385-year-old stolen Shakespeare edition recovered

A 385-year-old volume of Shakespeare stolen in England a decade ago, valued $30 million (€18.86m), has been recovered after a man walked into a library in Washington and asked to have it authenticated.

Police in Durham, northeast England, said yesterday they had arrested a 51-year-old man over the theft of the First Folio edition of 1623, which scholars consider one of the most important printed books in the English language.

It was among seven centuries-old books and manuscripts stolen in December 1998 from a display case at the Durham University library.

The mystery began to unravel two weeks ago when a man brought the First Folio to Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and asked to have it verified as genuine. Police said the man claimed to be an international businessman who had bought the volume in Cuba.

Staff at the library asked to keep the book while they did research and discovered it was stolen. They informed the FBI.

Police said the man was arrested on Thursday at an address in Washington, near Durham. He was being questioned yesterday while detectives searched his home.

The book remains at the Folger Library. Durham Police said authorities felt it would be safer there than in “an FBI warehouse next to piles of cocaine and cannabis”.

Plans were being made to bring the book back to Durham.

American writer Bill Bryson, the university’s chancellor, called the recovery “wonderful news”.

“Like Shakespeare himself, this book is a national treasure giving a rare and beautiful snapshot of Britain’s incredible literary heritage,” he said.

The First Folio was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death and was the first collected edition of his plays. Some 750 copies were printed. Only about 40 complete copies of the book are known to exist.

The university hoped to recover other stolen works, which include a 15th-century manuscript with part of a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer and an edition of Beowulf dated 1812.