Musical impresario Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber is selling an important Victorian manuscript valued at �1.5m because he does not feel he can do justice to it in his vast art collection.

The composer is to sell William Morris's illustrated, hand-written version of Virgil's Aeneid at Christie's, London on 27 November.

It is considered the most important Victorian illuminated manuscript ever to appear at auction, fusing the Arts and Crafts movement and Pre-Raphaelite art.

"It is well-known that I have collected Victorian art for many years and the Morris Aeneid is one of the jewels of my collection," said Lord Lloyd Webber.

Morris did not complete the manuscript

"But it is a book, a hugely delicate manuscript and over the years I have become aware that I do not have the facilities for such an important work to be displayed.

"I myself do not view it enough to justify keeping it and although it is a huge wrench to sell, I feel it should find a home where others could enjoy it," he added.

The work was a collaboration between poet Morris and designer Edward Burne-Jones, good friends who met weekly to discuss design and medieval manuscripts.

Burnished gold

In 1873, Morris suggested working on a manuscript copy of Aeneid, illustrated with 12 large designs which they would work on during their regular meetings.

The first page of each of the 12 books of Aeneid was to be a combination of a half-page miniature above a panel of text written on vellum in burnished gold capitals.

Burne-Jones prepared 29 pencil drawings to be copied onto the manuscript by illustrator Charles Fairfax-Murray, his one-time studio assistant.

But such was the enormity of the task that the manuscript remained only half completed.

Some years later Morris sold the unfinished manuscript to Mr Fairfax-Murray, now an eminent art dealer, who completed the transfer of the drawings and painted the remaining letters for the six books in gold.