An arm and a leg

According to AbeBooks, the most expensive poetry books they sold in 2008 were:

1. Poems (1909-1925) by TS Eliot - $8,500
Containing many of Eliot’s canonical works including “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Hollow Men,” and “The Waste Land,” this is a first edition - one of 85 numbered copies signed by the poet.

2. The Collected Poems by DH Lawrence - $4,893
A limited first edition, one of 100 numbered copies that were signed by Lawrence. This 1928 two-volume collection comes with a cream dust jacket.

3. Poems by Frank O’Hara with lithographs by Willem De Kooning - $4,500
One of 550 first edition numbered copies signed by De Kooning (1904-1997). Illustrated with 17 original lithographs, bound in black goat-skin, stamped in gold and encased in a linen clamshell box

Novels:

1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding - $9,260
A first edition, proof copy of Golding’s 1954 classic

2. Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway - $8,000
First US edition printed in 1927 including first state dust jacket without review blurbs on front flap. Slip of paper inscribed by Hemingway laid in reads "To Marian Spies/ wishing her much luck/ Ernest Hemingway."

3. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - $6,780
First edition, first printing, of Orwell’s 1949 dystopian classic featuring the red dust jacket