Hundreds of rare books owned by the Rolling Stones drummer and bibliophile Charlie Watts will be put up for sale this autumn, representing the “best collection of modern first editions” to come to auction in over 20 years.
Watts, who died in 2021, amassed the works of mostly 20th-century authors including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene, George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway. The titles, which will be auctioned by Christie’s, reflect “an incredibly sensitive curiosity about the very best of literature,” said Mark Wiltshire, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie’s.
Volumes up for auction include the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s own copy of his first collection, 18 Poems. The book is inscribed three times: once saying it is his copy, “once when he’s presenting it to his first serious girlfriend, and he crosses that out and then he presents it another time to a next girlfriend”, explains Wiltshire.
The collection also includes a first edition of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, inscribed inside the front cover to “the original Gatsby”, Harold Goldman, a screenwriter friend of Fitzgerald’s in the 1930s. The volume is expected to fetch between £200,000 and £300,000.
The two-part auction of more than 500 lots will take place at Christie’s in London on 28 September, and an online sale will be open for bidding from 15 to 29 September. Jazz memorabilia, such as an annotated printed score for George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, will be on sale alongside the books.
Watts was the “heartbeat of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years,” said band members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood in a joint statement. The drummer, who joined the Stones in 1963, was “devoted to jazz and literature from boyhood,” they added.
Watts’ curiosity “announces itself in his love for detective fiction”, said Wiltshire, which constitutes a “major part” of the collection. Titles include Agatha Christie’s The Thirteen Problems and Murder at the Vicarage, estimated to sell at £40,000-60,000 and £4,000-6,000 respectively.
The collection also includes a first edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles with an inscription reading “I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book.” Conan Doyle’s inscriptions are “often very formulaic,” said Wiltshire, so this is “really quite special”.
Highlight lots will be on display in Los Angeles from 25 to 29 July and New York from 5 to 8 September before a pre-sale exhibition in London between 20 and 27 September. The exhibits will be free of charge and open to the public.
Other highlights include Samuel Beckett’s books addressed to Alberto Giacometti, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century, and Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men inscribed with 11 stick figures.
Watts’ collection reflects a “real refinement” of taste, said Wiltshire. “He collected the finest possible condition, the rarest editions, the most interesting presentation copies.”
