J.K. Rowling's 'Tales of Beedle the Bard' sold for £370,000, partly donated to Lumos
 

The rare bejeweled and handwritten copy of J.K Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard went to auction on Tuesday at Sotheby's in London, and brought in over £370,000 (above $460,000 USD).

The copy was written by the Harry Potter author and given to Barry Cunningham, the British publisher who bought the rights to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone nearly 20 years ago in the UK for Bloomsbury.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The rare <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HarryPotter?src=hash">#HarryPotter</a> book was handwritten by <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling">@JK_Rowling</a> <a href="https://t.co/R2bbNU1rtu">https://t.co/R2bbNU1rtu</a></p>&mdash; BBC News Ents Team (@BBCNewsEnts) <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCNewsEnts/status/808725203022999554">December 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Of newsworthy note regarding this sale is that Cunningham will give some of the proceeds to Rowling's charity Lumos, and it was only due to this clause that the author would agree to allow the auction to take place in the first place. The rest of the money will be divided among Cunningham's children as their inheritance.

J.K. Rowling wrote this personal note to Cunningham in the book, which is one of seven rare hand-written books by the author given out to those near and dear to her.

Six of the books were given to those close to the creation and release of the Harry Potter series, including Cunningham and Scholastic publisher Arthur Levine, while the seventh was auctioned off years ago, bringing in well over $1 million.