Bronte letters saved for the nation
The Brontë Society is celebrating the acquisition of a rare collection of important Charlotte Brontë letters which will now return to her former home - the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth. The letters, which went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London, were previously in a private collection.
They were expected to fetch between £100,000 to £150,000, but sold for £185,000. The Society was able to acquire the letters thanks to support of £198,450 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the UK’s fund of last resort for saving the nation’s most important heritage at risk.
The collection consists of six letters written by Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, her closest friend. They met as pupils at school in Mirfield and wrote to each other regularly. It is thanks to Ellen that Charlotte’s letters, upon which so much of Brontë scholarship is based, have survived.