The Honresfield Library, also called the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, is a British collection of literary manuscripts and printed books assembled as a private library in the 19th century. In 2021, it was purchased by the Friends of the Nations' Libraries and donated to institutions across the United Kingdom. [1]
William Law (1835–1901) was a mill owner and wool manufacturer in Lancashire, England, whose home from 1873 onwards was Honresfeld or Honresfield House near Littleborough. He collected books, manuscripts, and paintings, taking a particular interest in Jane Austen, the Brontës, [2] [3] Robert Burns, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. [4] [5] [6]
Law's descendants offered the collection for auction through Sotheby's in 2021. The Friends of the National Libraries led a fundraising campaign to acquire the collection for the nation. Sir Len Blavatnik's family foundation offered to contribute £7.5 million if matched funding could be found to meet the asking price of £15 million, which was achieved by the end of 2021, including £4 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. [7]
The Friends of the National Libraries donated the collection to a range of public and university libraries and museums across the United Kingdom, some with joint ownership. Authors' manuscripts are now in Jane Austen's House, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, and Walter Scott's home Abbotsford. [8]
Charlotte Nicholls, commonly known as Charlotte Brontë, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths.
The Yongle Encyclopedia or Yongle Dadian is a Chinese leishu encyclopedia commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1403 and completed by 1408. It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls in 11,095 volumes. Fewer than 400 volumes survive today, comprising about 800 rolls, or 3.5% of the original work.
Patrick Branwell Brontë was an English painter and writer. He was the only son of the Brontë family, and brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Brontë was rigorously tutored at home by his father, and earned praise for his poetry and translations from the classics. However, he drifted between jobs, supporting himself by portrait-painting, and gave way to drug and alcohol addiction, apparently worsened by a failed relationship with a married woman. Brontë died at the age of 31.
Jane Porter was an English historical novelist, dramatist and literary figure. Her bestselling novels, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810) are seen as among the earliest historical novels in a modern style and among the first to become bestsellers. They were abridged and remained popular among children well into the twentieth century.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum is a writer's house museum maintained by the Brontë Society in honour of the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. The museum is in the former Brontë family home, the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England, where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels.
The Rosenbach is a Philadelphia museum and library located within two 19th-century townhouses. Established as a testamentary gift in 1954. The historic houses contain the donated collections of Dr. Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach and his brother Philip H. Rosenbach. The Rosenbach offers virtual and on-site programs, including tours, Courses, Book Clubs, and a free weekly web series called Biblioventures, all inspired by its peerless collection. The Rosenbach is Philadelphia's home for Bloomsday, a festival celebrating James Joyce's Ulysses every June 16.
The collections of Waseda University Library form one of the largest libraries in Japan. Established in 1882, they currently hold some 5.6 million volumes and 46,000 serials.
Sir Leonard Valentinovich Blavatnik is a Soviet/Ukrainian-born British-American businessman and philanthropist. In 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $32.1 billion, ranking him the 52nd-richest person in the world. In 2017, Blavatnik received a knighthood for services to philanthropy.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the United Kingdom. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Juvenilia Press is an international non-profit research and pedagogic press based in the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. The press undertakes to provide undergraduate and post-graduate students with hands-on experience of textual transmission under the guidance of an academic supervisor. The scholarly volumes published by the press are works from the genre of literary juvenilia—the early works of known writers—and are printed in a format that includes a preface, introduction, note on the text, end notes, textual and contextual appendices, and illustrations.
Arthur Bell Nicholls was the husband of the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. Between 1845 and 1861 Nicholls was one of Patrick Brontë's curates and was married to his eldest surviving child, Charlotte, for the last nine months of her life. He cared for Patrick Brontë after Charlotte Brontë's death and spent the rest of his life in the shadow of her reputation. He returned to his native Ireland, remarried and left the ministry.
Gondal is an imaginary world or paracosm created by Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë that is found in their juvenilia. Gondal is an island in the North Pacific, just north of the island Gaaldine. It included at least four kingdoms: Gondal, Angora, Exina and Alcona. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of speculative fiction.
The Young Men's Magazine is the last of a series of three magazines written by Branwell Brontë and his sister Charlotte. The journals were handwritten mini-books containing articles, stories, letters, and reviews, inspired by and following the model of Blackwood's Magazine and Fraser's Magazine. A notable issue is volume 2, a copy of which was sold in December 2011 for £690,850 at Sotheby's in London. Writing the magazine on the basis of established literary models helped Charlotte and Branwell in their maturation process toward becoming "literary professionals".
The Glass Town is a paracosm created and written as a shared fantasy world by Charlotte Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, siblings of the Brontë family. It was initiated by Charlotte and her brother Branwell; Emily and Anne Brontë later participated in further developing the stories and geography of its world, although they also broke away to conceptualize Gondal, while Charlotte conceptualized Angria.
In September 2003, Barnes & Noble Books of New York began to publish The Collector's Library series of some of the world's most notable literary works. By October 2005, fifty-nine volumes had been printed. Each unabridged volume is book size octodecimo, or 4 x 6-1/2 inches, printed in hardback, on high-quality paper, bound in real cloth, and contains a dust jacket. In 2015, The Collector's Library was acquired by Pan Macmillan.
An autograph or holograph is a manuscript or document written in its author's or composer's hand. The meaning of "autograph" as a document penned entirely by the author of its content overlaps with that of "holograph".
The John Murray Archive is a collection of 234 years' worth of manuscripts, private letters, and business papers from various notable, mostly British, authors including correspondence between Mary Shelley and Lord Byron, and letters of Jane Austen and Charles Darwin. The Archive consists of over a million items, valued at more than £100 million, and is kept at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) in Edinburgh, Scotland.
A Book of Ryhmes is a miniature book of poems by Charlotte Brontë. It was written in 1829 when Brontë was aged 13. The book is part of the collections of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
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