Shakespeare second folio to make $300,000 at San Francisco auction?

Shakespeare's second folio edition of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, is coming to auction next month.

The first printing, first issue of the rare Aspley imprint, will sell in San Francisco on September 13 with a $300,000 high estimate.

Shakespeare second folio
Not as rare as a third folio

The second folio from 1632 contains all the plays included in the first folio of 1623, and features close to 1,700 changes from the first outing.

It also includes the new addition of a Milton poem dedicated to Shakespeare, An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare. It is the first instance of a Milton work in print.

William Aspley was one of five publishers of the second folios, and his imprints are among the rarest. The work's value has also been heightened by its superb binding in morocco by Riviere.

A second folio sold for £42,000 ($66,440) in 2005.

Of the 750 first folios produced in 1623, around 230 survive. A copy set a world record for Shakespeare's work when it was sold to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $6.1m in 2001.

A third folio from 1663 sold for $374,500 in May. Third folios are rarer than second folios as many of the unsold editions were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The sale will also feature William Bradford's 1873 work The Arctic Regions, regarded as one of the finest illustrated books on the Arctic. It has a high valuation of $180,000.

A first edition of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, from 1776, will also feature, with a $150,000 estimate.

View our stunning collection of books and manuscripts here.

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