OT: Shakespeare First Folio for sale

If Folio's Letterpress Shakespeare didn't quite do it for you, you might wish to consider this alternative:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jun/09/shakespeare-first-folio-copy-est...

It sounds a fascinating volume. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

'The folio includes annotations, doodles, ink spills and markings from its owners over the centuries. There are fragments of prayers, verse and mysterious lines from a “John Frasere” – a speech asking for herculean strength “to beatt him That let my love be stolen away when I was sliping”.'

>1 Cat_of_Ulthar:

For a slightly cheaper alternative there's always the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio, which Folio (Society) published as a LE in 2006.

>1 Cat_of_Ulthar: mysterious lines from a “John Frasere” – a speech asking for herculean strength “to beatt him That let my love be stolen away when I was sliping”.'

That is brilliant. Was she stolen when he was sleeping, cause he was slipping or while he was peeling bark from a tree?

>1 Cat_of_Ulthar:

Thank you for sharing this, it's fascinating.

> 1 Previous owners bookplate, marginal notes, no slipcase. Think I'll pass on that one.

Something tells me $2.5m is a major low-ball estimate on this one.

It's tempting, but I don't really need a second one of these. It'll probably be snapped up by a reseller and dropped on Ebay at double what they paid anyway.

>5 SimB: haha! they better not try and pass this off as fine/NF :D

>6 ubiquitousuk: I had that same feeling too. I wonder if they underestimate on purpose...

>7 Shadekeep: Once my time machine is complete, I'm going back and gonna snag them all.

>5 SimB:
In this case the doodles and annotations might actually add to the value. I hope to live long enough for mine to do the same!

>6 ubiquitousuk: 'Something tells me $2.5m is a major low-ball estimate on this one.'

It went for $2.4m. Times must be hard ;-)

There are a number of key texts in English Literature and I suggest that The First Folio is the most important. Every National Library around the world and every major university that wishes to have a strong holding of historic English Literature should want a copy - even just from an investment point of view it seems a no-brainer.

At some stage there will be no copies left in private hands or held as an investment so from then on no further copies will ever be available on the market. Same goes for the First Editions of Jane Austen and other major authors.

>11 English-bookseller: Private funds will always outstrip public funds at this level (unless one is talking about bidders like the Qataris or Saudis, where the ruler or ruling family can bid through their state museum or other third party that is de facto in their private hands); no western state museum or university can compete if a private bidder really wants it. Bequests or donations remain a possibility, of course, but that is at the discretion of a private bidder. Also, items held in public institutions don’t always remain there when cash runs seriously short.

>11 English-bookseller:
Tax-supported libraries and universities shouldn’t be spending their valuable resources on first editions. Later editions and even modern reproductions have the same educational value.

>13 jroger1: that is a position you can take, but doesn't reflect the priorities of any major university rare book library with which I am familiar. Such institutions are just as much museums as they are text-preservers.

>14 abysswalker:
I have no objection to publicly funded institutions holding and preserving rare texts as long as the texts are obtained through donations or bequests, as most are.

>13 jroger1: it's a pretty weird position to take. Should universities also refrain from spending large sums on spectrometers or telescopes or other expensive resources needed to conduct their research?

First folios are used not only by researchers in English who study Shakespeare, but also by scholars of conservation, social history, digital humanities, and surely a range of other fields.

>17 ubiquitousuk:
I’m a retired professor specializing in mathematics and science history. Mathematics requires few tools, but modern science obviously requires modern labs and equipment. Teaching its history, though, does not require Galileo’s original telescope, but only a model of it.

Book conservation can be taught and learned using much less expensive titles than Shakespeare’s First Folio or Jane Austen first editions. Not being a specialist in these fields, though, I’m not sure how social history fits in, and I don’t even know what digital humanities is.

>18 jroger1: Ego and legacy building. It always astounds me what some public universities spend money on while cutting staff benefits and replacing professors with adjuncts.

There was a rare-book section in the library of the university where I worked, all contents donated, and none of jaw-dropping interest. A minor Milton was the high point. Most money was spent on new buildings to attract more students and through higher enrolment more government funds. Arts and humanities courses were accommodated in an original building, spilling out to whatever spare rooms were available in Social Science, Nursing etc.
The compulsory Bibliography course for postgraduate English students used a mixture of original single sheets and reproductions, obtained by the course instructor for a song.

>13 jroger1: "Tax-supported libraries and universities shouldn’t be spending their valuable resources on first editions. Later editions and even modern reproductions have the same educational value."

A First Folio has a cultural importance that far outstrips other first editions, though. You could equally argue that publically-funded institutions should never spend their money on works of art, as the same or greater educational value can always be found by spending the money on something else. If this had been the approach taken in the past, our museums and art galleries would be far poorer in their holdings. A classic example is Salvador Dali's painting of Christ of St John of the Cross - arguably the most important work of art at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, and bought for a relative pittance compared to its value today, but nonetheless the cause of extreme controversy when it was purchased by the museum from the artist in 1952.

BOT, the hammer price seems low to me, given that another copy sold for $10m just two years ago at Christies. This latter copy did have the frontispiece (missing from the Sotheby's copy), but otherwise the two books seem to have been comparable.

>21 TheEconomist: This latter copy did have the frontispiece (missing from the Sotheby's copy)

Wouldn't surprise me if this is the reason in the price discrepancy. Consider the 2020 auction
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/923565263/christies-auction-of-shakespeares-first...

"A complete copy of the First Folio comes up more or less once in a generation," said Margaret Ford, the International Head of Books and Manuscripts at Christie's."

That makes sense. Even if the recent copy is missing only one page, that still makes it incomplete.

>22 astropi: "Even if the recent copy is missing only one page, that still makes it incomplete."

While this is true in some sense, and I am sure influences some collectors, it is worth noting that there is considerable variation between copies of the first folio, as the compositors continuously corrected errors discovered after copies were printed. Paper was too expensive to warrant replacing previous pages or copies.

Though collectors like (and pay a premium for) "canonical" and unmodified specimens generally, in the case of the First Folio my understanding is that all copies have a degree of individuality.

Is the frontispiece really that important in a particular copy? Of course it is in the auctioneer's interest to convince buyers that it is, and indeed it does have some cultural value in preservation (in terms of existing somewhere), but what about an original box? The original bill of sale? Etc. The number of indexical components of a work is somewhat arbitrary.

Personally, I suspect the difference in price is more influenced by current macroeconomic conditions and confidence. The discrepancy is even greater when one accounts for inflation ($1 USD today has the buying power of 88 cents in 2020).

You can buy some leafs. Never knew this book exists.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/354283212727?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-...

I don’t know, so they cut up the Folio and glued the pages in several other books?
Seems a pity somehow