Two very important autograph manuscripts of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, the property of his nephew, Coningsby Disraeli, will be sold at Sotheby’s on December 17th, it was announced today. They are the manuscripts of what are probably his two most famous novels.
The earlier of the two manuscripts that of Lothair, is in three volumes quarto and extends to 1,550 pages, written almost entirely on one side of the sheet only, and complete except that apparently there are three pages missing. The novel was originally written in 1869; it was published May 2nd, 1870; #,000 copies were sold before publication, and by October 80,000 copies had been sold by Appleton in America. The MS. of the second novel, Endymion, extends to 1,440 pages, and is also in three volumes quarto, and clearly written on one side of each sheet, with occasional interpolations on the opposite page. This novel was begun in 1872-3, laid aside unler pressure of public affairs, and fin-shed in 1880.
Disraeli received $50,000 for it from Longmans, up to then the highest price paid for a work of fiction. It was Disraeli’s last complete novel, and published in his seventy-sixth year.
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