Highlights from the First Editions, Second Thoughts auction

Last night, English PEN was at Sotheby’s for our fundraising auction First Editions, Second Thoughts.  Fifty authors generously annotated a first edition of their most famous book, to be sold on behalf of English PEN.

We are delighted to report that the sale raised at total of £439,200. 

The headline lot of the evening was a first edition of Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone, personally annotated and illustrated by J.K. Rowling. The sale room fell silent as two determined bidders vied for the prized edition. Bidding leapt in increments of up to £25,000 and the hammer finally fell, to a round of applause, on a £150,000 telephone bid.  You can watch a video of auctioneer Harry Dalmeny making this historic sale on our YouTube channel.  The #PENauction hashtag on Twitter gives some flavour of the high-adrenaline atmosphere in the auction room.

The second-highest price of the auction was achieved for the much-loved children’s classic Matilda by Roald Dahl, with new illustrations by Quentin Blake, which sold for £30,000.

Further highlights of the sale include Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which sold for £18,000; Julian Barnes’ Metroland, which sold for £14,000; Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, which fetched £11,000; Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist, which brought £17,000; Colm Toibin’s The Heather Blazing, which sold for £15,500; Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall which sold for £16,000; Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, which fetched £14,500 and Ralph Steadman’s richly illustrated Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, which sold for £14,500.

Full list of sale prices

Auction catalogue may be viewed here.