Thais Hitchins
Associate Specialist | Books & Manuscripts
Love and Lust: A Literary Guide
Sale Overview
Love and Lust: A Literary Guide explores the enduring themes of romance, desire, temptation and devotion through an exceptional group of books, manuscripts, artworks and cultural artefacts spanning centuries of creative expression.
From the dangerous allure of Oscar Wilde's Salomé and the Gothic seductions of Dracula to the intimate correspondence of Nelson and Lady Hamilton, the sale traces the many ways love and longing have inspired some of history's most memorable stories.
Highlights include the iconic green dress worn by Keira Knightley in Atonement, a defining symbol of cinematic yearning; original artworks for the celebrated Metropolis and Dracula film posters; and four original sketches for The Joy of Sex, the groundbreaking publication that transformed attitudes towards intimacy and sexual expression.
The sale also features treasures from the worlds of film and popular culture, including classic James Bond posters that helped shape a 20th visual language of glamour and seduction, alongside Jilly Cooper's beloved typewriter Monica 2, the instrument behind some of Britain's most enduring romantic fiction.
Together, these remarkable objects demonstrate the extraordinary power of love and lust to inspire literature, art, cinema and the imagination, offering collectors a unique journey through the passions that have shaped human creativity across generations.
Explore the Classic Week auction series in London.
Auction times
09 Dec 04:00 PM (GMT)
Brought to you by
Mark Wiltshire
Specialist | Books & Manuscripts
Mark has over a decade’s experience in rare books and has been responsible for important sales in the fields of science, fiction, and science fiction, having set the record price for a work by a female scientist (Ada Lovelace’s Sketch of the Analytical Engine; £212,500), and overseen successful auctions including First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction in Support of English PEN (July 2022), Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone (September 2023), and Science Fiction and Fantasy (December 2024).
In private sales, he has sold works by writers including Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, and Robert Burns, as well as several fine and inscribed copies of the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He was a co-curator of the Loan and Private Selling exhibition The Art of Literature in 2022, which brought together masterpieces like Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), and pictures by artists including Rubens and Picasso.
Mark holds degrees from the Universities of York and Oxford, where he specialised in the works of the Romantic poets, and has lectured on the life and poetry of his beloved John Keats.
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