CATS Enables T.S. Eliot Estate to Issue £20,000 Gift to The Brontë Parsonage

The estate of poet T.S. Eliot, creator of the source material for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, has pledged a gift of 20,000 pounds (approx. $26,000) to The Brontë Museum in Haworth.

The estate told the museum that the donation was made possible by the worldwide success of the musical, which is based on Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats."

The museum houses the largest collection of items and manuscipts belonging to sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë and welcomes upwards of 70,000 guests a year. The museum shuttered in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Rebecca Yorke, the head of communications and marketing at the Brontë Society, the estate quietly made the donation on the museum's crowdfunding campaign page.

Despite the generous gift, the museum still faces a deficit of £100,000 and a loss of approximately £500,000 in income.

Read more at The New York Times.