Handsomely bound for a collector “rich beyond the dreams of avarice” 14
SHAKESPEARE, William. Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London: for H. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, 1685 £175,000 [ 159969 ] Folio (360 × 232 mm). Nineteenth-century blue straight-grain morocco tooled in blind and gilt, edges gilt and gauffered, with the supralibros of Frederick Perkins (arms, gules two chevrons between three escallops argent; crest, out of a ducal coronet a unicorn’s head) stamped in gilt to covers. Engraved portrait by Martin Droeshout above the verses To the Reader on verso of the first leaf, cancel title, double column text within typographical rules, woodcut initials. Engraved bookplate of Frederick Perkins; bookplate of Thomas Henry Foster (1875–1951), his sale at Parke-Bernet 1 May 1957, lot 524; subsequently purchased from Scribner’s in 1968; thence in the Ken Rapoport collection.
The Fourth Folio, the last of the 17th-century editions of Shakespeare’s works, and the most grandly produced. There are two settings of the title page of this edition. The other has the names of H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley in the imprint, with a variant state adding that of R. Chiswell. To judge from institutional holdings, this title with the Knight–Saunders imprint is much the rarer of the two settings. This finely bound copy is from the library of Frederick Perkins (1780–1860), of Chipstead Place in Kent. He was the third son of John Perkins, founder of the brewing firm of Barclay, Perkins of Southwark, which by 1809 was the largest brewery in the world. The brewery was formed in 1781 when Perkins and Robert Barclay, of the Barclay banking family, purchased Henry Thrale’s Anchor brewery from Henry’s widow, Hester. Dr Johnson, a friend of the Thrales, commented, “Sir, we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” Frederick succeeded his father as head of the brewery and started collecting books about 1820. He left his library to his second son, George, who died in 1879. The greater part of his library, remarkable for its Shakespeare quartos and folios, was sold at auction by Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge on 10 July 1889. The 1623 First Folio was edited by John Heminge (d. 1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627), and seven plays were added by Philip Chetwin (d. 1680) for the Third Folio of 1663, of which only one, Pericles , is today recognized as the work of Shakespeare. This Fourth Folio was a straight reprint of the Third, issued by Henry Herringman in conjunction with other booksellers. In common with the Third, the Fourth Folio dropped the final “e” from Shakespeare’s name, a spelling that persisted until the beginning of the 19th century.
SIXTY FINE ITEMS
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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