Orwell`s letters expected to fetch £40k

George Orwell's handwritten letters are expected to fetch more than £40k.

London, March 08: Twenty handwritten letters by George Orwell, including missives to his secret lover, are expected to fetch more than 40,000 pounds when they are auctioned by Bonhams later this month.Orwell’s letters are addressed to Dennis Collings and Eleanor Jaques, two of his closest friends during the early 1930s when he was living in Southwold, Suffolk.

The notes, written under his real name of Eric Arthur Blair, reveal the love triangle between Orwell, Jaques and Collings, when the author began a secret relationship with Miss Jaques, the girlfriend of Mr Collings. Miss Jaques and Mr Collings later married, reports a news daily. The letters have been described as "the most revealing documents in existence" about the author. The letters, written between 1931 and 1933 when Orwell was struggling to get his work published, are being sold by the sole surviving daughter of Mr and Mrs Collings. The letters also reveal his exploits among Britain`s "down-and-outs" as he pursued his interest in how the lower classes lived. David Park, the head of Bonhams` book and manuscript department, said: "In auction terms, this is a major literary event, not least because Orwell letters rarely come onto the market, and a correspondence is unprecedented." ANI