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World's most expensive book comes up for sale

This article is more than 13 years old
Sotheby's to auction Audubon's Birds of America and Shakespeare's First Folio from estate of late Lord Hesketh

By any standards they form part of a truly extraordinary library: a rare copy of the world's most expensive book, perhaps the most important book in English literature, a fascinating cache of letters from Elizabeth I to the jailor of Mary Queen of Scots, and more besides.

Title Page Of Shakespeare'S First Folio
The title page of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio, a copy of which is to be sold by Sotheby's. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Sotheby's will today announce it is to sell items from the collection of the late Lord Hesketh, including a stunning copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America, a book that grabbed the world-record auction price of $8.8m 10 years ago.

David Goldthorpe, a senior specialist in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said: "To have all these items in one sale is remarkable; it's certainly never happened in my time, 15 years, and people who've been here longer can't recall it."

Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, 2nd Baron Hesketh, belonged to a family that had collected books from the 19th century onwards and was an obsessive. He was an example of what is known as "high spot collecting" in that he did not specialise but needed to have the very best of the best and, with a big splurge of collecting in the early 1950s, he achieved it. Now, 55 years after his death, trustees of his will are selling books, manuscripts and letters with an estimated total worth of £8m to £10m.

One of the highlights is a copy of Birds of America valued at £4m to £6m. The book is bound on a huge scale – a "double elephant" folio – because Haiti-born Audubon wanted to paint the birds life size. He would travel across America, shooting the birds before carefully hanging them on bits of wire to paint them.

Not only was Audubon a skilled artist, he was also a persuasive seller, travelling to Britain to print the volumes and then offering Birds of America to the very rich as a prestige product. The copy being sold was first bought by an early paleobotanist, Henry Witham, "subscriber number 11", after an apparently very boozy dinner. Audubon writes in his ledger: "I determined in an instant that this gentleman was a gentleman indeed … We all talked much, for I believe the good wine of Mr Witham had a most direct effect."

Only 119 complete copies of Birds of America are known to exist today and 108 of those are owned by museums, libraries and universities.

A copy of Shakespeare's First Folio included in the sale is almost as rare and has been valued at £1m to £1.5m. The volume of 36 of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623, and, of the 750 that were probably printed, 219 are known to exist today, most in institutions and most in America. Goldthorpe said there were very few good copies in private hands and only two other textually complete copies with such an early binding. "To have it in this state of preservation is really quite extraordinary," he said.

The Elizabethan letters date from 1584-85 and were all written to Ralph Sadler – a name familiar to readers of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall – who was being asked to take over from a fed-up Lord Shrewsbury as jailor of Mary Queen of Scots. "It was a completely thankless job, to be honest," said Sotheby's specialist Gabriel Heaton.

The letters give detailed instructions, such as where guards should be placed, how many women she could have, the circumstances in which she was allowed outside, and so on.

They are signed by Elizabeth – with her recognisably grand, flourishing signature – but are otherwise mostly in the hand of scribes. One letter does contain a handwritten message from the Queen, to "use but old trust and new diligence".

Other letters – about 180 pages, which could fetch £150,000-£200,000 – include some written by her chief minister, Lord Burghley, and her spymaster, Francis Walsingham. "As far as we know, this cache of letters has not been studied by historians," said Heaton. "It is really quite exceptional to get a group of letters like this."

Further highlights of the sale on 7 December include a copy of William Caxton's Polychronicon, a stunningly illustrated copy of Plutarch's Lives of Romulus and Cato the Younger, and many original drawings from Pierre-Joseph Redouté's Les Roses.

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