Museum acquisitions

A rediscovered miniature book by Charlotte Brontë has been sold at a New York book fair.

A Sitwell portrait is returning home after Scarborough Museums Trust bought it at a Newbury auction.

The funds necessary to keep a portrait of Horace Walpole on display at his former home Strawberry Hill have been raised following a public appeal.

The Strawberry Hill Trust is appealing for public donations to buy a painting by William Hogarth (1697-1784) of Horace Walpole.

The 1844 portrait William Beckford on his Deathbed by Willes Maddox (1813-53) has been purchased by Bath Preservation Trust and will go on display at Beckford’s Tower and Museum this month.

The Herschel Museum of Astronomy in Bath has bought Caroline Herschel’s visitor book dating from her time living near Windsor.

A rare Renaissance roundel has been bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 20 years after its first attempt.

Essex saleroom TimeLine Auctions and a Dutch detective have worked together to return a stolen Roman statue to France after it was missing for 50 years.

The Honresfield Library of British Literature, containing more than 500 manuscripts, first editions and letters including works by the Brontë family, Robert Burns and Walter Scott, has been purchased by the Friends of the National Libraries for £15.3m.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angles has acquired an early first-century marble bust of the Roman general Germanicus, the adopted son of the Emperor Tiberius and father of Caligula.