A first edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover with mocking doodles by HG Wells that shed a revealing light on his relationship with its author, DH Lawrence, is for sale at a book fair this weekend.

If a buyer cannot be found before Sunday the book - considered to have a unique place in UK literary history - is due to be sold to a United States university.

It includes sarcastic remarks and pornographic cartoons drawn by Wells, who was known to have had an icy relationship with Lawrence.

They're two literary giants of the 20th century, and there they are hammering it out with pornographic drawings

Adrian Harrington

With a price tag of £12,500, antiquarian book dealer Adrian Harrington said he had had "a lot of interest" in it after a series of press stories.

The book, signed by the author, was one of 1,000 printed for subscribers in 1928 in Florence to get around UK censorship laws.

But the first few pages of Wells' copy are dotted with drawings, including a caricature of the author with a large phallus and the words "DHL by himself".

Under Lawrence's signature, Wells wrote: "My God what stuff!"

"The ill feeling between the two was very intense," Mr Harrington told BBC News Online.

'Nasty'

"They're two literary giants of the 20th century, and there they are hammering it out with pornographic drawings."

"Basically, they didn't like each other. Lawrence had done a nasty review of one of Wells' books, The World of William Clissold, and Wells was smarting about it."

HG Wells: Revenge in cartoon form

Wells is regarded as a literary great for masterpieces like The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.

Lawrence was visited by Wells just before his death from tuberculosis in France at the age of 44.

Banned

"History doesn't record whether Lawrence ever saw these drawings, but my instinct is that he probably didn't," Mr Harrington said.

"What he would have made of them, I don't know."

The book will be on sale at the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association International Book Fair at the Olympia 2 exhibition hall in London.

Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the UK until 1960 for its graphic sexual descriptions.