That Twenty Shillings Was A Good Investment

I can imagine the wife of English bibliophile wondering if it was really worth it to squander twenty shillings, equivalent to approximately £100 today, for ANOTHER book...

It was, when it was spent to purchase what Sotheby’s claims is the most important book in English literature.

A rare First Folio edition of William Shakespeare’s plays is to be auctioned on July 13th by Sotheby's with an estimated price of 4 to 6 million dollars.

This edition, in its original calf skin binding, is one of just a few surviving from a 1623 printing (just seven years after the Bard's passing) of 750 copies, and includes many annotations in the margins from seventeenth century readers.

Of the 36 plays included in this first folio, eighteen (including Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It (the play that was the CaptainStL's theatrical debut as a Stage Manager) and that Scottish play, Macbeth) had never been printed before.

This volume has been in the collection of a theological library in London since 1716. They are parting with it now to secure the library's financial future.