John Lennon manuscripts, drawings sell for $2.9 million at auction
All of the 89 lots in the sale, from Lennon's 1964 book "In His Own Write" and 1965's "A Spaniard in the Works," were snapped up by buyers.
The highlight of the sale was "The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield," the manuscript for Lennon's parody of Sherlock Holmes from "A Spaniard in the Works" which fetched $209,000.
"The outstanding result, the first white glove sale of 2014 at Sotheby's New York, shows that Lennon's nonsense verse, puns, wicked humor and comic drawings continue to resonate 50 years after the publication of 'In His Own Write' and "A Spaniard in the Works,'" Gabriel Heaton, the deputy director of Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said in a statement.
A white glove sale is an auction in which every lot is sold.
Other top items in the auction, just over 50 years after the Beatles' first appearance in America on the Ed Sullivan Show, included "The Fat Budgie" manuscript, which sold for $143,000, and an ink drawing of a guitar player that went for $137,000.
Heaton, who described the items as the most substantial collection of original artwork and manuscripts by Lennon, said all the lots in the sale were produced at the height of Beatlemania.
Lennon died in 1980, at the age of 40, after he was shot in New York.
The collection was sold by Lennon's British publisher Tom Maschler, who persuaded him to write the books.
(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Tom Brown)
A Sotheby's employee handles a typescript signed by John Lennon during the press preview of a collection of Lennon's original drawings and manuscripts from 1964-65 at Sotheby's in New York May 29, 2014.
Drawings are seen as part of John Lennon's original drawings and manuscripts from 1964-65 at Sotheby's auction house in New York in this May 29, 2014 file photo.
An untitled drawing by John Lennon is seen during the press preview of a collection of Lennon's original drawings and manuscripts from 1964-65 at Sotheby's auction house in New York May 29, 2014.
An untitled drawing of a four-eyed guitar player by John Lennon is seen during the press preview of a collection of Lennon's original drawings and manuscripts from 1964-65 at Sotheby's auction house in New York May 29, 2014.
CREDIT: REUTERS/SHANNON STAPLETON
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