A BOOK collection worth millions of pounds is on its way to America in a deal scholars describe as "beyond value".

The 2,600-volume personal library of the US author Edith Wharton has been stored away in a tiny North Yorkshire village for more than 20 years.

But now it is finally being returned to the novelist's estate in Lenox, Massachusetts.

George Ramsden, who runs a specialist bookshop in York, agreed to sell the collection back to the Wharton estate after months of delicate negotiations.

Ever since he acquired the incomplete library for about £45,000 in 1984, Mr Ramsden has scoured the country to piece together the missing volumes.

Wharton left the library in her will to the historian Sir Kenneth Clark, in trust for his son, Colin Clark, brother of the late Tory MP Alan Clark.

Colin Clark later sold the library to Maggs Brothers, a London book dealer, which in turn sold it to Mr Ramsden in 1984.

He stored the library at his home in Settrington, near Malton, and traced volumes that had gone missing over the years to complete the collection.

Mr Ramsden, who runs Stone Trough Books, in Fossgate, York, told the Evening Press: "I had the library for 21 years, which was long enough.

"I came to realise that it should be something that is shared with people, not just privately owned.

"The sale is a win-win situation: that rare thing, the ideal deal."

An anonymous benefactor donated $2.6 million - around £1.5 million - to the Wharton estate so it could purchase the collection.

Wharton, whose best-known work is Ethan Frome, died in France in 1937. Her library is filled with annotated and dedicated volumes.

Among them is a copy of US President Theodore Roosevelt's book, America And The World War, signed: "To Edith Wharton from an American-American! Theodore Roosevelt Feb 6th 1915."

There is also a copy of Henry James' The Golden Bowl, signed by the author: "To Edith Wharton - in sympathy - Henry James, November 1904," and a first edition Alice In Wonderland.

Stephanie Copeland, executive director of The Mount, Wharton's home in Massachusetts, described the collection as "a window on her life".

Ms Copeland said: "We are thrilled that the empty shelves of the library at The Mount will once again be filled with Edith Wharton's lifelong collection of books.

"Nothing informs us more about her extraordinary genius than the books that helped to shape her life and art. What they will bring to Wharton scholarship is beyond value.

"Together with her house and gardens, the return of her library to The Mount completes the legacy of this remarkable American woman."

The books will be on public display on the shelves in Wharton's original library from May.

:: Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 into the wealthy Jones family in New York. Widely considered to be one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, she wrote more than 48 books in four decades, including Ethan Frome and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age Of Innocence. Self-educated, Wharton was fluent in French, German and Italian, and also an influential landscape

architect. She continued writing until her death in France, on August 11, 1937.

Updated: 09:28 Tuesday, January 03, 2006