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Excerpt from Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, Tragedies
Steevens's comment on this incident was to the effect that the First Folio had become 'the most expensive single book in our language.', Much followed to corroborate this opinion. A year or two afterwards Payne of the Mews Gate by Charing Cross made over a First Folio to the zealous virtuoso, Constantine Jennings, for no less a sum than seventy guineas. In 1812, when the Duke of Roxburghe's Copy again changed hands at auction, Steevens's pronouncement was signally confirmed anew. For a second time it scored a record price, then leaping up to �0. But other Copies soon outstripped this sum. In 1818 at the Midgeley sale, Thomas Grenville, who subsequently bequeathed his library to the British Museum, paid �1 161. For a First Folio, and thereby created a new standard. The bibliographer, Dibdin, wrote somewhat prematurely that 'this was the highest price ever given or likely to,be given, for the volume Although the amount was not exceeded for thirty-three years, it was quickly, approached very closely thrice. For, the copy belonging to the actor, John Philip Kemble, James Boswell the younger paid in 1821 �2 or. 7d., and the same copy passed. Five years later to Sir John Soane for �0 5 (it is now in the Soane Museum). In 1827 John Dent's copy was bought, by Henry Perkins, the brewer, for �0 51. It was not, however, till 1850 that a new advance began. In the interval prices varied from nineteen to fifty-five guineas for many fair copies in which defects had been supplied by facsimile pages or by pages taken from later folios. In 1850 a copy, formerly belonging to Sir John Rennie, which had been bought in at his sale in 1829 for � 8r., fetched �4. In 1851 James Beaufoy paid �1 101. For a good copy sold with the library of the Right Hon. Charles Watkin Williams Wynn Three yearslater a slight advance was made by James Lenox, a New York collector, who acquired at a London sale for �3 161. The lichfield-baker copy. This -was the'first occasion on which American competition workedwith palpable effect.
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