Brontë Society pays £50,000 for Charlotte's single-sheet French homework about l'amour filial
Portrait of Charlotte Brontë, whose unpublished essay on 'l'amour filiale' has been bought for her former home in Haworth. Photograph: Bettmann
After a short public campaign, an unpublished homework essay by Charlotte Brontë, written in French for the married teacher whom she loved, has been bought for public display at the writer's former vicarage home in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Acquired privately for £50,000, the devoir was unknown until December last year when the Brontë Society was told of its discovery in a private library. Handwriting analysis confirmed the identity of the author of the single-page document. Covering both sides, Brontë tackles the subject of "L'Amour Filial", or the love of a child for its parents.
It was written in Brussels some time in the early 1840s and marked by her teacher, Constantin Heger, who ran the Pensionnat Heger school with his wife. Heger has added corrections to the work.
The essay deals with the subject in dramatic style, arguing that a child who treats a parent unlovingly is little more than a murderer in the eyes of God.
"Charlotte had a deep love and respect for her father, but lost her mother at the age of just five, when she died from what is now believed to have been ovarian cancer," said Professor Ann Sumner, executive director of the Brontë Society. "This exciting window on her love for her father, written at a time of great turmoil, is of incalculable value to our understanding of Charlotte's interior life, and will form the focus of much new scholarship."
Last month the society launched an appeal to fund the devoir's purchase, and received more than £3,000, as well as £20,000 from the V&A purchase grant fund and £5,000 from Friends of the National Libraries, which contributed £5,000.
Acquired privately for £50,000, the devoir was unknown until December last year when the Brontë Society was told of its discovery in a private library. Handwriting analysis confirmed the identity of the author of the single-page document. Covering both sides, Brontë tackles the subject of "L'Amour Filial", or the love of a child for its parents.
It was written in Brussels some time in the early 1840s and marked by her teacher, Constantin Heger, who ran the Pensionnat Heger school with his wife. Heger has added corrections to the work.
The essay deals with the subject in dramatic style, arguing that a child who treats a parent unlovingly is little more than a murderer in the eyes of God.
"Charlotte had a deep love and respect for her father, but lost her mother at the age of just five, when she died from what is now believed to have been ovarian cancer," said Professor Ann Sumner, executive director of the Brontë Society. "This exciting window on her love for her father, written at a time of great turmoil, is of incalculable value to our understanding of Charlotte's interior life, and will form the focus of much new scholarship."
Last month the society launched an appeal to fund the devoir's purchase, and received more than £3,000, as well as £20,000 from the V&A purchase grant fund and £5,000 from Friends of the National Libraries, which contributed £5,000.
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