Wessells, this “will be a red-letter day for Brontë scholarship.”
“It’s thrilling to be part of the history of English literature, one link in the chain,” Wessells said when interviewed. “And there’s also just the joy of actually having it on my desk. The more you look at it, the more interesting it becomes.”
Brontë’s “The Book of Ryhmes” (as the 13-year-old spelled it on her title page) was found inside a schoolbook from the 1800s, hidden within a smaller envelope.
The book is in its original brown paper cover, bound in a rope-like thread. The paper edges are uncut. In handwriting too small to be read without a magnifying glass, the inside cover bears the disclaimer: “The following are attempts at rhyming of an inferior nature it must be acknowledged but they are nevertheless my best.”
Brontë began writing at the early age of ten years old. By age 14, she reported having completed 20 works in full. By her death at age 38, Brontë had published three novels and had completed one other (published posthumously), in addition to dozens of poems. Her most famous novel Jane Eyre continues to be celebrated around the world as one of the first prose fiction accounts told in first-person narrative style, revolutionizing the future of fiction novel writing.
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