Shakespeare Folio Nets $5.1 Million
A 1623 "remarkably untouched" first edition folio of 36 Shakespeare plays fetched $5.1 million dollars (2.8 million pounds) at auction at Sotheby's London auction house on Thursday. This edition is considered special, as it is the first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. About 750 were known to have been published, and about one third of those survive, mostly in incomplete form. Published seven years after Shakespeare's death, the book that went under Sotheby's gavel on Thursday (entitled Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies) remained in its original binding, and wound up in the collection Dr Williams's Library in London, which specializes in religious and ecclesiastical literature. The sale of the important Shakespeare volume was initiated to help conserve the collection as a whole.