Books After completing my visit to the Sir John Soane's Museum, I headed to the British Library to see which of their First Folios is currently on display. Fortunately it isn't the copy exhibited at the Shakespeare North Playhouse last November but a different one to tick off the list (or make bold and put [IRL] afterwards), with the shelf mark C.39.k.15 and available to also view online at First Folios Compared. Two down from their collection, three to go.
The Shakespeare First Folios tells us this particular copy is notable for containing "one of only four extant impressions of the portrait in its first state". As this Folger article explains, subtle changes were made during the print runs of the Folio. In the first Shakespeare's head doesn't look like its attached to his body and so the plate was modified to introduce a shadow behind his head. This is the only BL copy with this version. The others are at the Folger and the Bodleian. Outstanding.
The provenance for the book is fairly straightforward. It was bought in about 1820 by John Delafield Phelps of Lincoln's Inn who judging by this list of items and subsequent posthumous auction catalogue from 1842 was a big collector of things. What wasn't sold off was bequethed to his nephew, William John Phelps, who was also at Lincoln's Inn and became a Justice of Peace for Gloucestershire and High Sheriff in 1860 and then passed down through a couple more generations of the family.
The genealogy of the family is labyrinthine by the way, stretching back (as far as I can tell) to Matthew Hale, the jurist born in Shakespeare's lifetime who worked for both Royalists and Oliver Cromwell during and after the civil war and who's writings are still being quoted today - he's even mentioned in Roe v Wade. None of which is really relevant to the book, but is at least a demonstration of how some Folios found their way into families with prominent establishment roots and stayed there.
The book was eventually inherited of a Captain A.W. Clifford and was purchased in a posthumous sale by the rare bookseller Bernard Quaritch who appears a lot in the folio catalogue (and whose titular company still exists) who paid £4200 and then flipped it to the British Museum for £11,900, who could afford it thanks to the aid of Tory Politician Charles Young. Incidentally the Folio catalogue doesn't say who any of these people are. I'm filling in the blanks as we go along.
The book has been in public ownership ever since, firstly on display at the King's Library and then moved the British Library when that became too small for purpose. At some point in its life the book has been "washed" in which a volume is suspended in water then slowly dried in order to remove stains. This may have been before the British Museum took possession, because they've placed their stamp in numerous places.
Further sightings:
