Unknown Joyce scripts fetch $11.7m

Joyce's work was rescued by friends but lay forgotten about for 60 years

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Early drafts of some of James Joyce's classics, including "Ulysses," have been sold for $11.7 million after being discovered in a Paris attic.

The papers had been left by the penniless Joyce as he fled the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940.

They were saved from a landlord seeking unpaid debts by friends of Joyce, Paul and Lucie Leon.

Paul Leon was later sent to Auschwitz concentration camp where he died, but his wife kept the documents, which also included two notebooks and proofs of another of his books, "Finnegan's Wake."

They lay gathering dust, hidden for 60 years, before being discovered in 2000 by their son Alex who decided the papers should be returned to Joyce's native Ireland.

Alex Leon agreed to sell the papers to the National Irish Library, through London's Sotheby's auction house, for $11.7 million.

Michael Groden, a professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, who examined the manuscripts on behalf of the National Library last year, told The Associated Press: "It will instantly catapult the National Library and Ireland into a major centre for the study of James Joyce."

The sum is the biggest ever paid for a literature by the Irish state.

Joyce gained international fame for his stylised form of writing known as 'stream of consciousness.'

He became friends with the Leon's during his stay in Paris during the 1930s.

The Leons had collected many of Joyce's documents before the author fled Paris.

After Joyce's death in 1941, Paul Leon broke into the author's apartment and salvaged the papers which he believed would have been taken by the landlord in place of rent that the writer owed.

Some of the manuscripts were returned to Joyce's family and others were auctioned off and bought by universities in the U.S..

The rest lay forgotten about, hidden in the Leon's attic, only to be discovered when Alex Leon had a clear out after his mother's death.