Handwritten Book of Poems by 13-Year-Old Charlotte Bronte Revealed by Booksellers James Cummins and Maggs Bros.
- by Michael Stillman
Charlotte Bronte's Book of Ryhmes
Booksellers James Cummins of New York and Maggs Bros. of London have come up with one of the more significant literary finds in recent memory. It is a hand-written miniature volume by Charlotte Bronte when she was just 13 years old. It is dated 1829, almost two decades before she and her sisters suddenly burst on the scene as some of the great writers of the century. It contains ten poems written on 15 pages of a book no larger than a playing card. As Miss Bronte described it, it is “A Book of Ryhmes by Chrlotte Bronte, Sold by Nobody, and Printed by Herself.” The original spelling of her name and “rhymes,” like the poems, are all hers.
The Bronte children were writers long before they became serious authors. Sisters Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and brother Patrick invented an imaginary world around them. Their mother died when they were young, leading to their becoming very close. In 1826, their father brought home some toy soldiers for Patrick, but the sisters generously shared his prize. They invented an imaginary place for them called “Glass Town.” From there, the children's imaginations ran wild, which led to their poems, stories, and a magazine, all “published” among themselves alone.
Charlotte explains her work like this: “This book is written by myself but I pretend that the Marquis of Duro & Lord Charles Wellesley in the Young Men's World have written one like it, & the Songs marked in the Index so * are written by the Marquis of Duro and those marked so † are written by Lord Charles Wellesley.” She modestly notes, “The following are attempts at rhyming of an inferior nature it must be acknowledged but they are nevertheless my best.”
Cummins and Maggs explain, “This close, enchanted world of their childish imaginations fed into the creation of some of the most famous and popular novels ever written, including Charlotte’s Jane Eyre; Emily’s Wuthering Heights; and Anne’s Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These were issued pseudonymously by London publishers in quick succession from 1847 to 1849 and are now acclaimed as classics of nineteenth-century literature. The miniature manuscripts were put away, but were known to Charlotte’s biographer Mrs. Gaskell. Beginning in the 1890s, the manuscripts were sold to collectors in Britain and America. This manuscript was sold at the dispersal of the effects of the second wife of Rev. A.B. Nicholls, whose first wife was Charlotte Brontë. A BOOK OF RYHMES was last seen in public in New York in November 1916.”
The Nicholls' sale took place at Sotheby's in 1914. It was back on the market two years later when it sold at Walpole Galleries on November 17, 1916. That was the sale of “Rare Books, Letters and MSS. Including many books from the Library of the late WILLIAM MATTHEWS Noted American Binder with Masterpieces of His Work.” However, it wasn't part of Matthews' library as he died in 1896. We don't know who was owner for those two years. Nor do we know where it has been in the years after it “was last seen in public” in 1916. Cummins and Maggs have not revealed who the most recent owner is.
Charlotte Bronte wrote several such miniature books in her childhood. Another sold at Sotheby's in 2019 for £690,000, the equivalent of $1,070,000. This book last sold for $520 at Walpole, but that was 1916 and both dollars themselves, and items created by the Bronte sisters have appreciated enormously in the last century-plus.
The book will be on display at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair on Thursday April 21 at the booth of James Cummins Bookseller.
Subscribers to the Rare Book Transaction History (signed in) will find the Walpole Galleries sales listing at the following link: www.rarebookhub.com/book_records/7962757
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
Freeman’s | Hindman Western Manuscripts and Miniatures July 8, 2025
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.