Letter linked to explorer for sale

A contemporary copy of a letter Christopher Columbus wrote while returning from the New World will be offered for sale at the Antiquarian Booksellers Assn. book fair in London this month, its price tag set at $900,000.

The eight-page document, known as the “Epistola Christofori Colum” (Columbus Letter), is a Latin translation of a letter he wrote to his royal Spanish sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile, on his return voyage.

Pope Alexander VI ordered the translation, which was printed in Rome on April 29, 1493, six weeks after the new hero returned to Spain. Few of the estimated 500 copies of the letter survive.