LONDON.- From today until Sunday, Sotheby’s London is exhibiting books and manuscripts from the exceptional personal library of Pierre Bergé, the French businessman and art patron, also known as Yves Saint Laurent’s partner in business and life.

Last year, Pierre Bergé decided to auction his entire personal library: 1,600 books and manuscripts, spanning, in incredible depth, all the great cultural, literary and philosophical landmarks, from the 15th through to the 20th century. A long-kept secret, his collection is estimated at around €40 million, making it the most valuable library ever to come to the market.

Following the great success of the first sale in December 2015, a further selection - 376 books and manuscripts dedicated to literary Europe from 1780 until 1900 - will be offered at Drouot-Richelieu, in collaboration with Sotheby’s, in Paris on 8 & 9 November.

The core of this ensemble is dedicated to Flaubert - a key writer in Bergé’s literary pantheon - but all the British, Russian, American, German greats - Dickens, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Nietzsche, Pushkin, Poe, Henry James, Walt Whitman, Shelley, Walter Scott, Oscar Wilde etc. - are there too.

Highlights exhibited in London include:

· Baudelaire’s first edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s French translation of Gordon Pym

· The complete works of Lord Byron annotated by Stendhal

· Flaubert’s last large autograph manuscript in private hands: 300 autograph pages of Par les champs et les grèves, including numerous innumerable crossing-outs, corrections and additions by the author

· The first edition of all three volume of Tolstoy’s War & Peace

· A famous holograph manuscript by the Marquis de Sade

· A rare off-print of Faust by Goethe

· A rare copy of the first edition of Keats’ Endymion