The China Mail - Set of Shakespeare folios to be sold in rare London auction

The First Folio, published in 1623, was the first collection of William Shakespeare's plays and is considered one of the most important books in English literature.

Without it, up to half of the writer's plays would likely have been lost, including "Macbeth", "Twelfth Night" and "Julius Caesar".

Around 235 of the 750 copies believed to have been published during this initial printing have survived.

A new print run in 1632 gave rise to the Second Folio, which contained amendments to the initial folio, while the Third Folio containing seven additional plays appeared in 1664.

The third is the rarest of the folios, with many copies believed to have been lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The sequence was completed with the Fourth Folio in 1685.

Generations of bibliophiles have dreamed of owning a full set, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve with fewer copies in private hands.

The last time all four were offered as a single lot was in New York in 1989.

The set to be sold by Sotheby's on May 23, with an estimate of £3.5 to £4.5 million, was brought together in 2016.

"The folios were large, expensive, and prestigious publications that embodied a claim that Shakespeare, a professional writer in the commercial theatre (rather than a poet writing for an elite), had created a legacy that deserved to be passed down the ages," Sotheby's said.

"The vast majority of all four Folios are to be found in institutions and this is a rare opportunity to acquire a complete set," it added.

The First Folio was published about seven years after Shakespeare's death and contains thirty-six plays, eighteen of them printed for the first time.

Famous diarist Samuel Pepys bought a Folio in 1664 and King Charles I read and annotated a copy of the Second Folio while imprisoned in the 1640s.

A.Sun--ThChM