US auction house Profiles in History is selling off over 300 private letters and historical documents of prominent people including the first US President George Washington, singer John Lennon, artist Van Gogh and Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

The correspondence is being auctioned by an unnamed American collector and will go under the hammer in an online and phone sale on Dec. 18.

George Washington’s 1798 letter to an Anglican clergyman is one of the highlights of the sale. It is estimated to fetch between $200,000 and $300,000.

"Peace, with all the world is my sincere wish, I am sure it is our true policy — and am persuaded it is the ardent desire of the Government," Washington’s letter reads as quoted by AP.

Another top lot of the sale is post-impressionist artist Van Gogh’s signed letter to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, owners of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch master used to live and work. The letter is dated 1890 and is expected to sell for $200,000 to $300,000. The artist died less than seven months after the anxious letter was written.

"Illnesses are there to make us remember again that we are not made of wood. That's what seems the good side of all this to me. Then afterwards one goes back to one's everyday work less fearful of the annoyances, with a new store of serenity," Van Gogh wrote in French.

John Lennon’s letter to Eric Clapton written in 1971 is expected to fetch between $20,000 and $30,000. In the eight-page letter the Beatle expresses his admiration with Clapton’s music.

The sale will also feature papers from the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, scientist Charles Darwin, physicist Marie Curie, composers Giuseppe Verdi and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, King Henry II, Napoleon I and other prominent figures.

Prior to the sale the collection will go on display at Douglas Elliman's Madison Avenue art gallery in New York.

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