Zut alors! French snatch our tiny Bronte treasure: Manuscript is going to Paris after museum in UK is outbid

Tensions in Europe took on a literary flavour yesterday as the French snatched a tiny but historically priceless Charlotte Bronte manuscript from under the nose of a British museum.

The unpublished work, written in 1830 when she was just 14 and containing a story which is a precursor to a famous passage in her novel Jane Eyre, was bought for a record £690,850 by Le Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris at auction.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum, in the literary family’s home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, was so keen to acquire the miniature treasure that it had launched a fundraising appeal before the sale at Sotheby’s in London.      Read Here