?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-Speare. Gent.
London: Printed at London by Tho. Cotes and are to be sold by Iohn Benson, dwelling in St. Dunstans Church-yard, 1640.
First collected edition, octavo, woodcut printer's device to title; lacking 15 leaves: the portrait [unsigned]; commendatory poems *3 and *4; A1 [second title], and all after L1 [L2-8, M1-4: the section, "An addition of some Excellent Poems," which contains verse in praise of Shakespeare's work by other poets]; bound in full modern smooth-grained brown morocco by Bramhall & Menzies, tooled and ruled in blind, gold lettering to spine, housed in a custom large octavo-format folding case; with unidentified ownership inscriptions and notes circa 1652 (owners name trimmed away by the binder's knife); including six lines of marginal notes accompanying the text of the poem "Sympathizing Love," [D6] providing alternate versions of a few lines, for example, "words are unconstant like wind" as opposed to Shakespeare's original line, "Words are easie, like the wind"; minute ownership stamp with the initials HR just above the imprint; signature of British book collector Thomas Jolley (1802-1854) on front free endleaf dated 1822, Jolley's library was sold in a series of auctions between 1843 and 1853; bookplate of County Borough of Warrington Municipal Library inside front board; joints rubbed, some leaves toned and discolored; some trimmed closely at fore-edges, corners bumped; other signs of handling; 5 1/8 x 3 1/4 in.
