Christmas has come early for J.K. Rowlings. The author, whose Harry Potter books have sold almost 400 million copies and been translated into 65 languages, wrote the The Tales of Beedle the Bard after finishing the Potter series and the book fetched nearly £2 million at auction today (close to $4 million).
The manuscript, a collection of wizardly fairytales, handwritten and extensively illustrated by the author, was sold for exactly 1,950,000 pounds (3,985,410 USD or 2,706,990 euro). The buyer, the London art agents Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, now owns one of just seven copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and the only one to be sold on the open market rather than given to family and friends. The book originally had been expected to sell for about £200, 000 ($100,000).
The price is the highest ever achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript, an auction record for a work by J. K. Rowling and an auction record for a children’s book. The proceeds from the sale will benefit The Children’s Voice, a charity co-founded in 2005 by Miss Rowling and Emma Nicholson, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.
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