The sale of some items relating to James Joyce, which were long considered lost forever, takes place at the Sotheby's auction room in London this morning.
Most notable is the erotic letter that Joyce wrote to Nora Barnacle, his future wife, during their courtship in 1909. Nora asked for something saucy and Joyce let fly, talking of his "ungovernable lust" in great detail.
Academics link Joyce's passion for Nora with the creative urge that produced his masterpiece Ulysses and the estimate of £60,000 (€90,000) placed on the three pages seems modest. As the father of modernism, collectors and museums compete furiously for his work.
In 2002 Sotheby's negotiated the sale of the Joyce archive, owned by his friend and adviser Paul Leon, to the National Library of Ireland for £8 million, a record sum for a literary archive. In the same year, a first edition of Ulysses sold at Christie's in New York for $410,000, a record for a first edition.
Today's sale includes a desirable first edition of the book from a print run of 750 copies. Joyce intimately inscribed it to his brother Stanislaus, "To Stannie - Jim". It has been rebound but is estimated at up to £100,000.