People, May 22, 1972

My letters are often sold not as literature but as the material relics of a modern saint, wrote George Bernard Shaw to a friend. "Often, some impecunious journalist asks me to refuse [his requests for material] on an insulting postcard, so that he can dispose of it to a collector for the price of a meal." That particular letter brought the price of a pretty good meal—$250—at an auction of G.B.S. letters and memorabilia at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries. A total of $41,900 was paid for the 165 lots—including $4,250 for a packet of...