A priceless Shakespeare collection offering unprecedented insight into the original works that influenced the playwright is to be returned to British soil.

John Wolfson, an American collector and playwright, has pledged to bequeath more than 450 works to the Globe theatre, including a First Folio of 18 Shakespeare plays, bound together shortly after he died in the early 17th century.

Mr Wolfson, who is based in New York, began buying the works 30 years ago. The bequest was hailed yesterday as an unsurpassed collection of texts. The collection features 16th, 17th and 18th century plays as well as texts by writers who are thought to have influenced Shakespeare. It will be housed in a new research centre at the Globe.

Patrick Spottiswoode, director of Globe Education, told The Times: “The intellectual range and depth of the collection is amazing. It starts with the sources of Shakespeare’s plays in their original French, Italian and English.

“Then there’s a series from his contemporaries so you have a fantastic window into Shakespeare’s time. Then we go into the Reformation and the adaptation of his plays. It is awe inspiring.” The Globe, in London, was built in 1997 to recreate the original theatre in which Shakespeare put on many of his plays.

The first Shakespeare folio took nearly two years to print at a shop near the Barbican in the City of London. It is thought that 750 copies were printed in 1623. In the 1990s 228 were recorded still in existence.

None of the 18 plays featured in the first edition, including The Tempest, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Antony And Cleopatra, had been published before.

Mr Wolfson said that he did not want his collection broken up after he died. “The collection is worth much more than the sum of its parts. Having witnessed the break-up of many collections, I consider myself fortunate to have found a place as appropriate for my books as Shakespeare’s Globe.

“Here it will be possible for the collection which I have put together, to remain together, and to be used to great advantage by students, scholars and educators for generations to come.”

Peter Kyle, Shakespeare’s Globe chief executive, said: “We are delighted and privileged that John Wolfson has bequeathed his wonderful collection to us. We are running a fund-raising campaign for a new library appropriately to store and give access to these rare books to the wider world.”

Saved for the nation

— In February Anthony d’Offay donated 725 works by artists including Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys and Damien Hirst – conservatively valued at £125 million – to the nation. It will be jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate

— The Rubens masterpiece The Apotheosis of James I, a preparatory sketch for the ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall, was saved in October after the Tate raised £6 million, helped by public donations

— In 1999 an unknown art-lover rescued Gainsborough’s painting The Byam Family when it was sold at auction by Marlborough College in Wiltshire. It has since been donated on long loan to the Holborne Museum in Bath

— Recently discovered notes by Norman Reid, a former director of the Tate gallery, claim that the gallery talked itself out of £630 million worth of paintings from Mark Rothko in 1965. The gallery reportedly accepted less than a third of the works originally pledged by the artist after he became close friends with Mr Reid

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