Jane or Joanne?...

It seems unoriginal to begin another awed tribute to the Hary Potter phenomenon, whose last installment has taken £104 million in its opening weekend in the US and Canada. Instead, across the Atlantic, another famous female British writer was proving that endurance of time is the real test.

Almost 194 years after her death, a rare Jane Austen manuscript has sold for £993, 250. 'The Watsons', an unfinished novel complete with revisions and crossings out, was originally owned privately, yet is now in the hands of the Bodleian Library, who beat off competition from New York's Morgan Library. Having secured money from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Bodleian say that they are 'delighted' to have bought 'such a valuable part of our literary heritage'.

Austen may be worth 105 times less than Potter today, but until Rowling influences 200 years' worth of readers, she won't hold the same place in literary hearts as the beloved Jane.

The name's Bond, and the price is also...

A rare first edition of Ian Fleming's 'Casino Royale' has fetched £19,000 at auction. Fleming's first James Bond novel, the 1953 copy sold for £4,000 more than expected, and £13,000 more than another of Fleming's Bond books, 'Live and Let Die'. The selling price was only £3,000 less than the highest price for a Bond first edition - coming in closely behind a signed copy of 'From Russia with Love'.

Twain's family sketch...

The public's fascination with Mark Twain is still going strong, one hundred years after his death. A 64-page tribute, handwritten by the Huckleberry Finn author upon the death of his daughter, has sold today at Sotheby's in New York for $242,500 (£164,000). Olive was only 24 when she contracted spinal meningitis in 1896, and it was in honour of her that he wrote 'A Family Sketch', in which he described his daughter as 'a magazine of feelings', adding 'in all things she was intense: in her this characteristic was not a mere glow, dispensing warmth, but a consuming fire'. The work forms part of a larger collection of Twain manuscripts, that are expected to sell for up to $1.2m (£810,000).

George Orwell far from Down and Out...

Joining the recent spate of literary auctions, a rare signed first edition of George Orwell's first full-length work, has sold for £86,000. An autobiographical work, 'Down and Out in Paris and London' was first published in 1933. This particular copy comes complete with dust jacket, and the note, 'with the author's kind regards, to Mr LP Moore without whose kind assistance this book would never have been published. Eric Blair, 24.12.32'.

The lot was originally estimated to sell at between £2,500 and £3,500, and Aaron Dean, a book specialist at the auction house, was astounded at the final bid, saying, 'I would be shocked if it isn't a record...I was absolutely stunned'.

There is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats...

A rare edition of 'The Wind in the Willows', has been sold at auction for more than £30,000. Noted inside as 'to Foy Felicia Quiller Couch from her affectionate friend Kenneth Grahame, Oct. 1908', the book was given to a Cornish schoolgirl, whose father, Arthur Quiller Couch, is said to have been the model for the character Ratty. Indeed, it was whilst staying with Couch, that Grahame was inspired to write the novel, which originally took the form of letters to his son. Auctioned at Bonhams in London, the book vastly exceeded its £5,000 estimate.

Curiouser and curiouser...

A rare edition of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' has sold at auction for $115,000 (£70,896). The edition was given to ten-year old Alice Liddell in 1846, as a Christmas present, after she proved the inspiration for the story two years previous. Other lots under the hammer, were another first edition which went for £24,659, and a signed letter by Carroll, which sold for £1,222. The items were being sold by children's book collector Pat McInally, who will use the proceeds to buy more A.A. Milne books at a forthcoming sale in London.

Get your teeth into this...

A more unusual literary lot has seen success in an international auction. A toothpick, used by author Charles Dickens, was sold in new York for $9,150 (£5,625), following a pre-sale estimate of £3,000-$5,000. The item, engraved with Dickens' initials, is made from ivory and gold and comes with a letter of authentication from Dickens' sister-in-law, in which she states that he used it right up until his death in 1870. Since his visit to the country, and subsequent publication of 'American Notes', Dickens has been hugely popular in the United States and this follows the opening of an exhibition in New York containing a handwritten manuscript of 'A Christmas Carol'.

Note to Self: Books sell...

Yesterday at Christie's, saw one of the most impressive literary auctions in some time. Film producer William E. Self sold his entire library of rare editions; 144 lots producing a sale total of $4,896,625. The highlights were two collections of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe; the first, a handwritten manuscript which sold for $830,500, the second, a first edition of 'Tamerlane and Other Poems', which went for $662,500. The list of other authors' work is extensive, and includes names from both sides of the Atlantic, such as; Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Walt Whitman. The full list of lots, including pictures and details, can be found here

Cormac shuns computers...

Author Cormac McCarthy is selling the typewriter which he used to write all his books. Author of such works as 'The Road', and recent cinematic success 'No Country for Old Men', McCarthy estimates that the typewriter has seen 'about five million words over a period of 50 years'. He bought the typewriter in 1963 from a pawn shop for the price of $50 and has not serviced it since; part of his reason for auctioning it being its 'serious signs of wear'. The typewriter will be auctioned at Christie's in New York on Friday and is expected to fetch up to $20,000 (£13,200); the money from the sale will go towards the Santa Fe institute, a scientific reasearch centre. Yet McCarthy refues to transfer to computers, and has found a replacement typewriter of the same make for $11.

Darwin gone down the toilet?...

A rare book, kept in the toilet, was sold at auction earlier this week for over £100,000. Kept in the guest lavatory, a first edition of Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species', had been bought 40 years ago for just a few shillings. One of only 1,250 copies produced in 1859, the owner first realised the significance of the book when visiting a Darwin exhibition earlier this year; recognising a picture of its gilt decorated spine and green cloth cover. Described as 'lightly bumped' around the edges, it went on sale at auctioneers Christie's earlier this week, on the date of its 150th anniversary and fetched £103, 250.