The page of Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics to The Times They are A-Changin' fetched $422,500 US at auction. (Sotheby's/Associated Press)

A sheet of Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics to The Times They Are A-Changin' was the highlight of a New York auction of rare books and manuscripts, with the folk anthem lyrics earning more than $400,000 US.

An American contemporary art collector named Adam Sender outbid five others to snag the fragile, discloured and heavily creased sheet bearing Dylan's verses, said Sotheby's, which held the auction on Friday.

The lyrics to the celebrated 1964 protest song — scrawled in smudged pencil — fetched $422,500 (including a buyer's premium), well over the pre-sale estimate of between $200,000 and $300,000.

Other highlights of the sale, which brought in $2.2 million overall, included:

• One of surrealist artist Alberto Giacometti's letters — featuring pen-and-ink drawings of roses — to his friend, screen siren Marlene Dietrich ($266,500).
• Notes on the State of Virginia, penned by Thomas Jefferson ($362,500).
• A second printing of William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies ($194,500).

Unfortunately, the sale did not find buyers for several of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Annebooks.

First-edition copies of Anne of Avonlea and Anne's House of Dreams failed to find buyers, while an early 1909 printing of Anne of Green Gables was withdrawn from the sale, according to auction house officials.

With files from The Canadian Press