Charlie Watts’ Collection of Modern Literature and Jazz Memorabilia at Christies

Christie’s has announced Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone – Literature and Jazz, a two-part auction the library of modern first edition books and extensive collection of jazz memorabilia amassed by the legendary musician and Rolling Stones’ drummer.

Watts’ love of music ran alongside a passion for 20th century literature - leading the live sale will be an important inscribed copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, inscribed inside the front cover to ‘the original Gatsby’, Harold Goldman, screenwriter at MGM (estimate: £200,000-300,000).

Particularly noteworthy volumes include a first edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles with the inscription "I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book", and Dylan Thomas’s own copy of his first collection, 18 Poems inscribed three times, firstly saying it is his copy, next on presenting it to a girlfriend, which is then crossed out when it is presented it again to a later girlfriend.

The online sale will be live for browsing from August 18 and other highlights include:

• Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (estimate: £4,000-6,000)
• Carry on Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (estimate: £4,000-6,000)
• two scores by Irving Berlin - Songs from Top Hat and Songs from Follow the Fleet - inscribed to Ginger Rogers (estimate: £4,000-6,000)
• two inscribed piano scores by the influential cornetist Leon ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke (estimate: £6,000-8,000)