'Very rare' Harry Potter book up for auction

A "very rare" edition of a book in the Harry Potter series is due to be auctioned in Nottingham.

Anne Hartley, from West Bridgford, said she could not remember how she first got her hands on an uncorrected proof copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second book in the bestselling series.

On Saturday it goes under the hammer at Arthur Johnson and Sons auction house in Meadow Lane, where it is expected to fetch about £6,000.

Keith Butler, from the auction house, said the low-cost way the editions were made meant they were treated as "disposable" at the time, making them even rarer today.

"An uncorrected proof copy, they're produced in very limited numbers by the publishers for most books," he said.

"There's [usually] about 200 made, and they're sent out to reviewers and publishers to try and generate a bit of buzz and catch any errors in the final text before it goes to proof.

"This thing was produced before JK Rowling became a massive sensation, so they would have been discarded, so any surviving copies are extremely rare and extremely valuable."

Mr Butler said it is believed the proof ended up in a school library before winding its way to a West Bridgford bookshelf, where it was "overlooked" for years.

When it was brought to the auction house for assessment, he said the valuer's "eyes popped out of their head".

"The book is very rare, and very fragile," he said.

"It's always a massive buzz when you get something like that - things things are just tucked away and appear out of the ether."

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