Usually I try to keep this blog fairly local, or, at least, regional. But Bronte fans, I figure, are everywhere, and certainly a lot of you will be interested in this big news from the literary world.

According to the London Review of Books (and the Guardian and the Telegraph, and Huffington Post, and Twitter, and...) a long-lost short story written in French by a young Charlotte Bronte has been discovered in a museum in Belgium.

(Charlotte Bronte, you remember, is the author of the enduring "Jane Eyre" and several other books.)

The story is titled "L'Ingratitude," and she wrote it as homework for her tutor, Constantin Heger, on whom she apparently had quite a massive crush. (Which you can read about in her letters.) (He was married, and was, of course, her teacher, and he apparently was appalled to get these letters, which he ripped up. But his wife rescued them and sewed them back together--yes, sewed them---where oh where was Scotch tape when you needed it? And they are to be published this year.)

Anyway, back to the newly discovered story: It's an allegory about a thoughtless young rat who escapes from his father's care and comes to a very sad end. The manuscript was last seen in 1913, when it was given to a wealthy Belgian collector. Although certainly someone saw it between then and now--someone at the museum, for instance? But I digress.

You can read the story in French and in English on the London Review of Book's website here, and also listen to the story read aloud. Sadly, not by Bronte herself, but by Gillian Anderson.