Running to thousands of books, the Watership Down author’s collection includes a rare copy of the Shakespeare Second Folio of 1632, Boswell’s Life of Johnson and a Bible that once belonged to Charles II. Adams, who died last year aged 96, also owned a host of first editions by 19th-century English novelists including Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. Dominic Winter Auctioneers, which will sell the library on 14 December, has valued Adams’s complete set of Austen first editions at between £60,000 and £80,000. That book also revealed how “before I was eight, I had become a passionate reader”, with the author adding: “Reading was highly reassuring. Much of what he collected remained unknown to us until we found it on the shelves after his death.

Source: The Guardian November 20, 2017 13:30 UTC