SHORT TAKES : Yeats Notes Sell for $360,000

A notebook in which William Butler Yeats wrote much of his poetry and prose over three years sold at Sotheby’s for $360,000, the auctioneers said.

The notebook was part of a sale Thursday of English literary and historical manuscripts and books that totaled $2.13 million, Sotheby’s said.

Other items included letters written by Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi and a script for a James Bond movie.

H. D. Lyon, a London dealer, bought the Yeats notebook. The seller was not identified but was believed to be a collector.

In 1923, Yeats became the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

The Great Vellum Notebook, as the manuscript is known, contains 380 pages and was used by Yeats from November, 1930, to the summer of 1933, six years before his death.

A collection of 76 unpublished autograph letters written by Gandhi to his eldest son, Harilal, between 1900 and 1914 was bought anonymously for $50,000.

In the letters, Gandhi offered advice on sex, counseling celibacy, and on diet, praising onions and deploring chocolates.

The working film scripts for the first James Bond film “Dr. No,” by British screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz, sold at three times their estimate for $5,000. They were bought by Quaritch, a London dealer known for rare books.