Sotheby’s has agreed to delay the much-publicized
auction of a “lost” library containing rare manuscripts by Robert Burns, Walter
Scott, and the Brontës, as a consortium of British libraries and museums has
begun an effort to raise $21 million to preserve it for the nation.
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That private library, the Honresfield Library, was assembled
in the 19th century and had gone virtually unseen since the 1930s. The news last
month that the library had resurfaced and would be sold at a series of auctions
starting in July had drawn excited reactions from scholars and fans, as well as
alarm that cultural treasures could be dispersed anew into inaccessible private
collections.
In a statement on late last week announcing the acquisition
effort, the group, Friends of National Libraries, said its hope was to buy the
collection whole and then allocate it to institutions around Britain “for the
benefit of the public.”
“A private library of English literature of such
significance has not been placed on the open market for many decades,” nor “is
ever likely to appear again,” the statement said. “A major and coordinated
effort is needed to save this astonishingly important collection.”
Joining together in the effort are eight institutions: the
British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Bodleian Libraries at
Oxford, the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, and house museums
dedicated to Jane Austen, Walter Scott,
Robert Burns, and the Brontës.
The Honresfield Library was assembled starting in the 1890s
by Alfred and William Law, two self-made mill owners who grew up less than 32km
from the Brontë home in Haworth (which is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum).
After their deaths, the collection passed to a nephew, who granted access to
select scholars, and had facsimiles made of some items.
But after the nephew’s death in 1939, the originals fell out
of public view. By the 1940s, the collection had become “well-nigh untraceable,”
as a scholar put it at the time.
In a statement, Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s specialist in
English literature and historical manuscripts, called the proposed acquisition
“a fitting tribute to the Law brothers’ voracious literary interests and their
family’s excellent care of this material for over a century.” Sotheby’s would
not disclose the time frame of the auction delay, which it said had been agreed
to by the two parties.
At the heart of the library is what the consortium described
as an “astonishing set of manuscripts” by the Brontës, much of it “unseen for
80 years and never properly examined.” They include an 1844 handwritten
manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems with pencil edits by Charlotte, which had
carried an auction estimate of $1.1 million to $1.7 million — a near record for
a modern English literature manuscript, had it been achieved.
There are also seven miniature books by Charlotte, some 25
letters by Charlotte and a diary-style birthday note written by Emily to her
sister Anne, complete with a tiny drawing of Emily at her writing desk.
Other highlights of the collection, which were recently on
view at Sotheby’s in New York, include the complete working manuscript of
Scott’s 1817 novel “Rob Roy” (estimate $560,000 to $840,000) and the manuscript
compendium known as Burns’ “First Commonplace Book” from 1783-1785 (estimate
$420,000 to $700,000), which contains some of his earliest literary writings.
The consortium’s announcement also highlighted “two hugely
significant letters” by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, including one
written on the eve of a ball, where she anticipated the end of a love affair.
Only three early Austen letters are preserved in any British national
collection, the group noted, with the surviving bulk instead held at the
Morgan Library in New York City.
In recent years, auctions of British literary artifacts have
become the focus of high-profile fundraising campaigns aimed at keeping them at
home. In 2013, Jane Austen’s House Museum acquired a turquoise ring once worn
by the author, after raising $236,000 to match the price paid at auction by the
American singer Kelly Clarkson. And in 2019, the Brontë Society raised nearly
$800,000 to buy one of Charlotte’s miniature that it had previously
escaped to France.
Richard Ovenden, the head of the Bodleian Libraries, said a
similar national resolve was urgently needed now.
“Literature and the creative use of the English language and
its dialects have been among the great contributions made by the people of
these islands,” he said in the consortium’s announcement. “Now is a time to act
together, to preserve and share some of the greatest examples of this
heritage.”
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