Bronte sisters’ letters feature in a newly expanded archive devoted to historical women of the county.

History to Herstory has been launched by the West Yorkshire Archive Service and the University of Huddersfield.

It features more than 80,000 documents and images concerning 900 women from the year 1100 AD to the present day.

There is a large collection of personal letters either written or received by the Bronte sisters.

They include an 1847 letter from Charlotte Bronte to her publishers Smith, Elder & Co on the eve of publication.

She writes: “I am glad you think pretty well of the first part of Jane Eyre and I trust, both for your sakes and my own, that the public may think pretty well of it too.”

The History to Herstory archive was originally created in 2002 but has now been redeveloped and expanded.

The archive service and university had drawn on records of other organisations, including the Bronte Society.

The subjects range from mental hospital patients to grand ladies, and include health-care campaigners, suffragettes, authors and aviator Amy Johnson.

Documents include 12th-century land transfers, 1980s CND posters, Second World War recipe books and 18th-century diaries about the French Revolution.

There are musical compositions and artistic sketches, labour certificates, marriage licences, autobiographies, accounts and reports, school exercise books, suffragettes’ scrapbooks, letters to Prime Ministers and medical case notes.

The expansion was made possible through funding this year from JISC, which specialises in digital technologies for education.

Graham Hebblethwaite, chief officer of West Yorkshire Joint Services, which oversees the work of the archives service, said the service was committed to making a wide range of archives available to the widest audience.

JISC said that exploiting Britain's cultural treasures in the digital age was not just about digitisation, but using the internet to tell interesting stories. The archive can be accessed free of charge at historytoherstory.org.uk.