AT AUCTION

A frayed, discolored and rare edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s first book, purchased by a collector at a New Hampshire antique barn for $15 last month, could fetch up to $300,000 at a June 7 auction, Sotheby’s said this week. A Massachusetts collector of local history books found Poe’s “Tamerlane and Other Poems” on Feb. 29 in a dusty book bin tucked among farm pamphlets. One day later he brought the rare find to Sotheby’s. A spokesman for the auction house said that the collection of poems--some written when Poe was as young as 12--has “slight” literary value but “is an indispensable part of the body of Poe’s work.”