Books

Charlotte Bronte Writing Discovered In Family Book

by Caitlin White

What is going on with 2015? Discovered manuscripts by iconic writers like Harper Lee and Dr. Seuss have been found and published as Go Set a Watchman and What Pet Should I Get?, respectively. Now, unpublished Charlotte Bronte writing has been found.

According to The New York Times, an American family uncovered Charlotte Brontë's unpublished 70-line poem and "sliver of prose" folded into a book belonging to her mother Maria Brontë, which was one of the only artifacts of Maria's recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of Devonshire, England in the early 1800s. Now, The Brontë Society will acquire Charlotte's poetry for $300,000, after they learned of its existence via a rare books dealer.

"It is quite romantic, quite dramatic language," Brontë Parsonage Museum collections manager Ann Tisdale told The New York Times, "written by a teenage girl who, even at that age, had the ambition to be forever known as a poet."

Charlotte Brontë, who is best known for her iconic novel Jane Eyre , reportedly prose when she was only 17 years old, and likely wrote her poem at the same time. Both found pieces of writing are set in Angria, a fictional world Charlotte imagined up with her brother Branwell. The prose piece centers on people of Angria coming into contact with real-world people from England.

In seems in the battle of 19th century literary queens, Team Brontë Sisters now has new work to add to their devoted cause.

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