Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of its place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognise Shakespeare.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Edward Dering goes shopping 1: Owning 2: Reading 3: Decoding 4: Performing 5: Perfecting Conclusion: 'We can afford no more at such a price'

About the Author :
Emma Smith teaches at Hertford College, Oxford, and has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and on the reception of Shakespeare.

Review :
A fascinating and provocative book. Delightful. Her diligence in considering every aspect of the Folio's material existence is commendable. This is a beautifully judged book about books, impeccably researched yet wry and affectionate. Smith's account of the Folio's distinguished career is very nicely written and consistently entertaining and informative... It is the modern equivalent of a magic book, and Smith's own book does justice to that magic. Emma Smith's book comes as a welcome corrective to the fascination with Shakespeare the man ... as it is the "biography" of something far more interesting: a book. I've been looking forward to Emma Smith's Shakespeare's First Folio ever since I heard her give a paper that asked, "can you actually read the First Folio?" It's that sort of arresting question that wouldn't occur to many other people that makes her scholarship so inventive and absorbing. A charming, enlightening account, not so much of the origins, as of the fortunes over the years subsequently, of the great edition. Smith is one of the cleverest scholars around, but her academic weight is balanced with an accessible tone and wry humour. A marvelous bit of scholarship. Detailed without being dry, playful without being silly, it's a well-researched, thoroughly balanced account of this 'iconic book.' The book is well illustrated, and Smith writes with great style. ... offers a wealth of important information, fascinating episodes, and sophisticated critical insight. It will, therefore, be of great interest to a variety of scholars in different disciplines, with literary critics, cultural historians, and scholars of book history foremost among them. [A] compassionate biography... a wonderful testimony to the 'world's most expensive book' and the readers who keep it that way. This book is a very good read, a largely anecdotal but always entertaining account of copies of the Shakespeare First Folio from their production in 1623 to the present ... the pleasure and instruction this book will bring to the casual bibliophile or the Shakespeare enthusiast. Smith's second book, Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, picks up where The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio leaves off, tracing different ways of interacting with the Folio owning, reading, forging, acting, collecting, and studying from the seventeenth century to our own time, and from Europe and America to Africa and Asia.