Haworth Bronte museum (From Keighley News)

Haworth Bronte museum

8:50am Monday 8th February 2010

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Two of the most expensive items ever acquired by Brontë guardians have arrived at the Parsonage Museum, in Haworth.

An artist’s box, belonging to Emily Brontë, and a miniature poetry manuscript written by Charlotte as a child, together cost the Brontë Society more than £60,000. The mahogany box — which still contains some of Emily’s watercolour blocks and quill pens — was bought at auction in Sotheby’s London for £32,000 and the miniature work cost 50,000 dollars at an auction in New York.

Ann Dinsdale, Brontë Parsonage Museum collections manager, said: “I can’t ever remember spending that kind of money. But these items are so rare.”

The treasures went on show at the museum — the shrine to the work of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne — on Monday — when it opened to the public for the new season.

The box is believed to have been bought for Emily, author of Wuthering Heights, as a girl aged about nine in 1827 and the museum has some of the work she carried out with the equipment.

Charlotte’s manuscript was an “iconic” piece and reflected the imaginative nature of the children when they lived at the museum, Mrs Dinsdale said.

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