Rare volumes go to charity shop

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The shop's Davina Rock said she was "astonished"

A Berkshire charity shop is celebrating an "amazing find" after a rare set of books was donated to them.

The twenty-one volume collection of the complete works of English philosopher William Hazlitt is expected to fetch more than £1,000 when sold.

Only 1,000 copies of the centenary edition were ever published and were due to be sold in England and America.

They were discovered while staff were digging through donations at the Woodley branch, near Reading.

'Amazing find'

They are now part of a display of rare and collectable books arranged for the first Oxfam Bookfest, which will run until 18 July.

Manager Davina Rock who made the discovery said: "I was quite astonished because we don't get many of these in, so goodness knows what the person who donated it thought about it.

"This is an amazing find for the Woodley shop and, of course, even more amazing because, like all our books, it has been donated."

The most Oxfam has raised from a single book is £18,000 for a 17th century economic treatise in 2005.

A rare Graham Greene book fetched the same sum in 2008.