Christie's to Gavel RARE Collection of Dickensiana

Kenyon Starling Library could fetch $2 million

A page from the original manuscript of Dickens' first novel, "Pickwick Papers," is one of the amazing items that will be on the block in April when Christie's auctions off the contents of the Kenyon Starling Library. According to the Associated Press, the collection is expected to sell for upwards of $2 million.

The page in question contains a "comedic scene between Pickwick's valet, Sam Weller, and a gentleman, John Smauker, could sell for $150,000 to $250,000."

Original drawings by Dickens, a Cruikshank sketch "Oliver Twist" character Bill Sikes, and a copy of The Daily News No. 1 (the liberal newspaper Dickens edited in 1846) will all go under the gavel, reports the AP.

Kenyon Starling, who died in 1983, left his Dickens collection to the family of William E. Self, a collector of English and American literature and film industry executive.

The auction is set for April 2nd at Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

AP photo provided by Christie's shows copy of "The Uncommercial Traveler" (1861), inscribed by Dickens to George Eliot, opened to its title page.