Shakespeare’s folios

Four folios of British playwright William Shakespeare were sold for nearly 2.5 million pounds (about 3.67 million U.S. dollars) at Christie’s London auction on Wednesday.

Margaret Ford, international head of Books & Manuscripts at Christie’s, said the four books were acquired by the same private U.S. collector, with the unrecorded First Folio going for 1.8 million pounds.

The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which, including Macbeth and The Tempest, might have been lost without this edition. It was estimated to sell for 800,000 to 1.2 million pounds.

The Second Folio was sold for 194,500 pounds, third 362,500 and fourth 47,500 pounds.

The First Folio, published in 1623, was a commercial success and was followed only nine years later by the Second Folio, providing a page-by-page reprint of the First.

Xinhua/NAN