From CNN:
A rare copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sold for almost $10 million Wednesday, becoming the most expensive work of literature ever to appear at auction, according to Christie’s.
The collection of 36 plays, published shortly after the playwright’s death, is one of only five complete copies still in private hands, the auction house said.
The First Folio is considered among the most important collections of literature in the English language. It contains 18 works that had not previously appeared in print, and would otherwise have been lost to history, including “Macbeth” and “Twelfth Night.”
Published in 1623 by the actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, friends of the English playwright, the book is formally titled “Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,” based on the three genres the pair used to categorize the plays.
The version sold on Wednesday was the first complete copy to appear at auction since 2001. It was put up for sale by Mills College in Oakland, California, which had kept the item in its collection since 1977.
