A RARE first edition of TS Eliot’s famous poem The Waste Land raised £5,625 for Cowley-based charity Oxfam yesterday.
The charity sold the book with Bonhams auctioneers at Shipton-on-Cherwell near Kidlington after it was donated to its specialist book shop in Turl Street, Oxford.
The copy of the poem, dating from 1923, was published by the Hogarth Press, a private press founded by Eliot’s friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
The Waste Land, which had an estimated price tag of £2,000 to £3,000, sold with 26 other items for Oxfam, raising a total of £20,200.
John Walwyn-Jones, of Bonhams book department, said: “It was an impressive price.”
Turl Street store manager David Sorrell, who attended the auction, said: “A gentleman called Colin Cohen was living near Banbury last year when he gave us a carload of books because he was moving home.
“I’m pleased it has raised so much money – it will help to provide water supplies to people who are in refugee camps from the conflict in Syria.”
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