Many of you will have heard the good news that a Shakespeare First Folio, stolen in 1998 from a public display at Durham University, has recently been recovered in Washington DC.
Kept out of press reports is the name of the expert called in by the Folger Library. This expert immediately identified the Folio as the copy missing from Durham University’s collection for ten years, despite the fact that it had been stripped of its binding and library marks.
We can reveal that it was Stephen C. Massey of Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller who instantly recognised the Folio as being the Durham University copy. Many of you will have met Stephen cheerily manning our stand at international book fairs in the USA. He joined our firm in 2002 as US consultant and continues to represent us.
Stephen began his career in books with Christie's in London in 1964. In 1975 he moved to New York where he founded the Printed Books and Manuscripts Department of Christie's New York, which started USA sales in 1977. In 1994, he sought out, secured for auction, catalogued and sold the Leonardo da Vinci Codex Leicester to Bill Gates for $30,802,500, still a world record auction price for manuscripts and books.
Since his independence from Christie's in 2001, Stephen has conducted appraisals for a variety of major institutions and acted as consultant for some notable private collectors. He was a consultant to Sotheby's for the series of sales from the Wardington Library in 2005 and 2006, and is currently senior international consultant for Bloomsbury Auctions in New York. Since 1996, he has been a regular participant appraiser on the US television version of Antiques Roadshow.
With all that experience behind him, Stephen would like to make it quite clear that the grossly inflated value of £15m quoted in all the news reports for the stolen Shakespeare First Folio did not originate with him.
