ONE OF Charlotte Brontë’s dresses has been sent across the Atlantic for a prestigious new exhibition.

The Morgan Library in New York is this autumn hosting an exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of the Jane Eyre novelist’s birth.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum has loaned several items from its extensive collections for the show, including a dress worn by Charlotte when she visited fellow writer William Thackeray.

Rebecca Yorke, the Haworth’s museum’s communications and marketing head, said: “Charlotte couldn’t have imagined, when she wore the dress nearly 170 years ago, that it would one day go on display on the other side of the world!”

The exhibition, Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will, is running from September 9 to January 2 next year.

The Morgan Library said the exhibition was a historic collaboration between two of the world’s finest repositories of Brontëana.

A spokesman said: “It brings together literary manuscripts, intimate letters, and rare printed books from the Morgan’s rich collection with personal artifacts, drawings, and photographs from the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

“Highlights include Brontë’s earliest surviving miniature manuscript, her portable writing desk and paint box, one of her own dresses, and a pair of her ankle boots.

“Also on view—for the first time in North America—will be a portion of the manuscript of Jane Eyre, from the collection of the British Library.

“It is open to the unforgettable scene in which Jane tells Rochester, ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.’”

An Independent Will traces Charlotte’s creative path from reluctant governess to published poet to commanding novelist.

The spokesman added: “From her earliest literary works – written with a quill pen in a minuscule hand designed to mimic the printed page – to the manuscript of her explosive novel Jane Eyre, the exhibition presents an intimate portrait of one of England’s most compelling authors.

“From the time Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre was first published in 1847, readers have been drawn to the orphan protagonist who declared herself ‘a free human being with an independent will.’

“Like her most famous fictional creation, Charlotte herself took bold steps throughout her life in pursuit of personal and professional fulfillment.”