Literary birthday

Charlotte Brontë was born today in 1816.

Brontë portraits

 Rare painting of the three Bronte sisters due to go under the hammer at Northamptonshire auction

AN auctioneer is aiming to secure a rare hat-trick by selling an “important” picture thought to depict all three Bronte sisters.
Jonathon Humbert, of  JP Humbert Auctioneers, based in Towcester, says he is confident the painting, which he claims is of “superlative quality”, is of the three literary sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
The rare portrait, thought to be a hitherto unknown watercolour, is the latest in the series of unrelated items concerning the trio to be put up for sale by the same firm.
The Northamptonshire auction house’s sale of  a small portrait believed to be of Emily Bronte recently fetched £4,600. In December, JP Humbert sold another painting of the reclusive writer for £23,836.
However, Mr Humbert said the latest painting could prove to be the most important yet.
He said there was no estimate on the latest discovery, which it believed to have come from an owner in Dorset, as it was impossible to say how much it would fetch.
He added: “We just had one and then with all the media interest someone came into us with the second and now we have a third one, which is by far the most important painting.
“The evidence has been put together by the vendor for the past four years and our own investigations.
“We have been incredibly forensic about this and we believe that not only is this a hitherto unrecognised portrait of the Bronte sisters, but moreover we believe it was painted by  Edwin Landseer, who went on top become Sir Edwin Landseer.”
The piece of art is thought to contain the signature of Landseer, who was an important Victorian painter, and depicts a broach [sic] and bracelet believed to have been worn by the sisters.
The jewellery is now kept in museums.
Mr Humbert added: “It has come to us from a long way away and we are already having a lot of international press interest and what we hope is the art world will embrace it accordingly.
“We have had success from two out of two and we are hoping for the hat-trick but we have no idea what it will make because there is nothing to compare it to.”
He added: “I hope it will end up in a museum or collection, where it will be recognised for what it is.”
The painting is set to go under the hammer on April 26 as part of a two-day fine art and antiques sale.

Other portraits:

The Brontë sisters by Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848) © National Portrait Gallery, London

‘We don’t think it’s a painting of Emily’
The Bronte Society has cast doubt on claims a painting being auctioned in Northampton this month [December 2011] is a portrait of the famous literary figure Emily Bronte.
Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said the society doubted the provenance of the oil painting and would not be bidding on it next Thursday.
“We are not 100 per cent convinced it is Emily. There isn’t enough provenance on the painting and there is an element of doubt about it,” she said.
“There are two portraits of Emily, both in the National Portrait Gallery, and they don’t bare a striking resemblance to this one. The experts are saying the woman in the painting is wearing the kind of clothes Emily would have worn, which probably thousands of other women of that period were wearing. They have done a huge amount of research on that painting but we are still not convinced.”
But art experts, who have assessed the picture, say there is strong evidence to suggest it could be of Emily Bronte.
The oil painting, which shows a young woman wearing a straw bonnet held in place by a silk scarf, was painted earlier than previously thought.
The picture, recently given to auctioneers J P Humbert of Northamptonshire by a retired headmaster, was found to have been painted circa 1840, making it contemporary with the age of the possible subject – Emily Bronte died in 1848.
It is almost identical to a print of a portrait of the writer published in the July 1894 issue of The Woman At Home, which itself was attributed to Charlotte Bronte. It is thought the artist responsible for the newly-found picture may be John Hunter Thompson (1808-1890) of Bradford who was a portrait artist and friend of Emily’s brother Branwell.
As well as that, written on the back is “Emily Bronte – Sister of Charlotte B… Currer Bell”, and on the backing paper “Emily Bronte/Sister of Charlotte Bronte/Ellis Bell”. Currer and Ellis Bell were the pen names of Charlotte and Emily Bronte from the winter of 1845 when the sisters published their poems and adopted pen names.
Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said the attribution confirms that the portrait is earlier than previously thought.
“After much research, we are confident this portrait, recently discovered, is of Emily Bronte,” he said.
“So many factors support this contention and, as such, this represents a very important study of one of English literature’s most perennial figures.”
The oil on panel painting is set to go on sale at JP Humbert Auctioneers in Towcester, Northants, at a provisional estimate of £10,000 to £15,000.
The sale coincides with an auction where the society will be bidding for a rare Charlotte Bronte manuscript the Young Men’s Magazine.

And:

Emily Brontë portrait goes under the hammer
For the second time in two months, a previously unknown portrait captioned “Emily Brontë” is to be auctioned, showing the Wuthering Heights author as a winsome but pensive young woman.
Painted in oils and with the subject gazing directly at the artist with clear brown eyes, the picture is less formal and possibly more flattering than the smaller, bonneted study that sold in December for £23,836, exceeding the reserve price of £10,000-£15,000.
Measuring 33 by 24cms (13 by 9.5ins), the painting has been reliably sourced to the mid-19th century and has a note of the subject probably made by the artist around the time of painting. But absolute attribution is unlikely, as has been the case with most supposed Brontë portraits apart from the famous study of the sisters painted in 1835 by their brother, Branwell.
The painting has been sent for auction by the Northamptonshire firm JP Humbert, which handled the “bonnet picture” sale. Jonathan Humbert said a private owner brought the portrait into the firm’s office after reading about the previous sale. “One unknown portrait of Emily Brontë is lucky enough, but two in two months is quite remarkable,” he said. “I am amazed that both have turned up on our doorstep.”
Anything with a Brontë tag appears to sell well, although uncertainty about the authenticity of the latest picture has seen the reserve set at between £3,000 and £4,000. Last month the Haworth Parsonage museum, which has the world’s greatest trove of Brontë relics, was outbid by a Paris museum for a miniature magazine made by Charlotte Brontë when she was 14.
The dainty handwritten manuscript was bought at Sotheby’s by the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits for £690,850, more than twice the reserve and a record for a literary work by any of the three sisters. The price of the bonnet painting was driven up on the same day by determined phone bidding to Northampton from the US.

Emily by Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848)oil on canvas, arched top, circa 1833 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Charlotte Brontë
by George Richmond
chalk, 1850
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Anne Brontë ( 1820 – 1849 ), English poet and writer by Charlotte Bronte, her sister.

Branwell Brontë by J. B. Leyland

Brontë Photographs

A photograph believed to be that of Charlotte Brontë taken in the last year of her life in 1854.  Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The Brontë sisters?

Whether it depicts them or not there’s certainly a Bronte connection. The ladies resemble them, their names are on the back and there’s a link to a photo in the Bronte Museum.

Patrick Brontë.

Update: Bronte portrait withdrawn from auction

St Cuthbert’s Gospel

The British Library has announced that it has successfully acquired the St Cuthbert Gospel, a miraculously well-preserved 7th century manuscript that is the oldest European book to survive fully intact and therefore one of the world’s most important books.

The £9 million purchase price for the Gospel has been secured following the largest and most successful fundraising campaign in the British Library’s history.
The single largest contribution to the campaign was a £4.5 million grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) together with major gifts from the Art Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation and the Foyle Foundation. In addition, the campaign received a number of significant donations from charitable trusts, foundations and major individual donors, along with gifts from members of the public.
A manuscript copy of the Gospel of St John, the St Cuthbert Gospel was produced in the North East of England in the late 7th century and was placed in  St Cuthbert’s  coffin on Lindisfarne, apparently in 698. The Gospel was found in the saint’s coffin at Durham Cathedral in 1104. It has a beautifully worked original red leather binding in excellent condition, and it is the only surviving high-status manuscript from this crucial period in British history to retain its original appearance, both inside and out. As such, it represents a major addition to the Library’s world-class collections relating to the early history and culture of Britain, and its unrivalled collection of texts associated with the world’s great faiths.
Now in public ownership, the St Cuthbert Gospel is on display in the  Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery in the British Library’s flagship building at St Pancras. Following a conservation review led by the British Library and involving leading international conservation and curatorial experts, the Gospel will be displayed open for the first time in this building.
To celebrate the successful acquisition, the Library has opened a special display exploring the creation, travels and near-miraculous survival of the Gospel across 13 centuries. Access is free to both the display and the Treasures Gallery where the Gospel is on show.
In addition, the manuscript has been digitised in full, allowing it to be made freely available online for the first time via the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts.
Announcing the acquisition, the Chief Executive of the British Library, Dame Lynne Brindley, said: “To look at this small and intensely beautiful treasure from the Anglo-Saxon period is to see it exactly as those who created it in the 7th century would have seen it. The exquisite binding, the pages, even the sewing structure survive intact, offering us a direct connection with our forebears 1300 years ago. Its importance in the history of the book and its association with one of Britain’s foremost saints make it unique, so I am delighted to announce the successful acquisition of the St Cuthbert Gospel by the British Library. This precious item will remain in public hands so that present and future generations can learn from it.
“I would like to pay tribute to the donors who have made this acquisition possible – and particularly the NHMF, who recognised the crucial importance of the St Cuthbert Gospel to our nation’s heritage, and who granted a remarkable £4.5 million – the largest single grant for an acquisition that the Library has ever received,” Dame Lynne added. “We are similarly grateful to the other major donors, and the many hundreds of people who made individual donations. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure the Gospel for the nation and we were both grateful and touched that so many people felt moved to support our campaign.”
Having acquired the Gospel, the British Library is now able to invest in its long-term preservation, as well as transforming the possibilities for improved access to the item through digitisation and display.
The acquisition of the St Cuthbert Gospel by the British Library involved a formal partnership between the Library, Durham University and Durham Cathedral and an agreement that the book will be displayed to the public equally in London and the North East. The first display in Durham is anticipated to be in July 2013 in  Durham University’s Palace Green Library on the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham, said: “It is the best possible news to know that the Cuthbert Gospel has been saved for the nation. For the people of Durham and North East England, this is a most treasured book. Buried with Cuthbert and retrieved from his coffin, it held a place of great honour in Durham Cathedral Priory. The place in the Cathedral where it was kept in the middle ages is still the home of our unique manuscript collection.

The faces of Burke and Hare

 Doon the close and up the stair
Butt and ben wi Burke and Hare
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief
And Knox the boy that buys the beef!

Found: the faces of Burke and Hare

The forgotten faces of two of Scotland’s most infamous murderers have been discovered among a number of macabre artefacts languishing in the store cupboard of a former prison.
Almost exactly 180 years after their brutal crimes shocked the nation, a rare pair of plaster masks of the notorious body snatchers Burke and Hare have been found at  Inveraray jail in Argyll, along with a genuine hangman’s noose, launching a mystery as to how they got there. Neither of the murderers was ever held at Inveraray, nor was anyone ever hanged inside the prison.
“We found the masks during a clean-out of one of our store rooms, it was quite a surprise,” said Gavin Dick, the general manager of the jail, which is now a museum. “Initially we thought it was just Burke, but it turns out we’ve got two heads. A death mask of Burke and a life mask of Hare. Unfortunately very little is known about either head, or for that matter the hangman’s noose, and how they came to be here.”
William Burke and William Hare are among the most notorious of Scotland’s criminals but, contrary to popular belief, the two Irish labourers were not grave robbers. Although they supplied bodies for dissection to the  anatomist Robert Knox, at Surgeon’s Square in Edinburgh, the pair found it easier to kill rather than exhume their victims.
Until the  1832 Anatomy Act, the only legal sources of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those of people condemned to death and dissection by the courts. However as the need to train medical students increased, the number of executed criminals fell, so Knox was only too glad to receive the Irishmen’s wares. It is believed that Burke and Hare murdered at least 16 people, possibly as many as 30, before their crimes were discovered. Hare turned King’s evidence and escaped the gallows, while Burke was publicly executed and his body exhibited before being flayed and dissected.
A number of ghoulish souvenirs were kept of Burke, including a book and a snuff box bound in pieces of his skin. His  skeleton [2nd pic. in link series] is still kept under lock and key at Edinburgh University.
The activities of the former  navvies, who had originally moved to Edinburgh to work on the Union Canal, repelled and fascinated the public. At the time, phrenology was a popular “new science” that claimed that the shape and contours of a person’s head could dictate their personality traits. So-called experts held talks across the country using casts of the heads of infamous criminals to illustrate their point.
A life mask is known to have been made of  Hare during the trial [3rd pic in link series], and  Burke’s shaven head was cast after his execution in front of 25,000 people on 28 January 1829.
Although a handful of masks are known to still exist, with at least one in the United States, one in a museum in  Swansea and copies at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, they are very rare. “How or why they should end up in Inveraray jail is a something of a mystery,” said Owen Dudley Edwards, the author of several works about the murderous pair. “There are no links at all between Inveraray and Burke and Hare, so it seems a very unlikely place to find these masks. There have been cases where copies have shown up in strange places, usually because they were once owned by private collectors, but there certainly weren’t many of them made.
“There were some pretty ghoulish souvenirs from Burke, such as  book covers and a snuff box. There was never any death mask made of Hare because nobody knows for certain what happened to him.”
Although there was much public anger at the fact that Hare was allowed to go free, attempts to bring further charges against him failed and he fled to England. The man described at the time as a “rude ruffian, ferocious profligate” and “evidently the greatest villain of the two” was last seen heading east from Carlisle on the road to Newcastle.
There were reports that he was living at Buckminster in Leicestershire until his identity was discovered and he was forced to move on. He is said to have died a blind beggar in London, or even emigrated to the US.
Andrew Connell, museum collections manager at the Royal College of Surgeons, which has its own copy of Burke’s death mask, said the find was definitely unusual: “I’ve not seen them anywhere else. I don’t think they were like Charles and Diana souvenirs, churned out in their thousands. There was probably only a handful made, if that.”
Staff at Inveraray jail are considering whether to exhibit the masks and the noose alongside their existing house of horrors, such as a cat o’ nine tails, and a tongue holder for nagging wives, which are used to illustrate the history of crime and punishment in Scotland.

Other life and death masks:

 Death masks in a gibbet in the keep of Norwich Castle.
 Record about Phrenology and Death Mask Collection at Norwich Castle
 The Death Mask of Thetford’s Thomas Paine
 William Corder’s death mask

 Wax death mask of Oliver Cromwell
 Death mask of George Bernard Shaw

 Life mask – John Hunter
 Life mask – John Keats

Life Mask – Abraham Lincoln

Life Mask – Nelson

Jane Austen ‘lost portrait’

 Jane Austen biographer discovers ‘lost portrait’

Jane Austen scholar  Dr Paula Byrne claims to have discovered a lost portrait of the author which, far from depicting a grumpy spinster, shows a writer at the height of her powers and a woman comfortable in her own skin.
The only accepted portraits of Austen to date are  her sister Cassandra’s 1810 sketch, in which she looks cross,

and an 1870 adaptation of that picture. But when Byrne, biographer of Evelyn Waugh and Mary “Perdita” Robinson and with an Austen biography due out in 2013, was given a portrait of a female author acquired by her husband, Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, at auction, she was immediately struck by the possibility that it could be a lost drawing of Austen.
The portrait drawing, in graphite on vellum, had been in a private collection for years, and was being auctioned as an “imaginary portrait” of Austen, with “Miss Jane Austin” written on the back. “When my husband bought it he thought it was a reasonable portrait of a nice lady writer, but I instantly had a visceral reaction to it. I thought it looks like her family. I recognised the Austen nose, to be honest, I thought it was so striking, so familiar,” Byrne told the Guardian. “The idea that it was an imaginary portrait – that seemed to me to be a crazy theory. That genre doesn’t exist, and this looks too specific, too like the rest of her family, to have been drawn from imagination.”
Byrne pointed out that Austen did not become famous until 1870, 50 years after her death, and the portrait has been dated to the early 19th century, around 1815, on the basis of the subject’s clothes. “Why would someone have wanted to draw her from their imagination, when she was not popular at that time?” she asked.
She approached the BBC, and together they put together a documentary on the portrait, working with various experts including art historians, fashion experts and forensic analysts on the picture’s background. “We approached it with an open mind,” said Byrne. “We tried to cover all leads, and in the end we put our findings to three top Jane Austen scholars, and two out of three thought it was her.” The scholars were Professor Kathryn Sutherland from Oxford University, Professor Claudia Johnson from Princeton and Austen expert  Deirdre Le Faye. Sutherland and Johnson both agreed the picture was Austen; Le Faye did not. “She thinks it is an imaginary portrait. I did try so hard to find one single example of an imaginary portrait, but nobody could find one – they just don’t exist,” said Byrne. “But it’s great to have the debate – it opens up a very interesting question about who Jane Austen was and who we want her to be.”
If, as Byrne believes it is, the portrait is indeed Austen, then it shows a “very, very different” version of the writer than she has been seen as in the past, she said.
“The previous portrait is a very sentimentalised Victorian view of ‘Aunt Jane’, someone who played spillikins, who just lurked in the shadows with her scribbling. But it seems to me that it’s very clear from her letters that Jane Austen took great pride in her writing, that she was desperate to be taken seriously,” said Byrne. “This new picture first roots her in a London setting – by Westminster Abbey. And second, it presents her as a professional woman writer; there are pens on the table, a sheaf of paper. She seems to be a woman very confident in her own skin, very happy to be presented as a professional woman writer and a novelist, which does fly in the face of the cutesy, heritage spinster view.”
The documentary, Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait?, is due to air on BBC2 on Boxing Day.

Forensic artist Melissa Little created this likeness of Jane Austen using contemporary descriptive accounts from Jane’s brothers, nephews and nieces. Melissa learned these techniques whilst working for police authorities in the UK and USA.

WW1 poppies

Poppy plucked from the trenches goes on show

BRITAIN’S oldest remembrance day poppy was on show for the first time yesterday.
Private Cecil Roughton was just 17 when he picked the flower during a bloody battle in  Arras, France, in May 1916 [1917?].
The soldier, from the  Royal Warwickshire Regiment, kept it in his notebook before sending it home to Moseley, Birmingham.
It lay forgotten for almost a century until it was donated to the  Royal British Legion.
Welsh experts have preserved the poppy in acrylic and it is on show at the  Montague Inn, Shepton Montague, Somerset.
[video]

Poppy from no man’s land found in soldier’s diary

ONE of the oldest surviving First World War poppies – plucked from the killing fields of Flanders in 1915 – has been found in the diary of a former soldier.
Len Smith, of Woodford Green, was 24 when he picked the delicate flower from the ground in no man’s land while serving with the 7th City of London Regiment in Belgium.
Mr Smith, a sniper and battlefield artist, pressed the poppy in to his diary for safe keeping – perfectly preserving it for over 90 years.
The plant, and the illustrated war diary compiled by the infantryman during his service until 1919, have since been published as a book - Drawing Fire – complete with the pictures he drew while on the front line.

[video]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow,

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amidst the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from falling hands we throw

The torch; Be yours to hold it high!

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

by John McCrae, May 1915

WW1 ‘poppy’ letter

Prehistoric Cumbria

Mysteries of Cumbria’s ancient stones unlocked
A BOOK which sets out to fill the ‘black hole’ in Cumbria’s prehistoric past has been published by a Cambridge academic.
Dr David Barrowclough, a Fellow in Archaeology, has pulled together decades of research to come up with new interpretations about how ancient Cumbrians lived and why they built some of the most impressive stone monuments in England.
One theory Dr Barrowclough propounds is that patterns and marks carved on some of the ancient stones, such as Long Meg, in Eden,* could have originally been ‘map’symbols’ to guide people from valley to valley.
This early ‘rock art’ eventually was used to chart the movements of the sun and moon and rituals associated with passing from life to death, says Dr Barrowclough.
His book,  Prehistoric Cumbria, also suggests that thousands of years ago the  Langdale Valley was a centre of ‘professional’ axe-head production, with part-finished products being manufactured for both local and ‘export’ trade, overseen by organised groups. [not a new idea cf Graig-Llwyd ]
He reveals that the axe-heads, which were finished by polishing in lowland Cumbria, have been found in excavations as far away as the Yorkshire Wolds and the Thames Valley.
But ancient Cumbrians were not just exporters of weaponry.
Dr Barrowclough writes that by the Bronze Age the area was a net importer of a range of manufactured artefacts, many of which were deliberately thrown into bogs and rivers — a practice known as ‘deposition’.
“To an outsider, there would be nothing to indicate the long-term history of deposition in a moss or river.
“Yet particular locations were selected time after time for such actions; in the case of the Furness Peninsula, from Neolithic through to the end of the Bronze Age.
“The repeated use of the same places must have been deliberate: such places were meaningful and historical and imbued with memory,” says Dr Barrowclough.
He suggests that depositing imported artefacts in bogs and rivers was a ‘compelling way to realign a foreign idea’ and ‘to make alien, ambiguous items morally acceptable at home’.
Dr Barrowclough claims there was previously a ‘proliferation of misconceptions about the region’s archaeology; in particular, that it was in some way a ‘black hole in prehistory’.
“This book takes the opportunity to publish details of excavations that have in some cases only been hinted at in previous works, and in other cases not known of at all,” he said.

 

*Diaz-Andreu, M. and Hobbs, R. and Rosser, N. and Sharpe, K. and Trinks, I., 2005, ‘Long Meg : rock art recording using 3D laser scanning.’, Past : the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society. (50): 2-6.

Jope, E. M. & Preston, J, 1953, ‘An Axe of Stone from Great Langdale, Lake District, Found in County Antrim’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Third Series, Vol. 16 : 31-36

King Arthur manuscript

From my roving reporter, Woodwose:

Sotheby’s to Offer the Rochefoucauld Grail: Principal Witness of the Legend of King Arthur

It is the greatest romance of chivalry produced in the Middle Ages, and its themes of friendship, treachery, ambition, achievement and star-crossed tragic lovers form the foundations of much of our modern literature. The stories of the quest for the Holy Grail, of the Lady of the Lake, of King Arthur and his court at Camelot, and of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, captured the imaginations of generations to come, and have inspired some of the best-selling novels of our time. The Rochefoucauld Grail is from the 14th century, and on a scale which is as impressive as the text: some 200 cows [calves] would have been needed to produce the vellum sheets that make up the three monumental volumes, the whole embellished with some 107 jewel like illuminated illustrations – each one a work of art in its own right.

Dr Timothy Bolton, specialist in charge of the sale at Sotheby’s, said: “This is one of the principal manuscripts of the first significant medieval work of secular literature. It is a grand book, in a monumental format, with 107 miniatures, each a dazzling jewel of early gothic illumination. The subjects are almost entirely secular – a breathtakingly unusual thing at the time – with scenes of jousts, tournaments and battles, noble adventures and daring tests of strength and courage. The scenes often have a riotous energy, and often stretch beyond the boundaries of the picture frames, with lofty towers poking through the borders at the top, and figures tumbling out of the miniatures onto the blank page as they fall or scramble to escape their enemies.”

Estimated to sell for between £1.5 and £2 million when it is offered in Sotheby’s sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures on Tuesday, 7th December 2010, the work has an illustrious provenance. Written and illuminated in Flanders or Artois in the early-14th century (circa 1315-23), it was probably produced for Guy VII, Baron de Rochefoucauld, head of one of the leading aristocratic families of medieval France, and representative of King Philip V of France in Flanders. The volumes appeared on the market in the early-18th century and passed to Sir Thomas Phillipps (d.1872), possibly the greatest modern collector of medieval manuscripts. Since then, the work has changed hands just twice, passing through the hands of the most eminent dealer of the 20th century to one of the greatest collectors of our day. The Rochefoucauld Grail ranks among the finest medieval manuscripts in private hands.

The text was extremely popular in its time (there are myriad translations into other European languages), because it offered a model of spiritual chivalric behaviour, a guidebook for a Christian courtly society, through which the whole gamut of human emotions could be experienced. It shows friendship and love as well as lust, treachery and sin, while the characters struggle with ambition, achievement and crushing failure. These are the emotions and challenges that give life to stories such as those of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Lady of the Lake, Sir Lancelot’s tragic infatuation with Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, and the tales of the wizard Merlin.

The work is being sold by Mr J. R. Ritman for the benefit of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.

The Stories and the Miniatures that Illustrate them:

• The Lady of the Lake carries Sir Lancelot as a baby down to her underwater castle. In the legend, Lancelot’s mother turns from the side of her dying husband to see her child being carried away by the mystical Lady of the Lake. Lancelot then grows up in an underwater world, to emerge later as the greatest knight of his day.

• Queen Guinevere and her maidservants lead a wounded Lancelot to safety. Married to King Arthur, Guinevere’s infatuation with Lancelot was mutual. This tragic love both inspired him to become the greatest knight, and ultimately bought about both their downfalls.

• Lancelot, having heard the false reports that Guinevere is dead, falls into suicidal despair and attempts to take his own life. Here, the other Knights of the Round Table who are meant to be watching over him, have fallen asleep, all except one who leaps up to stop him from fatally wounding himself.

• Joseph of Arimathea brings the Holy Grail to Britain, having walked across water to do so, the image, shows his supporters walking across his cloak on the water’s surface, while the non-believers are left to drown.

King Arthur manuscript up for sale [more beautiful pictures with this link]

First edition ‘Dracula’ and more

Dracula book goes under hammer for 10k

A FIRST edition copy of Bram Stoker’s classic Whitby-based novel Dracula has sold at auction for £10,000.
The book went under the hammer on Thursday at Sotheby’s auction house in London and was snapped up by a mystery bidder.
Sotheby’s described the book as a lovely copy of the first edition of the world’s most famous vampire story, and had been expected to fetch anywhere between £8,000 and £12,000.
The book, partly set in and inspired by Whitby, was published in 1897 when Whitby, along with the rest of the country, was celebrating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
The copy of Dracula was among 149 rare books sold for a total of £3 million by a wealthy 75-year-old mystery collector.
At the auction, a first edition copy of A Christmas Carol, signed by Charles Dickens, sold for £181,250,a first edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice went under the hammer for £139,250, and an early copy of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte sold for £163,250.

Norfolk parson’s book sells for £163,250.
A first edition copy of Wuthering Heights, once owned by a Norfolk parson, has sold at auction for £163,250.
The antique copy of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece, first published in three volumes in 1847, was expected to fetch up to £75,000 but a mystery buyer landed it for just under double that price.
It was originally owned by the Rev John Nathaniel Micklethwait, who lived at Coltishall Hall and later inherited by Taverham Hall, now an  independent school.
It was among 149 rare books, mostly first editions, put up for sale by a 75-year-old mystery man at Sotheby’s in London.
A first edition of Black Beauty – written by Norfolk-born Anna Sewell – sold for £6,875.

Witch trials diary

One for Hallowe’en, found by my roving reporter, Woodwose:

Journal of the witchfinder general opened up

The diary – immortalised in the 1968 Vincent Price horror movie The Witchfinder General – tells of how 33 women were branded witches in a trial in the mid-17th century.
The trial was triggered by Matthew Hopkins, an English lawyer appointed by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sorcery.
The journal tells of how young maid Rebecca West confessed to having sex with the Devil and to how she implicated her mother and others in witchcraft – condemning them all to the gallows – but saving herself.
The activities of Hopkins and the Essex Witchfinders took place between 1645 and 1647 and 112 people were hanged for witchcraft – often when they were forced to confess whilst being tortured.
The notorious episode was recreated in the controversial 1968 movie starring Price as Hopkins which was heavily cut by censors amid claims it was ”exploiting” sadistic violence.
Now the journal by 17th century Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington has been opened up by a team from  The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library who are using cutting edge camera technology to photograph and ”digitise” the diary which is being kept at  Tatton Hall in Knutsford, Cheshire.
Wallington was an eloquent and well-read writer who filled 50 notebooks in which he documented his own philosophies on life to keep himself sane. When he died in 1658 he left over 2,500 pages written on himself, religion and politics.
The witchcraft trials occurred at Essex after Hopkins exploited much folklore and storytelling about evil witches that were causing catastrophe and death. Local gossip would be directed against those who were a bit “odd” or perhaps were suspected of having “cunning” powers.
In March 1645, he was commissioned by the local magistrates to “question” a suspected witch, Elizabeth Clarke who was also physically examined for ”devil’s marks’ signs like warts, moles or bits of extra skin that were declared to be “teats” to give suckle to imps.
Under torture Clarke broke down and named several other women including Anne West and her daughter Rebecca. The women were detained and taken to the cells in Colchester Castle for questioning. Rebecca confessed and implicated her mother and others, thus saving herself from hanging.
In July 1645, the women from the Colchester cells were tried at the County Assizes in Chelmsford. With no legal representation and among scenes of chaos, all but Rebecca were found guilty. Fifteen were hanged in Chelmsford but four were taken to Manningtree and hanged on the village green. Nine were reprieved.
In the journal Hopkins – who died of tuberculosis in August 1647 – was referred to as the ”Gentle man” and Wallington wrote of how Rebecca confessed after seeing flames disappear when she became separated from her mother.
In the passage he wrote: ”Shortly after when she was going to bed the Devil appeared unto her again in the shape of a handsome young man, saying that he came to marry her.
”Asked by the Judge whether she ever had carnal copulation with the Devil she confessed she had. She was very desirous to confess all she knew, which accordingly she did where upon the rest were apprehended and sent unto the Geole [jail].
”She further affirmed that when she was going to the Grand Inquest she said she would confess nothing if they pulled her to pieces with pincers.
”Asked the reason by the Gentle man she said she found herself in such extremity of torture and amazement, that she would not endure it again for the world.
”When she looked upon the ground she saw herself encompassed in flames of fire and as soon as she was separated from her mother the tortures and the flames began to cease whereupon she then confessed all she knew.
”As soon as her confession was fully ended she found her contience so satisfied and disburdened of all tortures she thought herself the happiest creature in the world.”
The handwritten notebook is the only copy known in existence. Mansion and Collections Manager Caroline Schofield from Tatton Park said: “Nehemiah Wallington was an intelligent working man who achieved much in the face of such difficulty and exhaustion in daily life.
“He doubted his salvation to the degree that he suffered a mental breakdown and tried to take his own life.
“He began to keep his diaries in an effort to record his own sins and God’s mercies
She added: “The Wallington manuscript are of huge importance to scholars of the period.
“We hope to use the digitised images in a new interpretive exhibition in the mansion’s library.”