LONDON: Christie’s announces The Alphabet of Genius: Important Autograph Letters and Manuscripts, an online-only auction from 1-14 and 15 December, as part of Classic Week.

One of the most important libraries of autograph letters and manuscripts to come to auction, featuring famous names from across the fields of literature, art, music, science and the history of ideas including Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Alexander Pope, Swift, Edward Lear, W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves, Kipling, Kerouac, Zola, Proust, Flaubert, Pasternak, E.H. Shepard, Antoine Saint-Exupéry, Edmond Halley, Edison, Einstein, Darwin, Leibniz, Pasteur, Pissarro, Gauguin, Monet, Matisse, Delacroix, Degas, Schiele, Mozart, Munch, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Liszt, Puccini, Elgar and John Cage, Jeremy Bentham, Wittgenstein, Freud and Jung. The Alphabet of Genius functions as a living record of the history of Western thought and culture over the past four centuries.

Literature highlights include:

• A series of sketches by writer Antoine Saint-Exupéry for his much-loved Petit Prince, including two early developmental sketches of the Little Prince that do not appear in the published work
• A hand-written inventory by Charles Dickens of the library and contents of his grand house at 1 Devonshire Terrace, the former including many copies of his own works and those of his literary predecessors
• A letter from R.R. Tolkien to an early reviewer of The Lord of the Rings, thanking her for ‘treating the work as literature’ and expounding on the realism, moral nuance and historical tradition underpinning the book: from the economic plausibility of Gondor to the decadence of the Elves
• H. Shepard’s original drawing of Christopher Robin and Eeyore, used to illustrate the first edition of The House at Pooh Corner (Methuen, 1928)

Science and The History of Ideas highlights include:

• Lecture notes on lunar and solar eclipses by the 17^th century astronomer Edmond Halley – only one other scientific manuscript by Halley has appeared at auction in the last half-century
• A laboratory notebook by the great inventor Thomas Edison, recording experiments relating to the development of the alkaline storage battery – intended for use in electric vehicles and illustrated with diagrams
• A manuscript by Albert Einstein, grappling with the intractable problem of Unified Field Theory – how to apply a single explanation to all of the fundamental forces in nature
• A letter from Sigmund Freud to a fellow psychoanalyst urging him to use optimism as the driving force for his work
• A letter from Charles Darwin to a fellow scientist about the ‘origin of evil’

Music highlights include:

• A composing manuscript of one of Gustav Mahler’s important songs, ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ in which the composer sets to music a poem warning the listener not to look too closely at the process of creation – ironically, a process that the manuscript itself allows us to view
• A previously unpublished autograph letter by Giuseppe Verdi on his plans for a second staging of his famous opera La Traviata
• The autograph working manuscript of Edward Elgar's orchestration of Henry Purcell's Motet 'Jehova, Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei'
• A manuscript of Italian arias containing a rare autograph annotation by George Frideric Handel

Art highlights include:

• An affectionate letter addressed to Michelangelo by his protégé, the painter Antonio Mini, reporting confidently on his life as an artist in Lyons
• A letter by Monet discussing fellow French painter Manet’s ‘Olympia’
• An autograph letter by Paul Gaugin to fellow artist Camille Pissarro
• The only recorded example in private hands of the first prospectus for Robert Blair’s The Grave (1808), announcing the designs for which William Blake was best known in his lifetime

Sophie Hopkins, Specialist, Manuscripts and Archives, London: “This landmark sale is a clarion call to autograph collectors old and new: not for years has there been such an opportunity to acquire letters and manuscripts in the hands of our most famous authors, artists, scientists, musicians and thinkers. From ‘A’ through to ‘Z’, the Alphabet of Genius has something for everyone”.

Highlights will be on public display at Christie’s in Paris from 14 to 21 November and Christie’s King Street, London from 9 to 12 December. Lots 1-199 will close on 14 December and lots 200-365 will close on 15 December.