Handmade Rowling Book Fetches Record Price
By Julia Eccleshare -- Publishers Weekly, 12/13/2007 7:28:00 AM
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a handwritten and illustrated book by J.K. Rowling, has been sold for a record-breaking £1,950,000 at auction in London on Wednesday. It was bought by London fine art dealer Hazlitt Gooden & Fox, who secured it after a hard-fought bidding war between six serious bidders. The price, which outstrips any previously paid for a modern literary manuscript, stunned the room, which erupted into spontaneous applause. Sotheby’s “low estimate” had been only in the region of £30,000–£50,000, though they also recognized that as “a collectible” it was almost impossible to value.
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| The forward to The Tales of Beedle the Bard |
Rowling, who had been in London earlier in the week for a pre-auction event at which she read one of the wizarding tales, spoke passionately of the charity and the work that it can do. After the sale she said, “I am stunned and ecstatic. This will mean so much to children in desperate need of help.”
Just before the sale Bloomsbury announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be published in paperback next July 5, in both a children’s and an adult edition. Scholastic has not announced a date for the U.S. paperback edition.
