More than 100 years later they continue to garner great interest. The miniature volumes remained in the family until the 1890s, when they began to be sold to collectors in Britain and America. "This book is written by myself but I pretend that the Marquis of Duro & Lord Charles Wellesley in the Young Men's World have written one like it," she wrote. She also refers to the imaginary world that the Bronte sisters created along with their brother Branwell.
Like many female writers of the time, they originally published their works under male pseudonyms.Īt the start of "A Book of Rhymes," or "Ryhmes" as Bronte spelled it, she writes: "The following are attempts at rhyming of an inferior nature it must be acknowledged but they are nevertheless my best." 'Extremely fragile' Their imaginations spawned novels hailed as classics of English literature, including Charlotte's "Jane Eyre," Emily's "Wuthering Heights" and Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." Raised in relative isolation in the moorland village of Haworth in Yorkshire, England, Bronte and her younger sisters Emily and Anne entertained themselves by weaving intricate stories set in a sophisticated imaginary world. The existence of the handwritten "A Book of Ryhmes" has long been known to scholars, having been mentioned in Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 biography of Bronte.īut the poems themselves, whose titles include "The Beauty of Nature," "Songs of an Exile" and "On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel" have never published. The fair opened Thursday and runs until Sunday. Now it is us up for sale at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, with an asking price of $1.25 million. The book hasn't been seen in public since November 1916, when it sold at auction in New York City for $520. It is the last of more than two dozen miniature works created by the "Jane Eyre" novelist known to remain in private hands. Titled "A Book of Ryhmes (sic) by Charlotte Bronte, Sold by Nobody, and Printed by Herself," the volume is hand-stitched in its original brown paper covers. Smaller than a playing card, the 15-page manuscript dated 1829 is a collection of ten unpublished poems.
0 kommentar(er)
