The Daily Howl provided the first evidence of John Lennon's unconventional writing talent. Devised whilst he was a pupil of Quarry Bank school in circa 1957, Lennon lampooned the teachers and others in caricature sketches, prose text and verse compiled in an exercise book which he would surreptitiously circulate amongst friends during class at school, and later at art college. It is through the pages of the Daily Howl that as John Robertson wrote, we first find out about John Lennon the individual: ..with its mix of word-play, scurrilous invention and lightning..caricature [The Daily Howl] was the clearest ancestor of In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works, Lennon's first two books, both published by Jonathan Cape. Numerous reviews of these works at the time of publication, were as Herzogenrath and Hansen wrote ...overwhelmingly positive, not only drawing parallels to James Joyce, but also suggesting that Lennon's work was modelled on Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and James Thurber...the combination of text and illustration in Lennon's books merely hinted at his talent for embracing a variety of media in his art...

Watercolour sketches such as Keen Type are very scarce and have rarely been seen at auction. Extracts from Lennon's first manuscript Daily Howl are exceptionally rare. It is our belief that material from this unpublished comic book of Lennon's, has not appeared at auction since 1988. The extract in this lot has not been offered at auction before.