West Chester University's Hidden Treasures
Shakespeare's First Folio, by Wendy Rosenfield, at West Chester University, Francis Harvey Green Library, with director Richard Swain and Ralph Leary. The Auchincruive Folio
By Wendy Rosenfield
Tucked away upstairs in West Chester University's library, behind a vault-locked door, through a reading room, an office, and another locked door, lucky visitors will find some some very valuable secrets. The school's rare books room holds a first edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a treatise on electricity owned by Benjamin Franklin, and another book hand-signed by nearly everyone who placed a pen on the Declaration of Independence. The missing John Hancock, explains Richard Swain, director of the school's Francis Harvey Green Library, belongs to Button Gwynnett, who, "basically signed the Declaration, went home, and died."
However, a nearby pile of books are of particular interest to participants gathered here for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region 2 event: It's a full set of William Shakespeare's First Folio. Swain says a pristine edition recently sold for $14 million; his, which was re-bound, cut to fit its new bindings, and features a slghtly later title page, was assessed at a measly $4 million. Printed in 1623 on French rag paper, and containing 36 of "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies," West Chester's copy is the "Auchincruive Folio," named for its original owner. As you'll see in the gallery, the Auchincruive also held a hidden treasure of its own.