Guest Post: The Man in the Stone Cottage by Stephanie Cowell
- Archaeolibrarian
- Sep 24
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 25
Book details:
Name: Stephanie Cowell
Book Title: The Man in the Stone Cottage: a novel of the Brontë sisters
Series: N/a
Publication Date: September 16th, 2025
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Pages: 258
Genre: historical fiction
Any Triggers: no
@cathie.dunn1 @thecoffeepotbookclub
@cowell.stephanie @thecoffeepotbookclub
In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters— Charlotte, Anne, and Emily— navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle.
Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. Despite their immense talent, no one will publish their poetry or novels.
Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd during her solitary walks on the moors, yet he remains unseen by anyone else.
After Emily’ s untimely death, Charlotte— now a successful author with Jane Eyre— stumbles upon hidden letters and a mysterious map. As she stands on the brink of her own marriage, Charlotte is determined to uncover the truth about her sister’ s secret relationship.
The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.
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“A haunting and atmospheric historical novel.” – Library Journal
“A mesmerizing and heartrending novel of sisterhood, love, and loss in Victorian England.” - Heather Webb, USA Today bestselling author of Queens of London
“Stephanie Cowell has written a masterpiece.” - Anne Easter Smith, author of This Son of York
“With The Man in the Stone Cottage, Stephanie Cowell asks what is real and what is imagined and then masterfully guides her readers on a journey of deciding for themselves.” - Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls
“The Brontës come alive in this beautiful, poignant, elegant and so very readable tale. Just exquisite.” - NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose
“Cowell’s ability to take readers to time and place is truly wonderful and absorbing.” - Stephanie H. (Netgalley)
“Such a lovely, lovely book!” - Books by Dorothea (Netgalley)
When Archaeolibrarian suggested I write blog about a Brontë artefact that inspired or was featured in my novel The Man in the Stone Cottage, I murmured with certitude, “It can be nothing but the Little Books!”
But what are the Little Books?
Let us go back nearly two hundred years. The four small solemn Brontë children (Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brilliant brother Branwell) are living in their father’s wind-swept parsonage in the small town of Haworth on the Yorkshire moorlands. They are proudly possessed of many gallant tin soldiers (some say wood) which had been gifted to Branwell by his father, and the boy and his sisters made them into characters and wrote tiny books for them to read. Perhaps twenty of these still survive.
These “little books,” only a few centimeters in size, were hand-made by Charlotte, Emily and Anne. They consist of paper scraps sewn into covers made from everyday items such as sugar bags and wallpaper. In them the sisters created imaginary worlds, most notably in Anne and Emily’s Gondal saga. Alas, only the ones by Charlotte and Branwell remain.
I have seen these little books several times and though I read small print fairly well, they are beyond me. I can imagine Charlotte who was very nearsighted bending over by candlelight with her pen in hand and her face some inches from the page. I saw one or two of the books at the beloved Morgan Library in New York City, and later only streets away on display at the New York Public Library in the great building behind the two stone lions.
Among the Little Books, one was lost for over a hundred years.
The author was Charlotte Brontë, the young writer who would grow up to write Jane Eyre. It consisted of ten poems and called “A Book of Ryhmes [sic] by Charlotte Brontë, Sold by Nobody and Printed by Herself.” It was last seen at auction in New York in 1916 where it was sold for $520. It then disappeared with its whereabouts, or survival, unknown until it surfaced suddenly a few years ago.
An envelope was found within a 19th century schoolbook. The envelope was marked “Brontë manuscript” with the addition of “most valuable.” Once opened a tiny hand stitched book of 16 pages was found. The literary world was at once on great alert. The curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum did not want a wealthy private collector to buy it and hide it away for another hundred years.She felt it belonged in the Parsonage where the girl Charlotte had lived and written it and stitched the pages together.
Geordie Greig, the chair of Friends of the National Library, had only two weeks to raise the money to buy the book, a daunting task. Among the benefactors were the estate of TS Eliot and the Garfield Weston Foundation. A plea went out for public donations which was answered around the world.
“There are just a few days to go before Charlotte’s little book goes to auction in Paris and we are urging everyone, literature lover or not, to be part of this historic moment to bring this literary gem home to where it was written 189 years ago,” said a spokesperson for the museum.“It’s very moving to think of 14-year-old Charlotte creating this particular little book at home in Haworth Parsonage.”
They did not depend on foundations alone to supply the money. There ran a crowd funder campaign. I and my friends heard the call. I donated my services as manuscript editor for a good fee. Thousands of people pooled their resources from around the globe and raised £50,000. The book was auctioned for a million pounds and donated to the Parsonage Museum.
In my home in New York City, I was almost shouting for joy.
The Book of Ryhmes received its first publication 21 April 2025 by the Brontë Society and Tartarus Press. The book has facsimile reproductions of the original pages of the manuscript, with a transcription of the poems. It is a limited edition, but you may still be able to buy a copy.
Stephanie Cowell has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival in NYC.
She is the author of seven novels including Marrying Mozart, Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet, The Boy in the Rain and The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her work has been translated into several languages and adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award.
Author Links:
Website: https://stephaniecowell.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cowell.stephanie/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/stephaniecowell
Tour hosted by: The Coffee Pot Book Club
Thank you so much for hosting Stephanie Cowell, with such a fascinating post linked to her evocative, new novel, The Man in the Stone Cottage.
Take care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club