Rugby School auctions rare first editions including a Shakespeare folio for £775,000

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One of Britain’s oldest boarding schools has raised £775,000 by auctioning first editions of classic books including a rare William Shakespeare folio.

Rugby School in Warwickshire caused controversy last week after they announced they were flogging over 300 texts to raise funds for bursaries.

The Bard’s Fourth Folio from 1685 was among the lots discovered in a storeroom at the posh institution and sold for £38,000 yesterday.

The collection also included a first edition Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which fetched £8,500 while a rare copy of Robinson Crusoe made £8,000. 

The Bard’s Fourth Folio from 1685 was among the lots discovered in a storeroom at Rugby School in Warwickshire and sold for £38,000 yesterday

The collection also included a first edition Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which fetched £8,500 while a rare copy of Robinson Crusoe made £8,000

The collection also included a first edition Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which fetched £8,500 while a rare copy of Robinson Crusoe made £8,000

Rugby School in Warwickshire caused controversy last week after they announced they were flogging over 300 texts to raise funds for bursaries

Rugby School in Warwickshire caused controversy last week after they announced they were flogging over 300 texts to raise funds for bursaries

The most expensive lot was another Shakespeare book – a Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies second edition – from 1632, which sold for a staggering £48,000.

Rupert Powell, deputy chairman at Forum Auctions, which hosted the sale, told the BBC the auction had fetched ‘more than double’ the lowest estimates.

He said: ‘To have four different folio editions of Shakespeare in the same sale is unusual, there was lots of interest before and during, on the phone and online.’

But alumni and academics alike are appalled by the move, with acclaimed novelist AN Wilson describing governors at the £37,000-a-year school as ‘complete vandals’.

He previously told the Mail: ‘It’s terrible. I would never dream now of leaving anything to that school because they would just flog it.’    

A rare first edition of John Milton's Paradise Milton was also auctioned yesterday

The most expensive lot was another Shakespeare book ¿ a Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies second edition ¿ from 1632, which sold for a staggering £48,000

A rare first edition of John Milton’s Paradise Milton was also auctioned yesterday

A rare first edition of  Don Quixote, a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, was also sold

A rare first edition of  Don Quixote, a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, was also sold

Rugby School in Warwickshire caused controversy last week after they announced they were flogging over 300 texts to raise funds for bursaries

Rugby School in Warwickshire caused controversy last week after they announced they were flogging over 300 texts to raise funds for bursaries

Rugby: England’s ancient boarding school, home to the beloved sport and alumni Lewis Carroll and Salman Rushdie 

Rugby School is an English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18 in Rugby, Warwickshire. Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.

Up to 1667, the school remained in comparative obscurity. Its re-establishment by Thomas Arnold during his time as Headmaster, from 1828 to 1841, was seen as the forerunner of the Victorian public school.

It is one of the original nine ‘great public schools’ considered by the Clarendon Commission of 1864 and subsequently subject to the Public Schools Act 1868.

The school’s alumni – or ‘Old Rugbeians’ – include a UK Prime Minister, and prominent poets, scientists, writers and soldiers.

Rugby School was founded in 1567 as a provision in the will of Lawrence Sheriff, who had made his fortune supplying groceries to Queen Elizabeth I of England.

In 1845, a committee of Rugby schoolboys, William Delafield Arnold, WW Shirley and Frederick Hutchins, wrote the ‘Laws of Football as Played At Rugby School’, the first published set of laws for any code of football. 

In 1975 two girls were admitted to the sixth form, and the first girls’ house opened three years later, followed by three more. In 1992, the first 13-year-old girls arrived, and in 1995 Rugby had its first-ever Head Girl, Louise Woolcock, who appeared on the front page of The Times.

The legend of William Webb Ellis and the origin of the game of rugby is commemorated by a plaque. The story that Webb Ellis was the first to pick up a football and run with it, and thus invented a new sport, has been known to be a myth since it was investigated by the Old Rugbeian Society in 1895.

Alumni include the purported father of the sport of rugby William Webb Ellis, the inventor of Australian rules football Tom Wills, the war poets Rupert Brooke and John Gillespie Magee, Jr, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, author and mathematician Lewis Carroll, poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold, the author and social critic Salman Rushdie and the Irish writer and republican Francis Stuart.

The famous boarding school, which was founded in 1567 in Shakespeare’s home county, is the birthplace of the sport of rugby by William Webb Ellis.

Academics raised concerns the texts will now gather dust in private libraries rather than be studied by experts.

Professor Michael Dobson, director of the Birmingham University Shakespeare Institute, said: ‘I think it is a shame. These books are quite likely to leave this country.

‘They are likely to go into a private collection and be treated as investments and will end up somewhere where other people are not able to look at them.

‘Rugby has a library at the school where people are able to go to look at them if needs be. It is in an area that has a strong Shakespearean tradition.

‘It is always sad when you see books that had been available to see get locked away.

‘It doesn’t seem sustainable and it reduces the value of the institution.

‘Rugby have an extraordinary library there, but they seem to be saying literary heritage isn’t important anymore.’

But the school, which was attended by William Webb Ellis, the inventor of the sport of rugby, defended the move.

It says it aims to raise money to fund bursaries for poorer students who cannot afford fees and that the books deserved to be preserved in specialist conditions.

Headmaster Peter Green said: ‘The decision by Rugby School’s Governing Body to sell these rare books is twofold.

‘They deserve to be preserved, stored – and enjoyed – in specialist conditions.

‘Secondly, the School is committed, as a registered charity, to use its resources to benefit current and future students.

‘Rugby School already operates a generous bursary system, with more than 40 per cent of our students receiving some form of scholarship remission or bursary support.

‘In addition, our Arnold Foundation fully funds places for talented children who would benefit from a boarding education, but are without the means to fund it.’

Mr Green said the books cover a range of topics from horsemanship, duelling and mountaineering; botany, horticulture and ornithology; sermons and proclamations; jurisprudence and military history; psalms and poetry and maps.

Most of them belonged to Matthew Holbeche Bloxam, who attended Rugby School from 1813 to 1821.

He went on to become an amateur historian, a genealogist, archaeologist, naturalist, antiquarian and art-collector.

Mr Green added: ‘Between the covers of these extraordinary books are examples of creative expression, tales of adventure and skill, passages of learning, reflection, and wonder at the world, written by men and women of enquiring minds.

‘It is entirely fitting that the proceeds from the sale of this collection will go towards extending the benefit of a Rugby education, an education where boys and girls are encouraged to keep asking questions and challenging the answers.’