Folio (330 x 219 mm), 517 leaves (including additional A1), complete. Engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout in third state. Second half of the 18th century calf, single-fillet border on sides, spine flat, tooled in compartments, red leather label, yellow edges. Tiny hole in about a dozen leaves, occasionally affecting a few letters, paper flaw into text without loss in P5, short marginal worm-track in Lll2-5, occasional small stain or faint spotting, small wax spot on a few leaves, but in splendid condition overall, tall and exceptionally fresh; a fine copy.

Soon after the printing of the Third Folio was completed in 1663, Chetwind learned that seven additional “Shakespeare” plays were available. Realizing these would enhance the appeal of his edition, he had several hundred copies printed of a new title page and the additional plays. He re-issued the book with the portrait of Shakespeare placed above Ben Jonson’s verse and the title page expanded to list the added plays and dated 1664. This is the issue usually met with and was clearly how Chetwind intended the book to be marketed. Chetwind also offered the additional matter for previous buyers of the 1663 issue to insert themselves, as shown by a few copies that have both states of the title, with or without the additional plays.

London booksellers and their stock clustered together in St Paul’s churchyard, the centre of the book trade in England, operating from small shops erected between the buttresses. On 10 December 1663 Samuel Pepys visited the shop of his bookseller, Joshua Kirton, in St Paul’s churchyard and was tempted by the offer of various books, including what was surely a recently published copy of the Third Folio. When the old cathedral went up in flames in the Great Fire of London of 1666, it took with it a significant portion of unsold books stored in the churchyard. Book historians have always thought this to be the principal reason for the signal rarity of the Third Folio.

The printing of the third folio

Philip Chetwind (d. about 1682) was originally a clothworker, not a member of the Company of Stationers. When he married Mary, widow of Robert Allot (d. 1635), chief rights-holder in the Second Folio, he had to jump through various legal hoops to inherit her husband’s copyrights, which, according to the Company’s usual practises, ought to have lapsed on her husband’s death. He also secured rights to Ben Jonson plays, which were utilized in the second folio of Jonson’s works (1640/1) published by Richard Meighen. Chetwind’s name alone appears on the title; other proprietors were Eleanor Cotes, Miles Flesher, William Leake, John Martin, Gabriel Bedell, Thomas Collins, and Alice Warren. The printing was divided between Roger Daniel, a second shop (perhaps that of John Hayes or Thomas Ratcliffe), and Alice Warren.

Provenance:

Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn (1751-1804), Baronet, Member of Parliament, mathematician, astronomer, and Fellow of the Royal Society (signature dated 1800 on flyleaf, along with a note “Third edit. Much scarcer than the 2d”, no. 5628 on pastedown). At his death in 1804, his collection was inherited by his daughter Julia and passed by descent: on Julia’s death in 1814 it passed to her husband, Charles Jenkinson (1784-1851, later third Earl of Liverpool);

Lady Selina Jenkinson (1812-1883), Lord Liverpool’s second daughter, whose first marriage was to William Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (1812-1835);

Lady Mary Selina Charlotte Wentworth-Fitzwilliam (1833-1899), only daughter of the above, who married William Henry Berkeley, second Viscount Portman (1829-1919);

Henry Berkeley, third Viscount Portman (1860-1923), whose wife Emma Andalusia Frere Kennedy (d.1929) was the widow of Lionel George Henry Seymour Dawson-Damer, fifth Earl of Portarlington (1858-1900); and continued by descent;

Christie’s London, 25 May 2016, lot 103, £362,500.

Bartlett 121; Gregg III, pp. 1116–17; Pforzheimer 908; Wing S2913.