A series of moving and occasionally prophetic personal letters written by a teenage Bob Dylan to his high school sweetheart were sold at auction for approximately $670,000 to a prominent Portuguese bookshop.
The Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal, which calls itself as “the World’s Most Beautiful Bookshop,” intends to maintain the collection of 42 handwritten letters totaling 150 pages for Dylan fans and students to examine, according to a statement released by auctioneer RR Auction on Friday.
Dylan, a native of Hibbing, Minnesota, penned the letters to Barbara Ann Hewitt while he was still known as Bob Zimmerman, between 1957 and 1959. They shed light on an era of his life about which little is known.
Dylan writes of changing his name and trying to sell a million records in some of the letters. Dylan, at 81 years old and winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, has sold around 125 million recordings.
In addition to Dylan declaring his love to his high school lover, the letters mention his future aspirations to become a singer.
AP
The young artist also shows his passion for Hewitt, invites her to a Buddy Holly concert, offers snippets of poetry, and discusses topics that have preoccupied generations of high school students, such as cars, clothing, and music.
The letters were discovered by Hewitt’s daughter following her mother’s death in 2020. The original envelopes addressed in Dylan’s handwriting were sent to the new residence of the Hewitt family in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul suburb of New Brighton.
The collection consists of 42 handwritten letters with a total page count of 150.
AP
Several other pieces of Dylan memorabilia were also sold at the auction, including an archive of 24 “Poems Without Titles” written while the singer-songwriter attended the University of Minnesota, which fetched nearly $250,000; and one of the earliest known signed photographs of Dylan, which fetched more than $24,000.