The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio

(Hardback)

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Description

The Making of Shakespeares First Folio offers the first comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeares plays. In November 1623, the book arrived in the bookshop of the London publisher Edward Blount at the Black Bear. Long in the making, Master William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragediesas the First Folio was then knownappeared seven years after Shakespeares death. Nearly one thousand pages in length, the collection comprised thirty-six plays, half of which had never been previously published. Yet no fanfare surrounded the initial publication of Shakespeares First Foliono queue of eager readers, no launch to the top of the best-seller list.

Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural, and commercial moment. Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folios origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade. Generously illustrated in color with key pages from the publication and comparative works, this new edition combines the 2016 discovery of a hitherto unknown edition of the First Folio at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute with the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of this landmark publicationand the birth of Shakespeares towering reputation.

Reviews

"The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio . . . is appropriately published by the Bodleian Library, where Professor Smith played a main part in the 'Sprint for Shakespeare' campaign to stabilize and digitize their copy, which has supplied many of the book's rather sepia-coloured images . . . . This is a clearly written account of the main issues in its printing and publication, drawing on the standard authorities."

-- "Times Literary Supplement"
"The Bodleian Library's The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio . . . [is] full of admirable detail and scholarship, but what we want most of all is to see Shakespeare that feels new and fresh. This kind of performance does just that."
-- "Independent" (12/17/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Author Bio

Emma Smith is Fellow and Tutor in English at Hertford College, Oxford.