A previously unknown draft of one of the key chapters in James Joyce's masterpiece Ulyssesis expected to fetch up to £1.2 million sterling at auction in London later this month.
The heavily edited 44-page manuscript of the Eumaeus chapter was written in the author's hand in Trieste and Paris between 1916-1920.
It goes under the hammer at Sotheby's in London on July 10th, with a guide price of £800,000 to £1.2 million.
"It's difficult to predict what the final sale price will be but we've had a lot of interest from collectors and some institutions," Mr Peter Selley of Sotheby's said.
He said it was a very important manuscript as it gives an insight into Joyce's compositional process and is a "wonderful" visual piece with layers of revisions in red, blue, green, and black ink and pencil.
A draft of a later chapter - the Circe episode - was bought at auction by the National Library of Ireland last December for £1.4 million.
Ulysseswas first published in 1922. The Eumaeus manuscript is being sold by a private collector who bought it several years ago from Henri-Etienne Hoppenot, a diplomat, poet and writer who was a French ambassador to Switzerland in the 1940s.