News | March 29, 2023

Landmark $10.5m Shakespeare Folio Offering at Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington

The 17th century Shakespeare Folios and Poems

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, London rare bookseller Peter Harrington has announced a landmark offering of copies of each of the four Folios as well as a first collected edition of Shakespeare’s Poems. This is a rare occasion for a single collector to acquire all the collected 17th century works of Shakespeare for US$10.5 million (£8.76 million).

Peter Harrington held a special viewing of the Four Folios and the Poems at its Mayfair shop this week and is expected to publicly show the Folios in the coming weeks.

The sale is being led by a fine copy of the First Folio in a handsome late 17th or early 18th-century English calf binding, very rare in this state, and with all the text leaves of the plays present, clean and crisp.

“There is no other single individual who has had as great an influence on how we use the English language or employ story-telling devices as Shakespeare – ranging far beyond the realm of theatre to the farthest fringes of popular culture. Together with the Poems, possessing any of the four Folios would be the greatest prize for any significant rare book collector, and owning them all obviously a huge coup,” says Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington. Each of the books is being offered for sale individually.

According to Harrington, the First Folio being offered is one of the most desirable examples to come to market in recent years on account of its fine condition, early English binding and fresh inner pages. Importantly the entire text of the plays themselves are complete and unsophisticated (the pages are original to this copy and have not been made up with pages from other copies of the same work). The copy lacks four of the eight preliminary leaves which are supplied here in facsimile.

“The attraction of this copy is the early binding and the freshness of the contents. There are a few marks left by early readers, but the French linen paper still has a wonderful crisp texture, unlike so many copies that were washed and pressed flat in the 19th century. At US$7.50m (£6.25m) I would say it represents excellent value for a collector who appreciates the finer points of what makes a copy like this so special,” he says.

The Second Folio was published in 1632, nine years after the First proved to be a commercial success, and it included 1,700 changes. The type was reset, and pagination and formatting standardised whereas the First Folio contained several quirks in pagination relating to the manner in which the printing rights for the plays would have been acquired to enable its publication. The book is also notable for containing the first appearance in print of John Milton, his poem in praise of “my Shakespeare”.

The original edition was probably 1,000 copies, shared between five publishers. The present copy of the Second Folio is a handsome, tall and well-margined copy in panelled calf, being offered for US$550,000 (£450,000).

Peter Harrington

The 17th century Shakespeare Folios and Poems

Peter Harrington

Shakespeare's First Folio

Peter Harrington

Shakespeare's First Folio

The rarest of all the four folios is the Third Folio. Many copies were destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666. It is most commonly encountered in its second issue, published in 1664 with a different title page. It is being offered for US$1.50m (£1.25m), a very fine copy in the excessively rare first issue, with the title page dated 1663. It is one of only three copies to remain in private hands.

Published in 1685, the Fourth Folio was the last of the 17th- century editions of Shakespeare's works, and the most grandly produced. It added seven plays at the end of the volume, although of those, only Pericles is now recognised as Shakespearean.

The most immediately striking aspect of the Fourth Folio is its height. The publishers used a larger paper size to increase the number of lines per page and decrease the bulk of the book. It is in a larger font and more liberally spaced than the three earlier editions. The Fourth Folio dropped the final “e” from Shakespeare's name, a spelling that persisted until the beginning of the 19th century. The current copy being offered for US$225,000 (£185,000), a handsome copy in a Regency-period diced russia binding.

Diminutive in size when compared to the imposing Folios, but no less influential, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s Poems is much rarer than either the First or Third Folios, with only 64 copies extant, of which only five remain in private hands. It is rarer still in a contemporary binding, as here, and is being offered for US$750,000 (£625,000).

The Poems collects all but eight of the sonnets (which were first printed in 1609, an edition that is now unobtainable), together with other shorter, non-dramatic poetry. The volume also includes an appendix of poems By other Gentlemen, such as Ben Jonson, John Milton, Francis Beaumont, and Robert Herrick. This copy was in Italy at an early date; it has the ownership inscription of an Englishman in Rome, dated 1664/5.

“We feel hugely privileged to be able to offer these landmark works for sale in the 400th anniversary year of the First Folio being published. We cannot recall the last time in living memory that a book seller offered all four Folios and the Poems for sale at the same time," said Harrington, "the last time the works appeared as a collection was when it was offered by an auction house more than 20 years ago. I’ve already been asked several times if we foresee a single collector buying them all. The Four Folios have sold to a single buyer before, so I would not rule it out."