Rare works by Charles Dickens will be on the auction block at Christie's New York auction house and may fetch around 2 million dollars.

An association copy of Oliver Twist, which is inscribed by Dickens to a fellow author, is the highlight of the auction. It is estimated to sell at between $200,000 and $300,000.

Christie's head of books and manuscripts, Thomas Lecky, believes several factors contribute to the book's high price tag.

"It's not only a first edition of Oliver Twist, one of the great novels of English literature, but it's inscribed by dickens to William Harrison Ainsworth, a fellow novelist,” Lecky explained.

Ainsworth was a fellow novelist who not only introduced Dickens to his first publisher, but is also credited with giving him some of the seeds of inspiration of the novel itself, which is the first novel to have a child as the protagonist.

An inscribed presentation copy of The Uncommercial Traveller is another significant lot, which was given to author George Eliot. It is valued between $100,000 and $150,000.

NAT/JC/GM