[John Bacon [John Collingwood Bacon; Brontes, English artist.] Long Autograph Letter Signed to ‘Miss Sprott’, making detailed and percipient criticisms of four books on the Bronte sisters that she has lent him.

6pp, 12mo, on two bioliums. A long letter, neatly and closely written. In stamped envelope, with stamps and postmark, addressed to ‘Miss Sprott / Magavelda / Blakeney / Holt [Norfolk]’ and signed ‘John Bacon’. The letter and envelope are in fair condition, on slightly discoloured paper and with short closed tears along the folds made for postage. He begins: ‘Dear Miss Sprott. / I have kept your books a long time, but I hope you do not mind, for my reading time is confined to half an hour a day, when I go to bed.’ Without further ado he gives his shrewd opinions of four books: ‘The Brontes in Ireland’ (‘most far fetched & fanciful & not in the least convincing’), ‘The Brontes. [E. M.] Delafield’ (‘We cannot realize to day the extent to which the sisters were literally buried alive in the grey old Parsonage - Charlotte for instance did nothing at all, it is said, for two years, from 17 to 19. / Try & imagine the intensive mental life she must have led during that time, without losing her reason, & it is easier to understand Branwell who had ot the mental stability of his sister.’), ‘Wild Decembers. [Clement] Dane’ (‘I enjoyed the play & found it good with one exception in Sc II Act II where it is insinuated that Branwell wrote the first part of Wuthering Heights & Emily finished it & put her name to it. Preposterous - in the first place to think that that drunken brother could have conceived the story, much less have managed the perfect construction’) and ‘C[harles]. P[ercy]. S[anger].s lecture [‘The Structure of Wuthering Heights’]’. The letter concludes: ‘Is there, I often wonder, any information in the world about Emily that has not yet bee brought to light? Does that photograph on glass exist today? Or must we be content with what our minds & hearts hold of her - surely no Poet ever had less data’.