Yesterday Charlotte’s tiny book sold at auction for £690,850. Yowza! Sadly, this was a higher price than the Brontë Parsonage Museum was able to pay, so the miniature book has a new home in a museum in France.
What is the significance of these little books, you ask? When the Brontës were children, their father brought home a set of wooden toy soldiers for brother Branwell, who shared the toys with his sisters. The soldiers were named, played with, and had stories invented about them and for them. Some of these tiny books were made for the toy soldiers to read.
Parsonage, through church graveyard
I wish I had photos of these adorable little books, but alas, I was unable to photograph the interiors of the Parsonage Museum where I saw one edition of Charlotte’s mini tale. I did, however, stand like an embarrassing child with my nose almost pressed against the glass display case, as I looked at what I saw during my visit there last year. Tiny book with even tinier writing. I remember making a tiny book for one of my dolls back when I was about 8. My book though was not an interesting piece of writing, nor did it contain 20 pages of minuscule prose, as Charlotte’s did, that was worth keeping.
Here is a great photo of the book from Salut! (salutsunderland.typepad.com), so you can easily see how tiny it was.
http://salutsunderland.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c337553ef0162fe74b3cc970d-pi
Here is a link to the article about the auction:
www.francesalut.com/2011/12/bronte-in-paris-shame-about-haworth.html#more
The book is just 35 millimetres by 61mm – about 1 1/3 inches by 2 1/2 inches. The tiny writing was just right for the wood soldiers to entertain themselves with some interesting writing. It was also too small for their father to be able to read… so the Brontë children could write whatever murderous, wicked, unladylike plots they liked!
Click here to read my blog post Stepping Back in Time to Visit Emily’s Kitchen, about when I visited the Parsonage Museum last year.
Emily's View, with Melody
