John Lennon Cartoons and Handwritten Poems and Stories Go On Sale

Original doodles and poems by John Lennon for his books "In His Own Write" and "A Spaniard in the Works" are being auctioned at Sotheby's in New York today. The sale coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first appearance in the US on the Ed Sullivan show.

The British publisher, Tom Maschler, has owned the material for a half century and is offering it for sale. This is the largest private collection of the Beatle's work to come to the market, the auction house said. The collection is expected to bring a total of £500,000 to over a million pounds.

Among the highlights in the 89-piece collection is a cartoon of a boy with six birds that appeared in "A Spaniard in the Works," published in 1965. The drawing was used 30 years later as the cover for the Beatles' single Free as a Bird.

A nine-page manuscript, a Sherlock Holmes parody titled The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield, is estimated to fetch up to £50,000.

In His Own Write is a collection of 31 short stories and poems, full of puns and spelling errors, published in 1964. It was a big hit with reviewers, who compared Lennon to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. A year later, A Spaniard in the Works was published, containing more humorous and nonsensical stories.