1461800 1935 Shakespeare. Reacquisition Document of Famous Bodleian First Folio.

 

The Original Bodleian First Folio of Shakespeare.  A finely printed description of the Bodleian library's reacquisition.  14 pp. Illustrated from photographs with facsimiles. (Folio) wrappers stitched at left edge with string. Printed by Horace Hart.  An account of the perambulations of the original Bodleian First Folio of Shakespeare and its reacquisition. With inscription on front cover by Leonard L. Macleane in presentation to the Century Club in February, 1935. Century Club bookplate tipped to half-title page.

 

The following has been extgracted from the Bodleian site:

 

The Bodleian received a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623, but appears to have sold it at some point in the late 1660s, perhaps having replaced it with the new, improved, edition, the Third Folio, with its additional plays, which was published in 1663/4. The whereabouts of the Bodleian’s copy were unknown until 1905, when an undergraduate at Magdalen College brought a book to a sub-librarian, on duty in the reading room, for advice on its rebinding. Falconer Madan, the sub-librarian, immediately identified the volume as the lost First Folio. Publicity about the find led to the owners, the Turbutt family of Derbyshire, being approached by a bookseller intermediary, offering the huge sum of £3,000 on behalf of an anonymous buyer. The Turbutts offered the Bodleian the chance to match the offer, and thus the first public fundraising campaign in the library’s history was born. Oxford graduates were approached via their colleges and a letter in The Times newspaper, asking for contributions to buy back the First Folio. But many of the donors were not Oxford graduates. All their letters and cards are preserved in the Library’s archive, and make fascinating reading. E.g. “Miss Browne begs to be allowed to make a small contribution towards the repurchase for the Bodleian of the Shakespeare Folio, although she has no connection with the university.” … Over 80 subscribers pledged the money required, the last donations arriving in the nick of time. Their average donation was around one guinea (the equivalent of about £60 today). It was widely rumoured that the anonymous buyer was American. Only later was it revealed that he was the chairman of Standard Oil, Henry Clay Folger, who already owned 23 copies of the First Folio and would go on to buy over 50 more – but not this one. Having lost its First Folio once, the Bodleian was determined not to lose it again. Thanks to you, we have raised the money to conserve this prodigal book for the future, and bring it, in digital form, to the world now. This copy is a rarity because it has not been rebound or restored during almost four centuries since it was first received by the library in 1623.