Carnegie Mellon University Libraries

This copy of the First Folio seems to contain leaves that have been inserted from another copy of the Folio. The watermark anomalies in this copy would corroborate this hypothesis. At the time of the publication of Rasmussen and West’s The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, this volume was used by Carnegie Mellon University librarians to teach graphic design students about ‘bad printing’. This First Folio came to Carnegie Mellon University’s collection in 1974 when Charles J. Rosenbloom, a book collector who attended Yale University, gifted it to the University. Prior to that, the volume’s first known owner is Marshall C. Lefferts who acquired the volume in 1892. He later sold it to a New York bookseller, George H. Richmond, who resold the copy to William Augustus Read, a banker. When Read died, his wife, Caroline Hicks Seaman Read inherited the copy. In 1936, the volume set a new price record for the public sale of a First Folio. It was sold to Charles Sessler, a Philadelphia book dealer for $28,000.