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Shakespeare's early works go up for auction/ 4 editions expected to sell for $6 million

2025-04-25 15:26:00, Kuriozitete CNA

Shakespeare's early works go up for auction/ 4 editions expected to sell

A set of the first four editions of the collected works of William Shakespeare is expected to sell for up to 4.5 million pounds or $6 million at auction next month.

Sotheby's auction house announced the sale on Shakespeare's 461st birthday. It said the May 23 sale will be the first time since 1989 that a set of the first, second, third and fourth folios has been offered at auction as a single lot.

Shakespeare's early works go up for auction/ 4 editions expected to sell

The auction house estimated the sale price at between 3.5 million and 4.5 million pounds.

After Shakespeare's death in 1616, his plays were collected into a single volume by his friends John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors and stockmen in the playwright's troupe, the King's Men.

The First Folio — whose full title is “The Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies of Mr. William Shakespeare” — contained 36 plays, half of which were published there for the first time. Without the book, scholars say, plays such as “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night” might have been lost. Sotheby’s called the volume “undoubtedly the most important publication in the history of English literature.”

Shakespeare's early works go up for auction/ 4 editions expected to sell

About 750 copies were printed in 1623, of which about 230 are known to survive. All but a few are in museums, universities, or libraries. One of the few early pamphlets in private hands sold for $9.9 million at auction in 2020.

The First Folio proved so successful that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a third in 1663, and a fourth in 1685./CNA





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