It included many works from a collection of Thomas Hardy and Dorset books formed by the late Derek Mills, a local schoolteacher who served for many years as publications manager for the Hardy Society and was involved in a wide range of other aspects of life in his beloved home county.
One of the more successful lots in his collection, at £2000, offered two letters of 1928, one from the the Dean of Westminster, relating to the granting of permission to bury Hardy at the Abbey. There were at the time some difficulties prompted by uncertainty as to Hardy’s Christian beliefs.
Sold for £445 as part of the Dorset sale on July 22 was a Western Daily Press poster that appeared following TE Lawrence’s May 1935 accident on his Brough Superior motorcycle, close to his Clouds Hill home, near Wareham. Lawrence died six days later.
