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Paris museum buys Bronte script | |
(about 11 hours later) | |
A tiny manuscript by Charlotte Bronte has been sold to a French museum for £690,850, dashing hopes it could find a new home in the UK. | |
The unpublished second issue of Young Men's Magazine was sold at auction at Sotheby's to the Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris. | |
The institution outbid the Bronte Parsonage Museum in the authors' former house in Haworth, West Yorkshire. | |
The work is important for the light it sheds on her literary development. | |
The manuscript, written when Bronte was just 14, smashed its pre-sale estimate of £200,000 - £300,000. | |
Bronte, best known for Jane Eyre, created six hand-written editions of the magazine aged 14, as part of the imaginary world she built with her sisters and her brother. | |
One story in the issue sold on Thursday is a precursor to the famous passage in Jane Eyre in which Mr Rochester's insane wife, who is kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to his bed curtains. | |
Dr Philip Errington, Sotheby's director of books and manuscripts, said it had "huge literary significance". | |
"The record price set today reflects the international interest in Charlotte Bronte's work," he said. "This tiny manuscript represents her first burst of creativity and provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history's great literary minds." | |
The manuscript contains over 4,000 words on 19 pages, each measuring approximately 1.4in (35mm) by 2.4in (61mm). | |
They contain stories set in Glass Town, a fantasy world created by the sisters and their brother, Branwell. | |
Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said it was "the most significant manuscript to come to light in decades". | Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said it was "the most significant manuscript to come to light in decades". |
The museum owns four of the six magazines and launched an appeal in November for funds to buy the second edition and put it on public display. | |
The current location of the sixth and last magazine - if it still exists - is unknown. | The current location of the sixth and last magazine - if it still exists - is unknown. |