It is hard to find a more British auction. The first editions of Shakespeare were put up for sale

The set of the first four editions of all works of William Shakespeare will be put up on May 23 for sale at the Sotheby's Auction House – AP said. It is estimated that the price of the set may reach 4.5 million pounds (approx. $ 6 million).

Sotheby's announced sales on Wednesday, on the 461th anniversary of the birth of the English playwright. It will be the first opportunity since 1989 to buy a set consisting of the first four editions – the so -called First, second, third and fourth folio.

After Shakespeare's death in 1616 in Stratford, his friends – actors John Heminges and Henry Condell – gathered art in one volume. The first folio, entitled “Comedies, chronicles and tragedies of Mr. William Shakespeare”, was printed in 1623 in about 750 copies. Contains 36 pieces. As the attention of Shakespearers, if this volume did not appear, the texts of “Macbeth”, “Burza” and “Evening of the Three Kings” would be lost forever.

The auction house called the first folio “undoubtedly the most important publication in the history of English literature”. About 230 pieces of this edition have survived to our times. The overwhelming majority are in museums, universities or in libraries. A small part of the first foils is currently in private hands. One of them was sold at auction in 2020 for $ 9.9 million.

The second folio was published in 1632, the third in 1663, and the fourth in 1685.

The first folio is considered the most valuable, but the third is the rarest – only 182 copies survived to the present day. According to historians, most copies of this edition were destroyed during a great fire in London in 1666. The third folio contains seven additional pieces, but only one – “Pericles, Prince of Tyu” – he considered the work of Shakespeare. (PAP)

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