High price for works by Wilde, Yeats

Handwritten works by two of our most acclaimed writers, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats, plus portraits of the artists have sold for more than €154,000 (£130,000).

The works were sold as part of the sale of The Roy Davids Collection Part III: Poetry: Poetical Manuscripts and Portraits of Poets at Bonhams at New Bond Street in London yesterday.

The big hit of the sale was Oscar Wilde’s very early poem, Heart’s Yearnings, written when he was an undergraduate at Magdalen College Oxford in 1874.

It went for £67,250 (€79,574) — a world record for a poetic manuscript by the writer. The previous record was £24,000 (€28,398) for a draft poem on Lillie Langtry. It had been estimated at £12,000–£15,000.

A famous photograph of Wilde, taken in New York by Napoleon Sarony in 1882 to publicise the writer’s tour of America, sold for £16,250 (€19,228) — much higher than the estimate of £7,000-£8,000.

Wilde’s poem, Les Ballons, started in Paris in 1887, was also sold for £16,250 (€19,228), also higher than the estimate price of £14,000 to £16,000.

A photograph of William Butler Yeats by the American photographer Alice Boughton, taken in New York in 1903, was sold for £18,750 (€22,186) far above the estimate of £4,000 to £5,000 and handwritten draft copies of his poems Are you content and The spirit medium made £15,000 (€17,748). This surpassed the previous record of £5,000 for a Yeats poem at auction.