Shakespeare, a fragment of the first edition of the "First folio" at auction in the USA

• Up for auction is a copy of Shakespeare's legendary “First Folio”

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25 October 2021Special event on Friday 29th at the American auction house Holabird.

An "extremely rare" fragment of William Shakespeare's First Folio, which includes the entire work "Henry IV-Part One", will be auctioned.

The printed fragment was valued at $ 50,000-100,000.

Officially titled "The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry Sirnamed Hot-Spurre", it consists of 13 pages of printed antique paper.

The work was authenticated by the scholar Eric Rasmussen.

The First Folio was published in 1623 and is the first printed edition of the collection of all of Shakespeare's works. When the Bard died in 1616, only 17 of his works had been printed. Without the First Folio, which collects 36 works, 18 of them, including "Macbeth and" The Tempest ", would never have survived. The works were collected and edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, two actors and friends of Shakespeare: they were about 750 copies were printed, 233 have survived to this day.       

"The chance to own a piece of Shakespeare's most important printed literary work is a once in a lifetime opportunity," said auction house president Fred Holabird. "We are proud to present this original copy of a first folio fragment of the first part of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Its new owner will own the history of literature." 

Last year, a complete copy of the First Folio was auctioned for $ 9,978,000, setting a new world record for a work of printed literature.

The buyer was rare book collector Stephan Loewentheil, who at the time said: "The First Folio is the most important collection of plays ever published and revered in the world. It is an honor to acquire one of the few complete copies of this. epochal volume ".