The manuscript of Charlotte Brontë’s poem, I’ve been wandering in the greenwoods, written when she was just 13, is to be sold on 10 April in Part I of the sale of The Roy Davids Collection Part III: Poetry: Poetical Manuscripts and Portraits of Poets at Bonhams, New Bond Street. It is estimated at £40,000 – 45,000.
The poem is signed C Brontë and dated by her 14 December 1829. It is written on a small slip of paper 3×3 inches in size and cannot be read easily without a magnifying glass. Although Charlotte Brontë wrote around 200 poems, the vast majority of the manuscripts are in institutions. There are perhaps no more than four in private hands, making this poem extremely rare.
