A lost library of works by the Brontë sisters was destined for sale. Then Britain rallied.

LONDON — The communicative of the find and betterment of a treasure thorax of letters, diaries, poems and manuscripts, penned successful the tiny meticulous handwriting by the beloved, pathfinding, canonical English writers, the unthinkable Brontë sisters, reads similar … what?

An over-the-top Victorian novel, oregon a BBC costume drama, loosely based upon it.

The literate trove virtually disappeared from sight. For astir of a century, it went dark.

Then it went connected sale. And Brontë fans were aghast. And the federation rallied.

Who saved this material, the rarest of the rare, from auction to backstage collectors?

Why, the richest men successful Britain saved it. Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the American-British-Ukrainian petrochemical-finance-entertainment mogul, enactment up fractional the wealth to bargain it for the nationalist a fewer weeks agone — with a small assistance from Prince Charles and thousands of tiny donations.

What bash Brontë scholars say?

Like lifting a lid successful King Tut’s tomb, beloved reader.

“It is particularly astonishing … arsenic myths person been woven astir the worldly implicit the decades. Did it truly survive, oregon has it been mislaid oregon adjacent destroyed?” said Kathryn Sutherland, a prof astatine Oxford University.

Sutherland is simply a advisor to the Friends of the National Libraries, the foundation that saved the postulation from nationalist auction and dispersal by raising $20 cardinal to bargain the full library, which volition soon beryllium placed successful institutions similar the British Library and literate houses specified arsenic the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

“To really clasp a notebook successful your hand, arsenic I have, was rather an bonzer moment,” Sutherland told The Washington Post. “You're holding thing that they held.”

She said, “It’s conscionable sticky with the beingness of the writer.”

“You’re seeing, I think, their minds astatine work,” Sutherland said.

Google “Brontë” alongside “mania.”

In the Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz observed, “I spot nary crushed not to see the Brontë cult a religion.” The sisters, she wrote, “turned home constraints into grist for superb books.”

Long ago, the Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily, Anne — became subjects of fascination, prized for their work: Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s lesser-known marvel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” considered by immoderate the archetypal feminist novel.

The sisters are celebrated for their penning — wholly — for the instauration of the three-dimensional Jane and Catherine and the Byronic atrocious boys Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff.

But what made them celebrities is their narrative, and these recently emerged papers whitethorn unfastened caller windows into those lives.

There were 5 sisters, the 2 oldest died arsenic children. The 3 surviving girls were raised successful Haworth parsonage, up successful northbound England successful the moody Yorkshire moors, with their liberal-minded father, an Anglican priest, and broody member Branwell (minor poet, not a atrocious painter, but astatine the extremity a gin-soaked opium fiend, who lights his furniture connected fire).

As teens, the sisters created from scraps of wrapping insubstantial the celebrated palm-sized “little books.” Their juvenilia — faux magazines, one-act plays and abbreviated stories astir phantasy worlds and the imagined lives of Branwell’s artifact soldiers.

In adulthood, they toiled distant arsenic governesses. Only Charlotte aboriginal wedded. They wrote poems and hid them from each other.

And 1 by one, they died young: Anne astatine 29, Emily astatine 30, the eldest Charlotte astatine 38.

In their abbreviated lives, shortened by tuberculosis, they created 3 classics of English literature, rebooted twelvemonth aft twelvemonth into movies and serial TV dramas.

Two of the sisters ne'er had a sensation of their fame.

Last year, Sotheby’s announced it was preparing to auction a cache of literate manuscripts and first-edition novels, collected by the bachelor brothers William and Alfred Law, a brace of self-made 19th-century mill owners who amassed the room astatine their home, Honresfield House, not 20 miles from the parsonage successful Haworth, wherever the Brontës wrote their masterpieces.

“The Victorians loved to cod and tons of Victorians enactment unneurotic libraries, but William Law was exceptional,” said Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s specializer successful English lit and humanities manuscripts, who prepared the worldly for sale.

William Law had a discerning and precise focused oculus — helium snapped up a Shakespeare First Folio — but appears to person been particularly keen for Brontë material, traveling to Haworth to bargain worldly from the neighbors.

He acquired immoderate of the champion worldly from the trader who bought straight from Charlotte’s widower.

This straight-line provenance — that the manuscripts and letters passed done truthful fewer hands — increases not lone their worth and wow factor, but their preservation.

“The worldly is successful singular condition,” Heaton said.

When the Law brothers died, astatine the opening of the 20th century, their Honresfield Library was inherited by their nephew, Alfred Law, a well-to-do Conservative Party subordinate of Parliament, who died successful 1939. Sir Alfred allowed a fistful of scholars to spot the room successful the 1920s and 1930s. After his death? Almost nary 1 got a look.

Alfred’s heirs knew they had thing special, but they requested privacy, and the trove has been mostly unseen for much than 80 years.

The Brontë worldly includes: 25 letters by Charlotte and 7 of her celebrated “little books,” a manuscript postulation of Anne’s poems, and diary notes shared and written by Emily and Anne, connected their respective birthdays.

The jewel successful the crown is an mean ruled notebook, the benignant a pupil would bargain successful a stationery shop, that contains 31 poems by Emily.

The poems are each known. But present they are each written retired successful Emily’s ain handwriting, and the singular happening astir the manuscript is that Emily besides appears to person penned edits of her poems — and truthful possibly did Charlotte.

Emily’s cross-outs look successful ink. Charlotte whitethorn person annotated the works successful pencil, scholars suspect. More volition beryllium known arsenic the cache is pored implicit by the experts.

At the extremity of the manuscript are the words: “never was amended worldly penned.” Pride of authorship? Or a sister’s loving blurb?

According to the lore, Brontë experts accidental Emily wrote her poems successful secret, but they were discovered by Charlotte, and aft immoderate to-and-fro the 3 sisters successful 1846 self-published a slim measurement of their poetry, nether the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, utilizing the archetypal letters of their names but taking connected antheral disguise.

It reportedly lone sold 2 copies.

Rebecca Yorke, the interim manager of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, recalled going into the vaults astatine Sotheby’s connected Bond Street successful London to look astatine the collection.

“It was truly rather moving,” she said.

Emily’s poems were penned “in a student’s champion handwriting.”

“But past to spot the edits … ” she said.

“It is the astir magical thing,” Heaton said.

Sotheby’s successful May announced its volition to auction disconnected the worldly successful 3 tranches this summer. Sold to the highest bidder. The merchantability was expected to beryllium an event.

Literary scholars were appalled. The Brontë Society decried “the precise existent anticipation that this immensely important postulation volition beryllium dispersed and vanish into backstage collections crossed the globe” and condemned “the constrictive commercialisation and privatisation of heritage.”

The nine wanted the champion Brontë worldly for the Parsonage Museum. “We are determined to prevention arsenic overmuch arsenic we can, but owed to the melodramatic fiscal interaction of the pandemic, the timing is unfortunate. While Covid has reinforced the comfortableness and anticipation that we find successful lit and culture, depository gross has fallen distant to astir thing and contention for nationalist funds has go fiercer than ever,” the group warned.

The Friends of the National Libraries, whose patron is Prince Charles, stepped successful and persuaded Sotheby’s and the sellers to deed intermission and springiness the foundation clip to rise funds.

The oligarch Blavatnik contributed $10 million, which Friends of the National Libraries connected its website called “the largest ever fixed to the UK by an idiosyncratic for a literate treasure.”

Prince Charles, successful a statement, said the room was saved for Britain. “Our literate practice is our taste DNA and this preserves it for students, teachers, academics and mean readers successful perpetuity,” the Duke of Wales said.

The recently named Blavatnik Honresfield Library contains much than the Brontë treasures. There are besides letters written by Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, 1 of which anticipates the extremity of a emotion affair; a missive to his begetter and an aboriginal measurement of poems successful his ain manus by Robert Burns; and a question diary and the implicit moving manuscript of “Rob Roy” by Sir Walter Scott.

The materials volition beryllium fixed to probe libraries successful England and Scotland arsenic good arsenic Jane Austen’s House, the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Abbotsford: The Home of Walter Scott and the Brontë Parsonage Museum.