University News | December 19, 2011

Brontë magazine, similar to Harvard holdings, sold

Manuscript, sold for $1.1 million, leaves England; magazine complements books in Harvard collection.

A handwritten magazine created by the young Charlotte Brontë has been sold at auction at Sotheby's in London for $1.1 million, according to the New York Times. The buyer is a museum in Paris. The sale deflates the hopes of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England, which had been guaranteed more than $900,000 from National Heritage funds to bid for the text in an attempt to keep the 1.5-by-2.5-inch manuscript in England; it owns four parts of the six-part series (the sixth work is untraced).

Harvard Magazine's new issue reports on the Houghton Library's collection of nine of the Brontë miniature books (of about 20), dating from the same period.

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