27 December 2021
In the presence of so much handwritten material by the Brontës, Austen, Scott and Burns, you find yourself imagining that the authors have just popped out of the room. "Manuscripts," says Prof Kathryn Sutherland, as she leafs through an exercise book filled by Emily Brontë with poems, "are sticky with their writers' presence."
It is partly the extraordinary condition of the material that creates this impression of closeness . The Honresfield library, now saved for the nation, was amassed by a Rochdale mill owner, William Law, at the end of the 19th century and the items have been kept pristine (and almost inaccessible) by his family ever since.
