The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1920-08-13
WORLDS cosTLIEsT BOOK. :
First Collected Edition of Shakespeare
Sells for 100000.

=
The first collected edition of Shake
speare 81 plays, published by Thomas
Pavier IN 1919 recently was sold to a
book collector in New York city for
$10p,00QHthe highest price ever paid
fors a book. In April 1911, g. vellum
copy of the GattenbuTg Bibfe4the first
book printed from movable tyPe-was
sold at the famous Hoe sale for $4,000,
the highest price ever paid up to that
time This volume continued to hold
this distinction until last July, when
Book of Hours, once owned by Jeanne
II of Navarro, brought 1880 pounds
in London.
The rarity that holds the new high
record, and doubtless will hold it for a
long time, contains nine playa
fourth of the dramas-each with a sep
arate title page, as was quite custom
airy with collected editions of the time
1t is a small book, seven by five and
quarter inches, and a half inch thick,
bound in old calf, with the name of Ed
ward Gwynn, a celebrated Elizabeth
an collector, stamped in the center of
the front cover. The text, having been
pirated from previous quartos, adds lit
tie or nothing to Shakespearean schol-
arship. It's value consists in the fact
that it is the only copy extant. 1t is
historically interesting from the fact
that it was printed by Isaac Jaggard,
who four years later published the first
folio.
Although the first collected edition
must be called the world IS costliest
book, the first folio will dougtless re-
main our most precious literary treas
ure. 1t has been really that ever since
1923, although it was a long time be-
fore it was so recognized. 1t contains
no less than 20 plays of which there is
no earlier text-among them The Tenn
pest, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
The Winter Tale, Julius Caesar, Mac
beth and Coriolanus. A copy of the
first folio now in the Bodleian library.
Oxford, is of peculiar and transcend
ent value because it contains the most
authentic portrait of Shakespeare, en-
graved by Martin Droeshout, printed
on the title page and appearing in the
most perfect state known. The light
and modelling of the face are far more
delicate and expressive, especially
about the lips and beneath the eyes,
than as shown by the engraving after
it had become worn and had been bun
glingly retouehed. The highest price
Il
for the Van Antwerp copy, now in the
Harvard library. The four folios-
the Marsden J. Perry set-were recent
" sold to a Philadelphia collector for
$75, 900.
century ago the folios and quar-
tos brought only few pounds each.
Belize, in his Anecdotes, in 1907 said:
- Perhaps there is no book which has
risen so rapidly in value as the first
edition of the works of our great ma
tional poet. / can remember a very
fine copy to have been sold for five
guineas.'
Percy Fitzgerald, an English author
now living, tells in The Book Fancier,
published in 1886, of how he brought
together the four folios, within two
years time, for 80 pounds. Henry
Stevens, in his Recollections of James
Lenox, founder of the Lenox library
in New York city, says that in Deem
Der, 1885, he offered to Mr.. Lenox Gin
a lump, 40 quartos, all in good eondi-
ton, and some of them very fine, for
500 pounds, or including a fair set of
the folios for 600 pounds. The offer
was accepted, and he became at one
step the possessor of perhaps the finest
Shakespearean collection in ePriFate \
hands,
The rise in value of the folios and
early quartos of Shakespeare and also
of the early foundation or source plays
from which the great dramatist derived
much of his material has been very
rapid since the famous Daniel sale in
1864. 1t makes beyond a doubt the
most interesting chapter in biblio-
graphical annals.-Youth s Companion.