Emily Brontë: Lost handwritten poems expected to fetch around £1m

The Brontë sisters were all writers

A "lost library" of British literature, including rare handwritten poems by Emily Brontë and works by Robert Burns, is to be auctioned off at Sotheby's.

The contents of the Honresfield Library, which has re-emerged after almost 100 years in obscurity, will go up for sale at three separate auctions.

Emily's poems are expected to fetch somewhere between £800,000 and £1.2m.

A first edition of her famous novel Wuthering Heights could fetch between £200,000 and £300,000.

Emily Brontë's rare handwritten poems will be sold at Sotheby's

An annotated Brontë family copy of Bewick's History of British Birds - famously referenced in the opening pages of Jane Eyre by Emily's sister Charlotte - could go for between £30,000 - £50,000, estimates suggest.

Emily Brontë was largely unknown as a writer during her lifetime, but wrote her passionate love story Wuthering Heights in 1847 before dying of tuberculosis a year later.

The public will have the chance to see highlights from the library at exhibitions in London, Edinburgh and New York.

Bewick's History of British Birds was made famous in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

The new rare pieces "open a window onto the short but amazing lives" of the Yorkshire siblings, according to Sotheby's.

The library also includes a compendium of poems, notes, personal letters and ideas put together by the Scottish bard Robert Burns, when he was an unknown 24-year-old.

The collection was last sold at Sotheby's in 1879, for £10.

'A unique portrait'

The library was originally compiled by Rochdale mill-owners Alfred and William Law, who were brought up less than 20 miles from Haworth in Yorkshire where the Brontës lived.

The brothers lived together at Honresfield House near Rochdale, which had been built for William in 1879.

"Showcasing the depth of the literary interests of Alfred and William Law, the collection as a whole paints a unique portrait of the passions of one of the greatest and least-known collecting families from a golden age of book collecting," said Dr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's English literature and historical manuscripts specialist.

When Alfred died - William having predeceased him - his nephew, also called Alfred Law, inherited his estate including the library.

But the library disappeared into obscurity after the younger Alfred died in 1939.

"When the library went missing from public view in the 1930s, many assumed it had disappeared, and to now play a role in bringing it to a wider audience is a true career highlight," Dr Heaton said.

The collection of more than 500 items will go on sale at three separate auctions set to take place this year and next.

Other items in the Honresfield Library include:

• Jane Austen first editions, including Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice

• A copy of Don Quixote printed in 1620 for Shakespeare publisher Edward Blounte

• An annotated copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems showing his changes

• The complete manuscript for Sir Walter Scott's 19th century novel Rob Roy

• Little-seen letters to and from the likes of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Hartley Coleridge (son of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and George Smith - publisher and champion of The Bells, which was the Bronte's secret pseudonym

• Works from Homer, Ovid, the Grimm Brothers, Montaigne, Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, Charles Dickens and Mary Wollstonecraft also make an appearance