The BBC said the rare document is expected to fetch as much as $600,000 at Christie's rock and pop memorabilia auction this summer in London.

Gail Renard, the seller, said she was a student in Montreal in 1969 when Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono arrived to hold their "bed-in" in the city's Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Renard said she knocked on the couple's door, asked Ono for an interview for her school newspaper and Ono said "yes." Renard said Lennon later invited her to help out with the bed-in and the two became friends.

Renard told the BBC Lennon gave her the original lyrics to "Give Peace a Chance," which she kept on a wall in her study then moved them to a vault for safe keeping.

"I thought, this is ridiculous," she said. "They should be out with somebody who can enjoy them and they should be seen again. It's my way of thanking him, to get his message and his song out there again, and have people thinking about it and talking about it."