Collected John Lennon letters to be published
Yoko Ono sells publishing rights to collection of letters giving unrivalled insight into Lennon's character
John Lennon was a man of many words verbose in interviews, prolific in prose and a dedicated letter-writer. Now, for the first time, fans will be able to read his personal missives in a collected volume of his letters after a high-stakes bidding war.
Yoko Ono has sold the publishing rights to a collection of Lennon's letters, which give an unrivalled insight into his daily life, character, concerns and hopes and run to hundreds of pages. Ono owns the intellectual property rights to the letters, but was persuaded to sell them by the Beatles' biographer, Hunter Davies.
The internationalrights were bought by Alan Samson, of the Orion Publishing Group, .
Orion saw off competition from all the big-hitting publishing houses who went to Davies's home in Kentish Town, north London, to make their bids.
The letters will be published in October 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' hit Love Me Do. Samson would not disclose how much Orion had paid for the rights, although it is thought to be in excess of 500,000 but less than 1m quoted in other media.
The prospect of publishing such a wide-ranging and unusual collection had provoked a high-level bidding battle, Samson said.
"These letters have never been collected in one place before, and for the most part they have never been seen before," he added. "The other reason people have gone crazy for it is the fact that there are half a dozen icons of the 20th century, Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy, Elvis and Lennon is one of them."
It was a singular collection with more than 150 letters including notes Lennon wrote to newspapers and record companies and a missive he wrote to an eight-year-old boy, Samson added. He said: "They are full of wonderful drawings. They are funny, sad ... they are very human letters."
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