OT news / p2pnet: They say a picture’s worth a thousand words – unless the words happen to have been Shakespeare’s, in which case they’re worth a whole lot more than that.

A first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, “attracted feverish bidding at auction in London yesterday before selling for £2.8 million (about $5,158,108),” says The Times Online.

“Moments after the auctioneer opened bids at £1.6 million, two competing buyers, standing at the back of the crush of onlookers, were pushing the figure higher and higher.

“The 1623 volume they were bidding for – originally priced 20 shillings – is considered to be the most important book in English. It transformed artistic imagination, language, literature and the performing arts.”

Seven hundred and fifty copies were printed, and about 230 are still around, 147 of them residing in the US and 46 in Britain, including five in the British Library, says The Guardian Unlimited, adding:

“Yesterday’s copy was sold by Dr Williams’s Library in Bloomsbury, London. The library, consisting largely of theological books, was set up by the nonconformist minister Daniel Williams (1643-1716).”

Digg this.

Also See:
The Times Online – Fine profit as First Folio fetches £2.8m — now go we in content, July 14, 2006
The Guardian Unlimited – £2.5m Shakespeare first folio sets UK sale record, April 21, 2006.

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