Digitisation of manuscripts from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library

By Catherine Angerson, Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts.

The Blavatnik Honresfield Library is a set of books and manuscripts of remarkable historic and literary significance fashioned by the Lancashire mill proprietor William Law (1836–1901) within the late nineteenth century and cared for by subsequent generations of the household till the sale of the gathering in 2022. The assortment consists of manuscripts and uncommon editions of the work of Jane Austen, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, the Brontë siblings, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Honresfield House, simply outdoors Littleborough close to Rochdale, was the place William Law lived along with his brother Alfred, who inherited the gathering after William’s demise in 1901. It then handed to a nephew, the Conservative MP Sir Alfred Law (1860–1939). Selected students have been granted entry in the course of the Thirties and transcriptions of a number of of the manuscripts have been made, however the assortment then largely disappeared from public view after the demise of Alfred Law in 1939.

The Blavatnik Honresfield Library was bought for the nation in 2022 by the Friends of the National Libraries with the assist of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and plenty of different beneficiant supporters. The assortment has been shared between cultural heritage establishments within the UK who’re all dedicated to creating the objects of their care publically accessible.

The British Library was one of many beneficiaries, receiving 102 printed books, 4 manuscript objects, and the William Maskell chapbook assortment. The manuscript objects have now been digitised and you may entry the pictures by following the hyperlinks under.

Emily Brontë’s pocket book of poems, 1844–46, Add MS 89488, ff. 5v-6r.

One of the highlights of the Blavatnik Honresfield Library is the pocket book of Emily Brontë’s poems (Add MS 89488) which she saved between 1844 and 1846. Few of Emily Brontë’s literary manuscripts survive and the pocket book is a captivating file of her inventive course of. Brontë transcribed neat copies of 31 of her personal poems into this pocket book, recording the date of authentic composition subsequent to every.

The first poem, ‘Loud without the wind was roaring’, is dated 11 November 1838 when Emily was 20. She composed the ultimate poem, ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’, on 2 January 1846 on the age of 27. Some of the poems embrace additional revisions within the hand of her sister Charlotte. Beneath the poem ‘How beautiful the earth is still’ of two June 1845, pictured under, Charlotte has written, ‘Never was better stuff penned’, within the miniature script shared by each sisters.

Emily Brontë’s poem ‘How beautiful the earth is still’, composed 2 June 1845, Add MS 89488, f. 17v.

The pocket book is the supply for 15 of the 21 of Emily Brontë’s poems chosen for Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). The different six poems got here from Emily’s ‘Gondal Poems’ pocket book which she saved on the identical time. Emily Brontë’s personal signed copy of Poems (1846) can be among the many treasures of the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.

Another treasure allotted to the British Library is a miniature e book by Charlotte Brontë titled, ‘Characters of the Celebrated Men of the Present Time by Captain Tree’ (Add MS 89486). The tiny e book, created by Charlotte when she was simply 13 years previous, is considered one of seven early Brontë manuscripts now collectively owned by the British Library, the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the Brotherton Library on the University of Leeds. The e book is narrated by Captain Tree, considered one of Charlotte’s childhood pen names. It consists of ten chapters that characteristic ‘Celebrated Men’ such because the Duke of Wellington, Lord Charles Wellesley, Captain Bud and Young Man Naughty. These figures have been drawn from actual life in addition to from the fictional world of Glass Town. The Glass Town Federation was a fancy fantasy land created by Charlotte and her siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne.

Charlotte Brontë, ‘Characters of the Celebrated Men of the Present Time by Captain Tree’, 12–17 December 1829, Add MS 89486.

The e book measures a tiny 5 x 3.7 cm, the dimensions of a small matchbox. The digital photos permit us to zoom in on Brontë’s tiny script and to look at the pages of the manuscript intimately. The pages are barely uneven in dimension. This is as a result of Charlotte lower the paper by hand and sewed the pages collectively utilizing a needle and thread, and the e book continues to be certain in its authentic yellow sugar paper cowl.

The manuscript objects allotted to the British Library additionally embrace a letter dated 10 November 1847 from Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams of Smith, Elder & Co., the writer of Jane Eyre (1847) (Add MS 89487). In this letter, Brontë (utilizing her pen identify ‘C. Bell’) complains concerning the ‘exhausting delay and procrastination’ that her sisters Emily (‘Ellis’) and Anne (‘Acton’) have needed to endure within the publication of their novels by Thomas Newby. Emily Brontë’s solely novel Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë’s first novel Agnes Grey have been each printed by Newby in December 1847 shortly after Charlotte wrote this letter.

In addition to the Brontë manuscripts described above, the British Library additionally acquired two leaves from the manuscript of Walter Scott’s Kenilworth (Add MS 89485), a novel of intrigue and deception set in Elizabethan England. These handwritten pages have been a part of the manuscript which Scott despatched to the printer John Ballantyne for the publication of the novel in January 1821. The Library additionally holds the bigger a part of the manuscript of Kenilworth and two additional leaves acquired in 2017.

The manuscripts have been digitised in full and pictures may be accessed through the archives and manuscripts catalogue and thru the hyperlinks on this blogpost. The printed objects are described within the predominant catalogue and may be recognized by the shelfmark prefix ‘Hon’. See our new collection information for additional particulars.

A small choice of books and manuscripts from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library is at the moment on show within the Treasures Gallery on the British Library in London (till 19 February 2023). The show features a leaf from Walter Scott’s Kenilworth manuscript, the letter from Charlotte Brontë to WS Williams, Emily Brontë’s poetry pocket book collectively together with her personal copy of Poems (1846), and two of the chapbooks from the Maskell assortment.

We are delighted to be working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the Brotherton Library to make the Brontë materials out there to new audiences (on-line and in an exhibition) over the approaching months and years.