The Bronte Society, which celebrated its 120th birthday earlier this month, is planning a full programme of events next year including lectures, panel discussions, pop-up activities all over the country.

This programme will be announced at a special event in London on February 19.

The first meeting of the Bronte Society took place in Bradford’s Town Hall on December 16, 1893.

Presided over by Reverend W H Keeling, headmaster of Bradford Grammar School, it was resolved that: “...a Bronte Society be and is hereby formed and that the objects of such Society be, amongst other things, to establish a museum to contain not only drawings, manuscripts, paintings and other personal relics of the Bronte Family, but all editions of their works, their writing of others upon those works or upon any member of the family, together with photographs of places or premises with which the family was associated.”

The first museum was opened in Haworth on May 18, 1895, in the former Yorkshire Penny Bank at the top of Main Street in Haworth.

In 1928 those premises were evacuated and the collections moved into the original Parsonage at Haworth which had been up for sale by the Church of England.

Sir James Roberts, a native of Haworth and a Life Member of the Society, provided £3,000 to buy the Parsonage and on August 4, 1928, he and Lady Roberts presented the home of Anne, Charlotte and Emily to the Bronte Society to be transformed into a museum and library for the Bronte sisters.

Today the museum receives visitors from all over the world and scholars who come to the Library which has the largest collection of Bronte material held internationally.