Fashion mogul Pierre Berge said Wednesday he
will put the second part of his famed library — one of the most valuable in
private hands — up for auction in November.
The French philanthropist, who co-founded the Yves Saint Laurent
fashion
empire with his lover the late designer, raised 11.7 million euros (12.8
million dollars) from the sale of the first part of his collection last
year.
He now intends to put 380 works that include some of the cream of
19th-century European literature under the hammer, a statement said.
They include the manuscripts of the Marquis de Sade’s last novel, “The
Secret History of Isabella of Bavaria” and Gustave Flaubert’s “Over the
Fields
and over the Shores” — an account of his tour of France’s Loire and
Brittany
regions in 1886.
Although the full catalogue of the Paris sales will not be released until
September, it will also include signed books exchanged between such greats
as
Balzac, Hugo, Stendhal and Baudelaire.
English-language, German and Russian classics will also feature
strongly
with rare editions of work by the poets Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth, Oscar
Wilde, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Kleist and Goethe.
“You have to know how to get rid of things,” Berge, 85, told AFP before
the
last sale.
The proceeds of the auction on November 8 and 9 run by Sotheby’s in
Paris
will go to a foundation Berge set up with Saint Laurent which helps support
AIDS research. (AFP)