Melville House Books

Raymond Scott and friend

Raymond Scott, rare book dealer from Tyne and Wear, England, has pleaded not guilty to the theft and handling and transporting stolen goods, telling the police that was being framed by corrupt university staff, according to the latest report from the Independent.

As the newspaper recounts,

Scott was arrested after he handed staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, asking for it to be authenticated. The 53-year-old claimed to have discovered the stolen artefact in Cuba.

But staff at the world-renowned library recognised the folio as a unique first edition taken a decade earlier from Durham University’s library on Palace Green, and called in the British Embassy, Durham Police and the FBI.

Each copy of the folio, printed in 1623, was unique and could be identified by its dimensions and by characteristic marks and printing errors, a trial at Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Mobylives has been following the case of the theft (see here and here). Scott, a flamboyant character, who arrived at his hearing in a silver limousine, sporting a Panama hat and flashing victory signs at reporters, has told the court that experts desperate to recover the stolen Folio had conspired against him.

According to the Independent, “A jury heard how he told Durham Police detectives: ‘I am not saying that the experts are lying or that they are being deceptive but it rather looks as if their brief has been to compare the Cuban copy with known records of the Durham copy and look for similarities. It is all a very cosy world. It is sort of like a conspiracy; they are ganging up against me.’”

He also told the court,

“‘Do you seriously think I’m going to walk into the foremost Shakespeare library in the world and using my own name and address, with my fingerprints all over it, hand them a copy knowing and believing that it’s got a doubtful provenance? A book worth millions — that I’m going to walk into such a place with such a book and ask to see the head librarian?

There is no way if I had any knowledge that this was the Durham folio or a stolen copy that I would walk into the Folger Library, show the book to the head librarian and then leave all my bank details, my own name and address and show them my British passport.’”

Hmmmm…. does sound kind of foolish when you put it that way…. But the prosecution alleges that Scott stole the folio from a secured glass cabinet at an exhibition of ancient English literature at Durham University’s Palace Green Library in 1998, and was planning to cut it up and sell it off piecemeal on the open market to pay off his debts related to his long standing affair with a Cuban woman.

The trial continues.

Valerie Merians is the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.