Rare document is back home in the Bronte Parsonage at Haworth where novelist penned it in 1848

It is back in the Bronte Parsonage Museum for the first time since it was written by Charlotte, author of Jane Eye, to her publisher on October 18, 1848.

It has arrived following a complex export procedure involving special packaging and a courier service from London.

Ann Dinsdale, the museum’s collections manager, said: “It was not a straightforward process getting it here.

“We had to arrange for someone to wrap it at Southby’s in New York – they wouldn’t do it themselves.

“It was then collected, flown over to London and then we had to arrange for a courier to get it here. But it’s been worth the wait.”

The black-bordered letter, which went under the hammer for £36,000, reveals Charlotte’s grief over the death of her brother Branwell, aged 31, in September 1848 and her anxiety about the health of her younger sister Emily, who died three months later, aged 30.

Mrs Dinsdale said: “Those letters written to her publisher, William Smith Williams, are amongst the most significant of all Charlotte’s correspondence.

“This particular one had remained in a private collection in America for many years and it is wonderful to be able to make it available for the first time.

“This was a very sad period of her life. Branwell had just died and Emily was showing symptoms of the TB which would kill her three months later.

“The letter doesn’t refer to these things, but it talks about her being ill. I think her deep unhappiness was manifested in this ill-health.”

The letter joins a treasure trove of artefacts acquired by the museum in Haworth over the past 12 months including a poetry manuscript written by Charlotte as a 13-year-old and Emily’s artist’s box.

The Bronte Society paid £32,000 for the box and geometry set at auction in London in December and $50,000 for the miniature manuscripts.

The letter will go on display at the museum this week until the end of the year.