![]() What makes the “First Folio” so valuable to collectors? Grant details how the couple quietly collected and built the Folger Shakespeare Library, which now houses 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, and 60,000 manuscripts. ![]() In his book Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published in 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Stephen H. The Folger Shakespeare Library holds the most copies, while others are privately owned and fiercely protected. Only 235 of those 750 copies are known to survive today. It is believed there were 750 copies of the First Folio printed in 1623, and they would have cost around the equivalent of $165 for an unbound or $228 for a bound copy in today’s dollars. Until the First Folio, 18 of the 36 plays had never been published, and had it not been for their compilation and organization of the book into Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories, we might not know some of Shakespeare’s most influential works, such as Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, and all the popular cultural quotes and references that go with them: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “Out, damned spot!” and “If music be the food of love, play on.” It was compiled by fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare, John Heminge and Henry Condell, after his death in 1616. ![]() ![]() The “First Folio” is the first printing of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, and it was first published in 1623 by Edward Blount and William and Isaac Jaggard. ![]()
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