Crowden & Wilcox stoneware jug, $5,250.

NEW YORK CITY – The First Folio by William Shakespeare, dated 1623, and one of only five complete copies in private hands, was sold October 8 at Christie’s New York for $6.166 million. This is the highest price ever paid for a work by Shakespeare at auction and a world auction record for any Seventeenth Century book.

This First Folio, arguably the most important book in English literature, was part of the sale of the Library of Abel E. Berland, a Midwest book collector. Several other world auction records were set during the sale.

The sale of The Library of Abel E. Berland Part I-Important English Literature, Science and Philosophy totaled $12,230,880 and was 99 percent sold by value and 94 percent sold by lot.