London Library Forced To Sell Shakespeare First Folio

-- Library Journal, 4/5/2006

If the financially strapped Providence Athenaeum's forced sale of its copy of John J. Audubon's Birds of America to raise operating money shocked you, then sit down because that was kid stuff: also suffering the slings and arrows of financial misfortune, London's Dr. William's Library this July is auctioning off the holiest of literary holies—its 1623 Shakespeare first folio. No one at Sotheby's will even venture a guess at how much the volume, which is one of only roughly 200 or so still known to be in existence, will fetch, although potential bidders with less than £2.5 million are advised to take their chump change elsewhere. The British press reports that even the seasoned Sotheby's staff is atwitter at the thought of a Shakespeare first folio under its gavel: "this sale will be a truly exceptional event," Peter Selley, Sotheby's English lit expert, told the Guardian. The July auction will mark the first sale of a first folio since 1980. Many of the known existing first folio's are incomplete, but the William's copy, which the theological institution has owned since 1716, covers the playwright's full canon and reportedly is in very good condition. The facility, said library director David Wykes, is selling the book to "safeguard the financial future of the library." The book required heavy insurance and is not central to its collection.