Fight to buy £1m Hardy collection

Hardy drew on his home county of Dorset for inspiration

A Dorchester museum is facing a race against time to secure a unique collection of works by the county's favourite son, Thomas Hardy.

The library of around 1,000 pieces, including some of the author's original manuscripts and letters, is due to go up for auction at Sotheby's on 7 November.

But the Dorset County Museum is hoping to raise around £1m to buy up the entire collection before the auction gets underway.

The museum, which is close to the 19th Century writer's birthplace in Higher Bockhampton, already houses the world's largest collection of Hardy material.

Curator Richard de Payer wants to keep the collection from being broken up and spread across the world, and the museum has already raised £95,000.

Pressure

It is hoped the Heritage Lottery Fund will donate £800,000 to the cause.

The pressure is now on to find the remaining £30,000 needed to secure the historical collection.

If unsuccessful in raising the cash, the Mr de Payer believes the museum will have to try and bid for individual lots.

The books and manuscripts come from what is considered to be one of the greatest collections of modern literature assembled in recent years.

Frederick B Adams Jr spent more than 70 years cultivating a library of rare literary works and memorabilia, right up until his death in February 2001.

Hostile

A former director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, Mr Adams assembled works by authors including Hardy, EM Forster and Virginia Woolf.

The collection includes more than 260 letters signed by Hardy to various friends, authors and editors, showing a remarkable insight into the hostile reception afforded his novel Jude the Obscure.

There are also first editions in cloth of his major novels, including his first book Desperate Remedies, published in 1871, which is expected to fetch up to £8,000.

The item expected to produce the highest bids is an annotated typescript of his collaboration with Florence Henniker, with whom he fell in love, with a price tag of between £25,000 and £35,000.

Virginia Woolf's extensively revised manuscript for The Voyage Out is also included in the auction, and is expected to fetch £40,000.