Santa Barbara’s Randall House Rare Books, a specialty bookstore owned by long-time local resident and book aficionado Ronald R. Randall, has sold two unpublished Charlotte Brontë manuscripts to the Brontë Society in Haworth, England.
The short story fragment and poem manuscripts were stowed inside a book, which had belonged to Charlotte’s mother Maria Brontë, called “The Remains of Henry Kirke White” by Robert Southey. The book survived a shipwreck and was inscribed by Charlotte’s father Patrick Brontë, “the book of my dearest wife and it was saved from the waves. So then it will always be preserved,” according to Randall House.
Set in 1833, Charlotte Brontë’s unfinished short story is “a satirical take on life in Harworth,” the village where the family lived, Brontë scholar Doctor Juliet Barker said. The story was written under the pseudonym of one of Charlotte’s male alter egos, Lord Charles Wellesley. The poem takes place in the six Brontë children’s fantasy world and, according to Randall House, is true to Charlotte’s poetic style.
