About the Collection

The four seventeenth-century folio editions of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies were the first published collections of William Shakespeare’s plays and consequently are some of the most significant titles in all of English literature. The copies in the Rare & Special Books Collection were donated to the University Libraries by Thomas B. Lockwood (1873-1947) along with the rest of his personal collection of rare books in 1935. That same year the original Lockwood Memorial Library opened on UB’s South Campus, thanks to the financial support of Lockwood and his wife Marion Birge Lockwood. Along with the Shakespeare folios, Lockwood owned many of the most important and collectible first and other editions from the history of western printing.