Tiny Brontë, Big Price

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. 

You might also like

Breaking Bread

Alexander Heffner ’12 plumbs the state of democracy.

Reading the Winds

Thai sailor Sophia Montgomery competes in the Olympics.

Chinese Trade Dragons

How Will China’s Rapid Growth in the Clean Technology Industry Reshape U.S.-China Policy?

Most popular

Breaking Bread

Alexander Heffner ’12 plumbs the state of democracy.

Who Built the Pyramids?

Not slaves. Archaeologist Mark Lehner, digging deeper, discovers a city of privileged workers.

The World’s Costliest Health Care

Administrative costs, greed, overutilization—can these drivers of U.S. medical costs be curbed?

More to explore

American Citizenship Through Photography

How photographs promote social justice

Harvard Philosophy Professor Alison Simmons on "Being a Minded Thing"

A philosopher on perception, the canon, and being “a minded thing”