De Ricci, English Collectors. 72, and a record which held for seventy-two years (Thomas, Great Books, 258).
Frank Hcntnasm. Sotheby's: Portrait o f an Auction House (1980), 125.
Taste andTechnique in Book-Collecting (New York, 1948), 5.
There is abundant evidence of varied demand for, and high interest in, the First Folio. In the first half of the century John Harris perfected his skill in producing facsimile pages to such a degree that even experts have been fooled. As Robert Metcalf Smith has pointed out, Harris’s sale in 1857 of facsimile remainders (including several copies of the preliminary or last leaves of the First Folio) is evidence that Harris kept such pages in stock ‘to supply the intermittent demands of the rare book trade’. Smith also notes Halliwell-Phillipps’s observation that Lilly the bookseller ‘had nearly twenty copies at one time in the process of making up, all lacking the title page’ (24). Aware of the demand for leaves, Sotheby’s in 1887 suggested the appeal of a defective First Folio was that ‘it would be useful for supplying imperfections in other copies (Catalogue 26 July, lot 655). Interest in the Folio is indicated by the fact that as many as five complete facsimile editions were published-in 1807, 1862-64, 1866, 1876, and 1888-89 (see the Appendix at the end of this work). In the 1870s Hazlitt, again not showing the customary reverence for the volume, attests to its prevalence and in his view its over-pricing when speaking of ‘this common and absurdly overestimated volume’. T o w a r d s the end of the eighties, the editor of Book-Prices Current, summing up the demand for books, placed ‘Early editions of old English authors’ as the fifth most sought-after category (following illustrated first editions, early works about America, specimens of old typography, and early works printed in Scotland). Within the category, he immediately says that the four Shakespeare folios ‘always sell well, and are now becoming extremely scarce’. Commenting ten years earlier than Quaritch (quoted above), he gives as the reason for scarcity, not American demand, but ‘every available copy being secured at any price for the Libraries.’"^
Table N in Appendix S/P 9 gives the details of First Folio sales and prices by year in the nineteenth century. Table O gives prices by year for L^e Class 1 Folios only. Table P in Appendix S/P 10 gives sales and prices of the Second, Third and Fourth Folios in the nineteenth century.
Table Q below, derived from Table N, shows the sales of First Folios by decade. The total for the century is 116. It is difficult to assess how many sales this misses, but the few that I have found in sources other than Lee suggest that it is reasonably complete. In any case it shows an impressive increase over the twenty-eight 1 found in the eighteenth century.
Robert Metcalf Smith, The Shakespeare Folios and The Forgeries o f Shakespeare's Handwriting [in The] Lehigh University [Library] With a List o f Original Folios in American Libraries, Lehigh University Publications, I , no. 2 (Bethlehem, PA, 1927), 22-24.
W Carew Hazlitt, Collections and Notes 1867-1876 (1876), 380. ""BPC, 11(1889), vi.
Table Q
Number of Sales of the First Folio by Decade in the 1800s
OOs 10s 2 0s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 1
5 ! 7 Ï2 5 ÏÔ 11 ÏÔ i"3 20 ^ I
The average rate of sale per decade in the second half of the nineteenth century (15.4) doubled that of the first half (7.8). The rate of sale accelerated at the end of the century, especially in the last two decades with twenty copies sold in the eighties and twenty- three (including four Folger purchases-Table V, Appendix S/P 11) in the nineties. (It would not be valid to compare these sales rates with those of the other three folios in Appendix S/P 10; the data in this appendix are only representative.)
Table R below, also derived from Table N, shows the average price by decade for the century, including American p r i c e s . 1 believe all the prices in Table N are actual sales prices-thatis, none is an offer, estimate or bought-in price. Based on such small samples, the averages in this and especially the next paragraph are only indicative. While the average price level of a First Folio was around £30 in the last decade of the eighteenth century, it was already nearly fifty percent higher, at £44, in the first decade of the nineteenth. Speaking of the book market, John Carter comments that we should not overlook that ‘the high prices of the Roxburghe sale [1812] period reflect the general inflationary economic conditions of the Napoleonic wars’. The average price was over thirty percent higher in the next two decades. It dropped back in the thirties, as did the number of sales: Richard Landon says ‘the demise of a number of the prominent members of the Roxburghe Club, combined with an economic depression, caused prices of books to fall drastically’; John Sutherland writes of the book trade crash in 1826.^^^ It then rose in each decade, especially in the sixties, till the end of the century. Perhaps it would have risen higher had it not been for the ‘ring’ or ‘knock out’ which operated among some booksellers in the nineteenth century (and the first part of the twentieth century).
The prices of copies known to be defective are excludedfrom the averages: Roscoe copy (1816), Lee 145 (1850), Pickering copy (1854), Lee 140 (1864), Lilly copies (1873), Lee 126 (1880), Lee 133 (1891 and 1892) aai Lee 129 (1895).
Taste and Technique, 5.
The Landon quotation is from ‘The Antiquarian Book Trade’ (415), cited earlier, and the Sutherland referenceis to ‘The Book Trade Crash of 1826’, Library, 6/9 (1987), 148-61.
Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman, Anafomy of an Auction: Rare Books at Ruxley Lodge (1919) (1900). Chapter 2, “‘The Ring”, Theory and Practice: A Digression’, treats this subject in detail. ‘The earhest physical record of a major English rare book auction settled by dealers’ known to the Freemans is the R H Evans sale of 26 April 1830 (31). This ring’ is mentioned again in Section G below (in the paragraph before Table EE).
Table R
Average Price of the F irst Folio by Decade in the 1800s
OOs i iOs I 20s I 30s I 40s j 50s 1 60s j 70s i 80s I 90s
The average of £62 in the first half-century increased over five times to £320 in the second half/^"* Undoubtedly, reports of high prices attracted more and more Folios out of obscurity.
Table S below, derived from Table O in Appendix S/P 9, shows the average or indicative price by decade of First Folios in Lee’s Class I only. (The figure for the first decade is single; the ‘average’ in the second decade is of only two figures.) By removing differences of condition insofar as is possible, this table permits price comparisons of Folios in roughly similar (as it happens the best) conditions. The diference between prices for Class 1 Folios and prices for the rest, ie, the premium paid for Class I copies, is treated in Section G below.
Table S
A verage o r Indicative Price of Lee Class I F irst by Decade in the 1800s
Folios
OOs iOs I 20s \ 30s ) 40s 1 50s i 60s \ 70s 1 80s 90s £38 £ 1 1 1 j £ 8 8 ! - 1 £Ï25 i £180 j £565 I £516 I £526 £833
The £103 average (versus £4^ for all First Folios) in the first half-century more than C>2j^ quintupled to £522 (versus £ $ 4 ^ in the second half, with eight copies in the last two decades selling for more than £400. These figures were capped by the spectacular price in the last year of the century of £1,700. In 1899 Lee said that ‘A fine copy of the First Folio is worth at least £1,000
An analysis of the buyers and sellers of the volumes in Table N in Appendix S/P 9 gives some indication of who owned, who sold and who bought (excluding booksellers) First Folios in the nineteenth century. The picture is not complete, because it is based mostly on transactions where the price is known. A significant shift in ownership was the beginning of the move to institutional libraries; at least nine institutions received a Folio, and eight of these still have them. The preponderance of sellers and buyers were plain Mr, in part because all Americans were Mr. There were at least ten American buyers, the beginning of the other eventual major shift in ownership. However, among the sellers and buyers there were three Dukes, five Earls, one
These averages are of individual prices, not the average of the average per decade.
Marquis, one Baronet and a goodly representation of professional men. There was but one Mrs. A review of such works as Munby’s twelve-volume Sales Catalogues o f Libraries o f Eminent Persons revealed no First Folio owners among the literary figures of the nineteenth century whose libraries were sold: the sales of Byron, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Thomas Moore, Samuel Rogers, Macaulay, Peacock, Browning, Ruskin, Wilde and Swinburne contained no Shakespeare Folio, but Edward Fitzgerald and William Hazlitt, the bibliographer, each owned both a Second and a Fourth Folio. The story was different among actors: Garrick owned a First and a Second Folio; Kemble, all four Folios; Edmund Kean, a First and a Fourth; and Charles Kean purchased his father’s Fourth. Edmund Kean’s First was presented to him in New York in 1820.^^^ Perhaps this copy was the first in America; its presentation to Kean took place some sixteen years before the first American purchase I have found (c. 1836, as noted above). It was also presumably the first to be repatriated.
The First Folio, increasingly demanded as a collector’s item, continued to leave the other seventeenth-century Folios behind, as Table T below shows. The Second outdid the Fourth in both halves of the century. The Third, already ahead of the Second in the first half, continued its lead in the second half, showing the effect of rarity on value. It began to achieve three-figure prices in the 1860s, which the Second and the Fourth (with one remarkable exception) did not reach until the present century (see Table P in Appendix S/P 10). In 1899 Lee said ‘a fair price’ for a Second or Fourth Folio was £50, and for a Third Folio in good condition £250.^^® In both the first and second half of the century, the First was in a price-class apart from the other three. From the Daniel sale on, if not from the Roxburghe, it made price history.
Table T
Average Prices of the Four Folios, First and Second Half of the ISOOs^^^
1 First ! Second ! Third 1 Fourth
First Half-Century i £62/8/- I £11/7/- i £18/18/- i £4/17/- i
Second Half-Century I £320/-/- i £54/8/- i £94/3/- 1 £46/3/-
As for the four Folios together, at least by the end of the first quarter of the century, they were beginning to be regarded as a package. In 1824, the bookseller Thorpe advertised a set for £1(X) (or the First at £65, the Second at ten guineas, the Third at £25 and the Fourth at six guineas) and about the same time Pickering offered a set for
Munby, I , II , V I , vii, ix, andxil; vol I for Fitzgerald and Hazlitt; vol X I I for actors.
Munby, X I I , 374.
Cornhill Magazine, 451.
The averages for the Second, Third and Fourth Folios are only indicative, being based on representative samples.
€95/^° In 1840 the Bibliothèque Nationale purchased the four Folios, as Lee says, each ‘for the modest sum of £20’ (1924, 101). There is a manuscript note in Meisei copy 7, giving a price for the four Folios on 13 June 1855 of £110. For the century as a whole 1 found twenty-nine cases where all three later seventeenth-century Folios were in the same sale as the First, sixteen of them in the second half. See Table U in Appendix S/P 10. A remarkable fact is that so many owners of a First Folio, even by the early years of the century, had also collected the other three. On the other hand, even by the later years of the century, the four were not offered in auction catalogues as a package (that is, in one lot) and were not often purchased by one buyer. If one compares the twenty-nine cases in the nineteenth century of the four Folios selling together with the four cases in Table L in Appendix S/P 7, one finds that a century later the premium paid for a First Folio over the Second and Fourth has increased greatly, and that the premium paid for a First over a Third—due to increasing recognition of the latter’s rarity—has somewhat decreased.
The First Folio held its own against most other volumes in all the most demanded classes of books. By the end of the century these included, in order of demand, early Bibles, first editions of the classics, early Italian literature, Caxton and other early English literature. For example, it took the combined drawing power of Caxton, Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, as well as the first edition and much greater rarity, to compete in the 1890s at the level of £1,000, which as we saw above is what Lee said a good First Folio commanded. What BPC called ‘the better class standard and collector’s books’ averaged in 1893 £1/6/7 and in 1899 just under £3/-/-.*^^ Compared to the dramatic Works of his comtemporaries, the Shakespeare Folio stayed in a price class of its own. In the last five years of the century, Ben Jonson’s Works (1616) ranged from £1/16/- to £8/5/-; five averaged £4/13/-. A Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works {l&Xl) fetched£5.*^^ By contrast, the Gutenberg Bible, another book in a class of its own, had sold from 1873 to 1900 at least three times for between £500 and £760 and at least eight times for between £1,600 and £4,(X)0; a vellum copy sold for £5,000. In the 1884 Thorold sale, where the First Folio fetched £590, the paper Gutenberg achieved £3,900. (For Gutenberg prices, see Chart 5 following the appendixes of this chapter.)
For the century as a whole, the rate of sale and the price level of the First Folio continued the upward movement seen in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Except for a relapse in the thirties, the average price advanced in each decade. At an average price in the last decade of £410 (in excess of £830 for Class 1 copies) it stayed well ahead of its successor Folios, though the price of the Third left that of the other two far
Wheaüey, 224. Ibid, 180 and 193. "‘2 BPC. X I I I (1899), vii.
The five Jonson prices are from BPC, 1895 (items 3101 and 5654) and BPC, 1896 (items 602, 2910, 4322). The Beaumont and Fletcher price is from BPC, 1896 (item 553).
i j l i i i / ' r»e 3cuf3oY :SAiMJBOIUUOt<| W ir n ï. i i i m w m z / Æ ./
AUTOLYCÜS, U.S.A.
U.SCLZ S a ^ i. “ NOW, T H A T 'S REAL DISAPPOINTING. I 'D SET MY HEART ON TEA:
SfŒLETON."
Sh.u)e OF SHAiircAnE. “ BU T ALL THE SAME I SHOULD F E E L MORE COMFORTABL: IE IT Wa s INSURED."
Plate 3. A Punch cartoon after the Burdett-Coutts sale in London, May 1922, when Rosen bach earned off the Daniel copy of the First Folio. It was acquired by Henry Folger in the same month.
behind. Compared to other books it became, during the century, one of the most sought-after and prestigious of collectables.