Hardy letters under the hammer

Hardy's novels are still popular today

A collection of Thomas Hardy's works and letters - said to be the finest left in private hands - is going under the hammer at Sotheby's in London on Wednesday.

The collection, which is expected to fetch about £500,000, contains more than 260 autographed letters from Hardy - including descriptions of the hostile reception to his novel Jude The Obscure.

There are also first editions of his major novels and his own typescript dramatisation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

The works come from the collection of bibliophile Frederick B Adams Jr, one-time director of New York's Pierpont Morgan Library, who died in February.

Lots include Hardy's poem Souls Of The Slain

The Hardy first editions include a rare copy of his first novel Desperate Remedies from 1871, which is estimated at £6,000-£8,000.

There is also a typescript of his collaboration with his friend Florence Henniker - The Spectre Of The Real - which is expected to fetch £25,000-£30,000.

A copy of his novel The Woodlanders inscribed by Hardy, and both his first wife Emma and his second wife Florence (neé Dugdale), is estimated at £7,000-£10,000.

Frederick B Adams Jr, who assembled the collection, bought his first book - a limited edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando - in 1928.

A typescript of the Tess play is up for auction

Mr Adams, who was born in 1910 and became the second President of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie in his retirement, was still collecting at the time of his death.

Also in the sale is a rare inscribed copy of TS Eliot's poem The Waste Land in a 1922 Hogarth Press edition, thought to be likely to fetch £25,000-£30,000.

There is an inscribed presentation copy of AE Housman's poem collection A Shropshire Lad from 1896, estimated value £7,000-£9,000, and a mint copy of Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time from 1924 - estimated at £20,000-£25,000.

The Dorset County Museum, which houses the world's largest collection of Hardy material, will be among the bidders at Sotheby's on Wednesday.

Marketing Officer John Grantham told BBC News Online that a recent campign to raise money to buy parts of the collection was "very successful".

"We're are bidding, through an agent, in a way to complement and add value to our collection."

The museum is close to the 19th Century writer's birthplace in Higher Bockhampton.