They are Shakespeare’s First four Folios, including in effect, a “First Edition” of most of his collected plays, first published in 1623. Subsequent folios were printed later, and almost all are in museums and libraries, very few in private hands. They are in the form of four volumes, all apparently in great condition.
On a slightly more serious note, when I entered college in a science major, we had to take some liberal arts courses, too. I don’t remember if I had a lot of options, but I chose Shakespeare as one of my “liberal-arts” options.
The professor turned out to be a noted Shakespearean scholar. His enthusiasm was infectious. The textbook we had to buy was amazing. I don’t know if he had a financial interest in it but I don’t care – it was a very big volume of the complete works of Shakespeare, and it included a massive amount of footnotes as well as a fairly large section on the history of the life and times of Shakespeare. How they fit all that into one volume is explained by the facts that (a) the paper was quite thin, and (b) the book was absolutely huge!
And that one course – and that one large volume that I still have and treasure to this day – instilled in me a lifelong love of Shakespeare’s art and his amazing way with words. I’ve since been to see a number of the live plays, as well as some of the movies like Joel Coen’s Macbeth, and appreciated them all the more.
So yeah, seriously, if I was a billionaire, I’d be bidding for those books!
I don’t think this is the original binding. But perhaps @Spoons knows more about that kind of vintage books and can proof me wrong? All I see is that in those pictures the inside of the book looks older than the outside. I would expect the opposite.
The inside is paper. The outside is certainly leather. And even if the leather binding had not been well maintained, it could have been refinished. You can see in the second picture a clear reflection of the young lady’s gloved hand halfway up the book she is holding, and also another one near the bottom right.
Does that mean the binding isn’t original? After 400 years I guess we can’t know for sure, but there are other examples of those folios around, even if they’re in museums. If they look the same, maybe we can assume that the leather was just shined up a little, in the very careful manner that one would expect Sotheby’s to do it, and not that it’s a forgery. I’m pretty sure that at that price, the age of the leather binding can be authenticated.
Copies of the First Folio were originally sold unbound. That was normal for that period. Purchasers would then commission a bookbinder to bind it in their preferred style. So every binding is different.
Although a very arcane speciality, experts can usually date book bindings with a fair degree of accuracy. In this particular case, the binding is circa 1795 and was done by Roger Payne. The technical details are discussed in the Christie’s listing from when this copy was previously sold in 2016.
Apart from what APB just wrote, I would not consider re-binding a forgery. Books have to be mantained and can be restored. How well and carefully this is done and documented will have an influence on the valuation of the book. But it is not as such a bad thing to do.
The original printings in the 17th century used the long “s” (ſ) character in place of the modern “s” in certain particular places, so technically, not the same words!
No need, I think you’re correct. Books can be rebound. I’ve seen a number of books where the binding is obviously newer than the pages inside. Heck, your local public library might have a few—neither expensive nor rare, but ones where the pages were just fine, but the original binding took a beating, so the library rebound it.
Sure. For some rare book collectors, that might be a fair price, or even a bargain.
Some will happily pay what seems to be exorbitant prices for a Honus Wagner baseball card, or a Wayne Gretzky rookie card, or an “Inverted Jenny” US Air Mail stamp. That’s what collectors do. Oh, you can find reproductions of these online or in books, so you can see what they look like, and you may have no interest in owning them, but some people do. And sure, you can find The Complete Works of Shakespeare in a nice new edition from Amazon. But some people want originals. That’s what the First Folio is. And if somebody is willing to pay $6M, let them.
I collect rare books. While Shakespeare’s First Folio is way beyond my price range, I can appreciate that someone would want it for that price.
Amongst my eccentricities, I am a qualified book binder. My school had a “book-binding” club, a tiny group of nerds who restored old library books.
I joined, not through love of books, despite being an avid reader, but because it was scheduled during school hymn practice. I was already in the choir, I did not need to be singing alongside the lumpen-proleteriat. And… because of obscure rules, service to the school got me an extra weekend away from my strict 1860s style English boarding school.
(We were allowed 3 weekends in every 13 week term, Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon)
