Latest news with #BrontëParsonageMuseum
Wales Online
25-05-2025
- Wales Online
Ten most affordable staycation destinations for summer
Ten most affordable staycation destinations for summer The picturesque village of Haworth in West Yorkshire tops the list A staycation holiday operator has revealed the 10 most affordable staycation destinations for summer, with the picturesque village of Haworth in West Yorkshire topping the list. The new ranking from Sykes Holiday Cottages is based on an analysis of the average weekly price of a week's holiday in all UK locations this summer (June-August). Haworth is famed for its Brontë heritage and cobbled charm, with stays averaging just £668 per week for a family of four over summer or just £24 per person, per night. Close behind is the little-known north east town of Wooler, a gateway to the Northumberland National Park and Cheviot Hills, with a week in summer setting you back £680, on average. This is followed by the North Yorkshire market town of Skipton, often dubbed the 'Gateway to the Dales' (£710 a week), and Liskeard in Cornwall (£722), with another picturesque North Yorkshire town, Pickering (£733), rounding out the top five. Top 10 most affordable summer staycation locations (Average price for a two-bedroom cottage, June–August 2025) Haworth, Bradford – £668 - £24 per person, per night Wooler, Northumberland – £680 - £24PPN Skipton, North Yorkshire – £710 - £25 PPN Liskeard, Cornwall – £722 - £26 PPN Pickering, North Yorkshire – £733 - £26 PPN Carnforth, Lancashire – £740 - £26 PPN Mundesley, Norfolk – £741 - £26 PPN Buxton, Derbyshire – £748 - £27 PPN Caernarfon, Gwynedd – £752 - £27 PPN Ludlow, Shropshire – £761 - £27PPN Teddy Bear Cottage – Haworth, West Yorkshire Sleeps: Four Price: Seven nights from £355 (£13pppn) Offering a blend of traditional character and modern comfort, this cosy retreat features exposed beams, a stone fireplace and a well-equipped kitchen, making it the perfect family escape. Just a short walk from the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the village's historic streets, the cottage is ideally placed for exploring Haworth's literary heritage. The surrounding Yorkshire Dales also offer walking and cycling opportunities. Bridge End Bothy – Wooler, Northumberland Sleeps: Two Price: Seven nights from £425 (£15pppn) This home-from-home combines traditional character with modern comforts. Inside, the lounge boasts exposed beams, reclaimed wooden floors, and a woodburning stove which is tucked away into an inglenook fireplace. Well placed for exploring Northumberland National Park, scenic coastal walks, and nearby castles, it's an ideal base for couples or small families looking for a peaceful countryside stay. No. 4 Embsay – Skipton, North Yorkshire Sleeps: Two Price: Seven nights from £408 (£14.60pppn) Thoughtfully styled with a warm, homely feel, this mid-terrace retreat combines classic features - like a wood-burning stove - with contemporary touches and elegant interiors. With two comfortable bedrooms and scenic views towards the Skipton Dales, it's an ideal base for families. Bolton Abbey Steam Railway is close by and the cottage offers easy access to the Yorkshire Dales, peaceful walks and cosy village pubs. Elvan Cottage – Liskeard, Cornwall Sleeps: Two Price: Seven nights from £611 (£22pppn) Combining rustic features like exposed stone walls and vaulted ceilings with bright, stylish interiors, this semi-detached cottage offers a relaxed open-plan living space and two comfortable bedrooms. Guests can relax on the private terrace or enjoy the communal garden with a hot tub, bar and barbecue area. Just 1.5 miles from Liskeard, the cottage is ideally placed to explore Cornwall's countryside and coast. Hogwarts Cottage – Pickering, North Yorkshire Sleeps: Two Article continues below Price: Seven nights from £340 (£12pppn) Set opposite the North Yorkshire Moors Steam Railway, it's great for train lovers and families alike. The cosy interiors include a sitting room with a gas fire, a dining area, and a modern galley kitchen, plus two comfortable bedrooms. With shops, pubs and the moors on your doorstep, it's an ideal base for exploring the beauty and heritage of North Yorkshire.
BBC News
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Charlotte Bronte: Poems written by author aged 13 go on sale
For nearly 200 years, only a select few people had read the contents of a tiny collection of poems written by an author who later became a household Brontë was just 13 when she compiled her Book of Rhymes in 1829 - misspelling the word "rhymes".In 2022, the original volume was purchased for £983,000 at auction and the winning bidder donated it to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West museum has now teamed up with a publisher to release £20 paperback copies of the anthology, which contains 10 works by the future writer of the novel Jane Eyre. Ann Dinsdale, the museum's principle curator, said: "Charlotte was hugely ambitious. "She'd grown up seeing poetry published by her father on the parsonage bookshelves."So that idea of being a published author had kind of always been present."She'd been steeped in the works of Wordsworth and Lord Byron and she saw her true vocation as being in poetry."The tiny manuscript - measuring just 3.8in x 2.5in (9.7cm x 6.4cm) - was one of six "little books" written by Charlotte but never eldest of the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte went on to write her classic Jane Eyre 18 years later. The girls grew up in the Haworth died in 1855 aged 38 and the booklet was kept by her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls until his was put up for sale in 1915 in London, and again a year later in New York, before disappearing from public view for more than a century before being auctioned for a third time. Ms Dinsdale said: "We worked with a publisher called the Tartarus Press, they're based in Leyburn, so it's a very Yorkshire project."And we published the edition of the Book of Ryhmes (sic)."These tiny, early manuscripts are so important in that they chart her development as a writer."She's trying to establish her own style, her own voice."It was one step in the process that went into her eventually producing Jane Eyre."The original15-page manuscript, stitched in brown paper covers, is on display in the was bought by Friends of the National Libraries (FNL), a UK charity devoted to saving the nation's written and printed to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Observer
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
At 13, Charlotte Brontë Already Knew How Good a Writer She Would Be
Few teenagers would want the world to read their poems, but at 13, Charlotte Brontë was an exception. In 1829, she collected her verse in a humble anthology that hinted at her ambition to become an author at a time when few women wrote for a public audience. The poems in Brontë's 'Book of Rhymes' were handwritten in tiny script on scraps of paper, no larger than playing cards, and stitched together with a meticulously crafted contents page. The author of 'Jane Eyre' likely never intended to publish this juvenile work, inscribing on the cover 'Sold By Nobody and Printed By Herself.' Years later, the anthology will be available to the public for the first time. To celebrate the 209th anniversary of her birth, the Brontë Parsonage Museum in England has published a collection of 10 poems alongside images of the original ink-smudged pages. The anthology features a long poem on the beauty of nature, an epic attempt, and a piece intriguingly titled 'A Thing of Fourteen Lines — Commonly Called a [Sonnet?]'. Brontë's manuscript reveals her editing process, illustrating her as an aspiring author already grappling with character and perspective. Ann Dinsdale, the museum's principal curator, notes, 'They chart her development as a writer.' The original manuscript, lost for over a century, will also be exhibited at the museum in Haworth, northern England. The existence of these poems came to light through Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Brontë, published in 1857. Gaskell mentioned a catalog of 22 works created by Brontë, starting at age 10. 'A Book of Rhymes' and similar juvenile pieces became treasured collectibles. Records indicate the anthology was auctioned in New York in 1916 but later vanished. It resurfaced in 2022 as the highlight of the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. Sold by an anonymous private collector, the anthology fetched $1.25 million during an auction held on the 206th anniversary of Brontë's birth. Friends of the National Libraries, a British nonprofit, raised the funds through donations from nine contributors, including the Garfield Weston Foundation and the estate of T.S. Eliot, to prevent it from disappearing into private hands again. The anthology was then donated to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where the Brontë family lived and wrote in the 19th century. From their home in Haworth, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and their brother Branwell produced tiny magazines filled with elaborate worlds. Their imagined readers were toy soldiers, and they crafted stories on scraps of paper, hiding their creations from adult scrutiny. Dinsdale notes they wrote to scale for the toy soldiers, using small text to keep their adventures private. In 'A Book Of Rhymes,' Brontë adopted the voices of two toy soldiers—Marquis of Duro and Lord Charles Wellesley—as they embarked on an expedition through a Canadian forest or an exiled journey through biblical Babylon. The young Brontës' works reflected their reading influences, and their father, Patrick Brontë, a priest and bird watcher, encouraged their explorations of nature during long walks over the moors. This connection with the landscape became a hallmark of Charlotte's writings. Long before her characters traversed the landscapes of her novels, the teenage Brontë captured nature in poems like 'Autumn, a Song' and 'Spring, a Song.' In 'A Bit of a Rhyme,' she describes, 'Meantime the rushing stream which roars along / its black waves foaming in high majesty.' Despite acknowledging the imperfections in her writing, Brontë introduced her anthology by stating, 'The following are attempts at rhyming of an inferior nature, it must be acknowledged, but they are nevertheless my best.' The Brontë Parsonage Museum collaborated with a local publisher to have musician and poet Patti Smith write the foreword. She reflects on how Brontë's writing transported her to her own childhood and emphasizes that the poems embody a determined ambition. 'It is not simply a handful of juvenile verses,' Smith writes, 'but the manifestation of an ambitious dreamer.' —NYT
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At 13, Charlotte Brontë Already Knew How Good a Writer She Would Be
Few teenagers would want the world to read their poems. At 13, Charlotte Brontë collected her verse in a humble anthology that already hinted at her ambition to become an author at a time when few women wrote for a public audience. Written in the winter of 1829, the poems in Brontë's 'Book of Rhymes' were written in tiny script to fit on scraps of paper no larger than playing cards that were hand-stitched together with a carefully written contents page. The writer of 'Jane Eyre' probably didn't intend to publish her juvenile poetry, writing in the inner cover 'Sold By Nobody and Printed By Herself.' Now, about 200 years later, the anthology will be available to the public for the first time. This week, in time to celebrate the 209th anniversary of her birth, the Brontë Parsonage Museum in England published the collection of 10 poems, transcribed alongside images of their original ink-smudged pages. The anthology contains a long-form poem on the beauty of the natural world, an attempt at an epic, and a verse called 'A Thing of Fourteen Lines — Commonly Called a [Sonnet?]' The anthology shows Brontë's deletions and rearranged stanzas, showing lines crossed out and rewritten. In preserving her ink-stained edits, the little manuscript also shows an aspiring author already grappling with character and perspective. 'They chart her development as a writer,' said Ann Dinsdale, the Brontë Parsonage Museum's principal curator. The original manuscript, which was lost for at least a century, will also go on display at the museum, in Haworth, in northern England. The existence of the poems was known thanks to a biography of Brontë, written by the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and published in 1857. Gaskell wrote of a catalog of early poems and stories by Brontë, first written at age 10 and numbering 22 titles by the time she was 14. These juvenile works, including 'A Book of Rhymes,' were later treasured by collectors. Records show that 'A Book of Rhymes' came up for auction in New York in 1916 — but then it vanished. It reappeared in 2022, where it was the headline item at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. Sold by an anonymous private collector, the anthology fetched $1.25 million at an auction that year, held on the 206th anniversary of Brontë's birth. Friends of the National Libraries, a British nonprofit, raised that amount with donations from nine donors, including the Garfield Weston Foundation and the estate of T.S. Eliot, to stop the book from again disappearing into another private collection. It was then donated to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which is based in the parsonage where the Brontë family lived and wrote in the 19th century. From their home in Haworth, the Brontë siblings — Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell — produced tiny magazines that contained elaborate worlds: Their imagined readers were a set of toy soldiers that they played with, making up adventures. The children gathered any scrap of paper they could find, writing on sugar bags and bounding their books in scraps of wallpaper, Dinsdale, the museum curator, said. They wrote to scale for the toy soldiers, but by making the text so small, they also kept the prying eyes of adults from looking into their little world. Brontë wrote 'A Book Of Rhymes' in the voice of two of the toy soldiers, the Marquis of Duro and Lord Charles Wellesley, and imagined them setting off on an expedition through a Canadian forest where 'branches mingle over head / casting a solemn shade / oe'r the lone pathway which I tread' or on an exiled journey through the biblical Babylon. The young Brontës' early work reflects what they were reading at the time, Dinsdale said. She added that they were encouraged by their father, Patrick Brontë, a priest who also studied bird life, who would take the children on long walks over the moors around their home. He encouraged Charlotte to observe the natural landscape, which became a signature of her writing, Dinsdale said. Long before her characters would muddy their skirts in the bucolic landscapes of her novels, teenage Charlotte Brontë captured the natural environment in her poems 'Autumn, a Song' and 'Spring, a Song.' 'Meantime the rushing stream which roars along / its black waves foaming in high majesty' she writes in a poem called 'A Bit of a Rhyme.' The verse is imperfect, but an already reflective Brontë knew this, writing in the introduction: 'The following are attempts at rhyming of an inferior nature, it must be acknowledged, but they are nevertheless my best.' The Brontë Parsonage Museum partnered with a local publisher and asked the musician, author and poet Patti Smith to write the foreword. In it, she writes that Brontë's teenage writing transported her back to her own childhood, when imagination offered her an escape from reality. The poems show a cleareyed writer determined to wield invention 'as a benevolent weapon,' Smith writes. 'It is not simply a handful of juvenile verses,' she adds, 'but the manifestation of an ambitious dreamer.'
