{"id":1825,"date":"2021-06-18T01:41:26","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T05:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2021-06-18T01:46:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T05:46:22","slug":"the-honresfield-library-friends-of-the-national-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/?p=1825","title":{"rendered":"The Honresfield Library – Friends of the National Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A consortium of 8 of the UK\u2019s leading cultural organizations have come together in a bid to save\u00a0and preserve one of the most important literature collections in history, the Honresfield Library\u00a0which was about to be auctioned by Sotheby\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The group, named Friends of the National Libraries are:\u00a0The British Library, the National Library of Scotland, Robert Burns Birthplace Museum,\u00a0Abbotsford House, the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, the Brotherton Library at the University of\u00a0Leeds and house museums dedicated to Jane Austen and Bront\u00ebs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Friends of the National Libraries are hoping to raise the $21 million dollars needed to purchase\u00a0the collection in a bid to save the collection for the British public.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"The Honresfield Library was assembled in the 19th century and has been virtually unseen since\u00a0the 1930\u2019s and contains precious rare manuscripts by historical literature figures including\u00a0Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and the Bront\u00ebs.<\/span><\/p>\n

News of the library has drawn great interest throughout the world from scholars, academics and\u00a0leading figures in the preservation of historical literature. The prospect that the library could be\u00a0purchased by private collectors has enthused the consortium to act to ensure the preservation and\u00a0accessibility of the Honresfield Library for the British public.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the heart of the library is what the consortium described as an \u201castonishing set of\u00a0manuscripts\u201d by the Bront\u00ebs, much of it \u201cunseen for 80 years and never properly examined.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"They include an 1844 handwritten manuscript of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s poems with pencil edits by\u00a0Charlotte, which had carried an auction estimate of $1.1 million to $1.7 million \u2014 a near record\u00a0for a modern English literature manuscript, had it been achieved.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also seven miniature books by Charlotte, some 25 letters by Charlotte and a diary-style\u00a0birthday note written by Emily to her sister Anne, complete with a tiny drawing of Emily at her\u00a0writing desk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other highlights of the collection, which were\u00a0recently on view at Sotheby\u2019s in New York,\u00a0include the complete working manuscript of Scott\u2019s 1817 novel \u201cRob Roy\u201d (estimate $560,000\u00a0to $840,000) and the manuscript compendium known as Burns\u2019s\u00a0\u201cFirst Commonplace Book\u201d\u00a0from 1783-1785 (estimate $420,000 to $700,000), which contains some of his earliest literary\u00a0writings.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A consortium of 8 of the UK\u2019s leading cultural organizations have come together in a bid to save\u00a0and preserve one of the most important literature collections in history, the Honresfield Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[314,206,204,3],"tags":[752,753,754,748,747,750,751,749],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanscottishfoundation.com\/programs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}