Two pages of Scott manuscript sold for £16,000

TWO missing pages from Sir Walter Scott’s original handwritten manuscript for the romantic novel Kenilworth have fetched £16,000 atauction in New York.

The sought after leaves were among only a few that remained in private hands nearly 200 years after the novel was published in 1821.

The majority of the manuscript was sold by the publisher in 1831, and is preserved in the Library, in London.

However, pages 14-15, which included the dramatic end of Chapter III and beginning of Chapter IV, were missing. They were given to the renowned Edinburgheducated geologist Edmond Logan by Scott’s friend and publisher John Ballantyne in 1821.

The two pages were completed in Scott’s usual final manuscript form, with British few corrections or notations and ready to be sent to the compositor.

They were sold at Bonhams in New York. The auction house said: “One of the most successful of all of Scott’s Waverley novels, Kenilworth was one of the final projects in which John Ballantyne, his friend and publisher, had a hand.

“Ballantyne must have given the present portion to Logan early in 1821, as his health gave out and he passed away on June 16, 1821.”

Kenilworth was published in Edinburgh on January 8, 1821. Set in 1575, the 13th of Scott’s Waverley novels centres on the secret marriage of the ambitious Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and tragic Amy Robsart, daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart.

Despite its success, Scott’s publisher later faced severe financial hardships and assets were sold off, including in 1831, the Scott manuscripts.

Kenilworth was sold for £17 before passing to the British Library in 1855, although some leaves were missing.

The text begins with a meeting between two characters, Foster and Lambourne, at the end of chapter three. Scott writes: “You are a gambler now, and live by the counting of chances – compute me the odds that I do not on this instant throw you out of that window into the ditch there.”