Smaller than a playing card but exceptionally valuable, a miniature book of poems crafted in the 19th century by English novelist Charlotte Brontë when she was 13 was unveiled in New York on Thursday.
Titled
A Book of Rhythms (sic) by Charlotte Bronte, Sold by Nobody, and Printed by Herself
,
this
15-page brown paper manuscript dated 1829, hand-sewn, includes a collection of ten never before published poems.
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The tiny book had not been unveiled to the public since November 1916 and its auction in New York for then $520.
It appeared at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair on Thursday, but this time New York-based James Cummins Bookseller and London-based Maggs Bros have priced it at $1.25 million, on behalf of an owner who wants to remain anonymous.
“We are selling it on behalf of a private owner who found it in an envelope stashed in a book.
And it was only because it was slipped into a book that it survived,”
a representative of James Cummins Bookseller, Henry Wesselss, told AFP.
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There would be approximately more than twenty miniature works created by the author of
Jane Eyre
in the hands of private owners, and the existence of
A Book of Rhythms
has long been known to specialists, since it is mentioned in a biography of Brontë published in 1857, two years after his death.
Unpublished manuscript, dated 1829 and written by novelist Charlotte Bronte, on display at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair in New York on April 21, 2022. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
Classic works of English literature
Raised in relative isolation in Yorkshire, England, Charlotte Brontë, born 206 years ago, on April 21, 1816, her sisters and brother entertained themselves by weaving intricate stories into a sophisticated fantasy world.
Their imaginations have given rise to novels hailed as classics of English literature, including
Jane Eyre
for Charlotte,
Wuthering Heights
for Emily or
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
for Anne.
Like many female writers of the time, they first published their works under male pseudonyms.
Miniature volumes, intended to amuse the Brontë children's toy soldiers, remained in the family until the 1890s, when they began to be sold to collectors in Britain and America.
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In November 2019, a miniature manuscript by Charlotte Brontë had already been sold for 780,000 euros (850,000 dollars).
Last December, a group of British libraries and museums also purchased a collection of books and manuscripts, including seven Charlotte miniatures, for 15 million pounds ($19.5 million).
