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Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book
This is a biography of a 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 their 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 owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare.
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 owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare.
379 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 2016
22 people are currently reading
296 people want to read
About the author
Emma Smith
44 books101 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford. She has lectured widely in the UK and beyond on the First Folio and on Shakespeare and early modern drama. Her research interests include the methodology of writing about theatre, and developing analogies between cinema, film theory and early modern performance. Her recent publications include Macbeth: Language and Writing (2013), The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide (Cambridge, 2012) and Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (2016).
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford. She has lectured widely in the UK and beyond on the First Folio and on Shakespeare and early modern drama. Her research interests include the methodology of writing about theatre, and developing analogies between cinema, film theory and early modern performance. Her recent publications include Macbeth: Language and Writing (2013), The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide (Cambridge, 2012) and Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (2016).
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 19, 2020
In reading this book I was struck by the way that this could have been so much better of a book than what it was had the author come at this task with a different perspective. There are interesting parts of books here, but the author just is not able to put them together and her own focus on certain aspects of class and property tend to drag the book down with leftist politicking. When the author is able to focus on things that are present within reality and not her own fevered imagination, there are interesting elements to the book such as the author's desire to look at provenance and the way in which the transfer of a book from a used book of little value to a collectible incentivizes theft and fraud, and how the author discusses the way in which these things occur. When a book has been around for centuries there are different ways to look at it, and this book chooses to look at the First Folio as an artifact that people do things with more than as a book to be read and savored and enjoyed. So long as you can relate and appreciate that, this book can be appreciated itself.
This book is about 350 pages long or so and is divided into five chapters. The book begins with acknowledgements, a note on the texts, as well as a list of illustrations, and then begins with an introduction that discusses the earliest known purchase of the First Folio and what that means in terms of the original customers of the book and how long it took for the First Folio to be an item that was collected apart from the audience of those who liked to read plays and watch them performed in the theater. After that the author spends a lot of time discussing the ownership of the First Folio over the course of the last four centuries (1). Following this comes a look at how the book was read through the marks that were left in owned copies and various marginalia (2). This is then followed by a look at how some readers of Shakespeare's plays sought to use them as a code that had to be solved (3). After this comes a glance at the performance of Shakespeare's plays and how it often varied from what the First Folio showed (4). Finally, the author looks at editing and the perfection of the book over time (5), after which there is a conclusion and then a bibliography and index.
Is the First Folio worth the fuss it receives? It's hard to tell. It is the first book which collects Shakespeare's plays together and views them as a collected body of work. And even though there are definitely errors in the text it is striking to note just how early Shakespeare's plays were given the treatment that Ben Johnson's were as being viewed in a literary fashion, which was a novelty at the time. Yet aside from the question of proofreading, the author shows little interest in the text of the First Folio itself. What does it mean that the book didn't include Shakespeare's poetry, especially his sonnets, or that it was missing Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen, as well as the late and lamented Cardenio? The author appears less interested in exploring such matters than she is in writing about the hands in which the First Folio met and the way that people bought it and traded it and how it reflected the relative economic position of England and the United States over the course of the 20th century, and even Japan towards the end of the 20th century. The author appears to be as interested, if not more, in the First Folio as a status good as she is in its value as a book to be read and enjoyed.
This book is about 350 pages long or so and is divided into five chapters. The book begins with acknowledgements, a note on the texts, as well as a list of illustrations, and then begins with an introduction that discusses the earliest known purchase of the First Folio and what that means in terms of the original customers of the book and how long it took for the First Folio to be an item that was collected apart from the audience of those who liked to read plays and watch them performed in the theater. After that the author spends a lot of time discussing the ownership of the First Folio over the course of the last four centuries (1). Following this comes a look at how the book was read through the marks that were left in owned copies and various marginalia (2). This is then followed by a look at how some readers of Shakespeare's plays sought to use them as a code that had to be solved (3). After this comes a glance at the performance of Shakespeare's plays and how it often varied from what the First Folio showed (4). Finally, the author looks at editing and the perfection of the book over time (5), after which there is a conclusion and then a bibliography and index.
Is the First Folio worth the fuss it receives? It's hard to tell. It is the first book which collects Shakespeare's plays together and views them as a collected body of work. And even though there are definitely errors in the text it is striking to note just how early Shakespeare's plays were given the treatment that Ben Johnson's were as being viewed in a literary fashion, which was a novelty at the time. Yet aside from the question of proofreading, the author shows little interest in the text of the First Folio itself. What does it mean that the book didn't include Shakespeare's poetry, especially his sonnets, or that it was missing Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen, as well as the late and lamented Cardenio? The author appears less interested in exploring such matters than she is in writing about the hands in which the First Folio met and the way that people bought it and traded it and how it reflected the relative economic position of England and the United States over the course of the 20th century, and even Japan towards the end of the 20th century. The author appears to be as interested, if not more, in the First Folio as a status good as she is in its value as a book to be read and enjoyed.
June 17, 2017
Emma Smith examines the reception of the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays (36 in total) as a physical object as well as literary text. Her book is a history of the first Folio as a thing-in-itself, the book as a cultural object, an artifact of its time and place of production and also something of significant value even though it is not a particularly rare book.
She illuminates the “contexts” out of which it was created, explaining the theatrical practices that influenced the writing and formatting of printed plays—there were no act or scene breaks, for example, since actors were given only their “sides”, the speeches and dialog of their characters, so they couldn’t memorize the entire play and sell it to unscrupulous printers ; the effects of performance rights on the publishing schedule and physical layout, since the rights weren’t with the author but with the company that first staged a play with no reservations; printing techniques and typesetting techniques especially hand composition by compositors with chancy grasps of spelling that determined the overall quality ; and political conditions, both international and local, that informed the book’s reception and Shakespeare’s reputation.
The Folio was pulled together from so-called “foul quartos” unauthorized printing, (often from notes made from the audience)without reference to Shakespeare himself; prompt books left over from productions of the plays and their own memories as actors in productions during Shakespeare’s career, often sharing the stage with him. Eighteen plays are known today only because they are included in the first Folio, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like it, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Coriolanus and Cymbeline. Without the first Folio we might only know that such plays existed without a shred of Shakespeare’s poetry from them.
For decades it was treated less as a materially valuable object and more as a common but prized and useful household item to be used (read) during normal domestic life. Several copies have food stains from reading while at the dinner or breakfast table; at least one has the paw prints of a cat who, as cats do, may have demanded its owner’s attention by occupying the book he was reading; many have unremarkable notations—lists, sums and other useful notes written in margins—while still others have “corrections” to misspellings, doodles or broken letters filled in by a reader. In other words, Shakespeare was a regular companion and the Folios were purchased to be read and were part of the daily life of the owner.
This changed over time and some owners made efforts to brand their own copies as unique (including one hopeful who changed the publication date of his to 1622, a year earlier than everyone else’s so it would be the FIRST first Folio), and the fashion for booksellers to advertise their particular copy as the tallest, the widest or the largest known to be in existence. The typical book is 908 pages printed on 227 sheet of cotton and silk rag paper, four pages per sheet printed front and back, The Folio was typeset and bound in "sixes" – 3 sheets of paper, taken together, were folded into a booklet-like quire or gathering of 6 leaves of 12 pages.
The Folio was controversial, although not due to its contents as such but because it was given the same high level of production quality as “important” books—the Bible, for example, of collected works of national poets, since plays weren’t yet considered literature. It took a year longer to produce than was originally announced and, priced at a steep one pound sterling, took a couple of years to sell out. It was both a mundane part of the burgeoning print trade in London and the repository of the genius of Shakespeare.
She illuminates the “contexts” out of which it was created, explaining the theatrical practices that influenced the writing and formatting of printed plays—there were no act or scene breaks, for example, since actors were given only their “sides”, the speeches and dialog of their characters, so they couldn’t memorize the entire play and sell it to unscrupulous printers ; the effects of performance rights on the publishing schedule and physical layout, since the rights weren’t with the author but with the company that first staged a play with no reservations; printing techniques and typesetting techniques especially hand composition by compositors with chancy grasps of spelling that determined the overall quality ; and political conditions, both international and local, that informed the book’s reception and Shakespeare’s reputation.
The Folio was pulled together from so-called “foul quartos” unauthorized printing, (often from notes made from the audience)without reference to Shakespeare himself; prompt books left over from productions of the plays and their own memories as actors in productions during Shakespeare’s career, often sharing the stage with him. Eighteen plays are known today only because they are included in the first Folio, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like it, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Coriolanus and Cymbeline. Without the first Folio we might only know that such plays existed without a shred of Shakespeare’s poetry from them.
For decades it was treated less as a materially valuable object and more as a common but prized and useful household item to be used (read) during normal domestic life. Several copies have food stains from reading while at the dinner or breakfast table; at least one has the paw prints of a cat who, as cats do, may have demanded its owner’s attention by occupying the book he was reading; many have unremarkable notations—lists, sums and other useful notes written in margins—while still others have “corrections” to misspellings, doodles or broken letters filled in by a reader. In other words, Shakespeare was a regular companion and the Folios were purchased to be read and were part of the daily life of the owner.
This changed over time and some owners made efforts to brand their own copies as unique (including one hopeful who changed the publication date of his to 1622, a year earlier than everyone else’s so it would be the FIRST first Folio), and the fashion for booksellers to advertise their particular copy as the tallest, the widest or the largest known to be in existence. The typical book is 908 pages printed on 227 sheet of cotton and silk rag paper, four pages per sheet printed front and back, The Folio was typeset and bound in "sixes" – 3 sheets of paper, taken together, were folded into a booklet-like quire or gathering of 6 leaves of 12 pages.
The Folio was controversial, although not due to its contents as such but because it was given the same high level of production quality as “important” books—the Bible, for example, of collected works of national poets, since plays weren’t yet considered literature. It took a year longer to produce than was originally announced and, priced at a steep one pound sterling, took a couple of years to sell out. It was both a mundane part of the burgeoning print trade in London and the repository of the genius of Shakespeare.
August 1, 2024
Okay. I love Shakespeare—this should not be a surprise to anyone who knows me or reads my reviews. I pick up pretty much any nonfiction book about Shakespeare and associated topics (though I am a staunch Stratfordian and have no time for the Baconian or Oxfordian conspiracy theorists). As a conservator and bibliophile, I am also deeply interested in the physicality and material culture of the First Folio as a locus of Jacobean printing and cultural transmission.
While fascinating overall, this suffers from a lack of section breaks within the chapters—which I attribute to a loose editorial hand. The first chapter carries on for a good one hundred pages, with zero more granular divisions into sections or subsections. The net result is that there is nowhere for the reader to “rest” as they make their way through the chapter—the author doesn’t even do us the favor of a section break of blank space. Later chapters are shorter, but overall this needed chunking out for greater readability. Scholarship is clearly evident, but there is little accessibility, even for someone as well read in the subject as I happen to be.
While fascinating overall, this suffers from a lack of section breaks within the chapters—which I attribute to a loose editorial hand. The first chapter carries on for a good one hundred pages, with zero more granular divisions into sections or subsections. The net result is that there is nowhere for the reader to “rest” as they make their way through the chapter—the author doesn’t even do us the favor of a section break of blank space. Later chapters are shorter, but overall this needed chunking out for greater readability. Scholarship is clearly evident, but there is little accessibility, even for someone as well read in the subject as I happen to be.
April 20, 2016
This is a brilliant, enjoyable though certainly academic account of the First Folio: the first publication of all Shakespeare's plays in a single huge book, in 1623. Shakespeare's singularity as an author is explored through the singularity of the First Folio, with Smith explaining how it came to occupy such a central and recognisable position within book-collecting, and within our culture as a whole (she's very good in how the First Folio is often evoked during moments of technological innovation, such as the debut of CD-ROM for instance).
From the early modern owners who didn't mind spilling food or leaving cupmarks on the book, to the Victorian booksellers who could cut and 'scrub' a copy into fresh new life (even minting new pages where necessary - one such 'fixer' so talented he had trouble identifying his own work when summoned to do so by the British Museum), the users and fans of this book are vividly conjured up. And so is the sense of the volume's meaning: I adored the Protestant ascetic who thought the paper was too posh for mere plays and complained it was better than that used for some Bibles; I loved the library who keep the ashes of a Folio that burned in a house fire visible inside a glass sarcophagus; I loved the owner who inherited Samuel Johnson's copy, and then had to replace all the pages upon which Johnson had 'scribbled' (!!!) it tells us SO MUCH about how our culture and attitudes have changed.
Most of all though I loved the little seventeenth-century girl who drew childlike houses and furniture inside one copy; and the two sets of cat footprints identified, quietly making their way across pages of these (nowadays) million-dollar volumes. The evidence of USE. Wonderful. And Smith caused me to reflect on today's Instagram, with Bookstagram in particular, and ponder the relationship we have with books as objects of show, display, learning, wisdom and enlightenment, and wonder whether that aspect of our human nature has changed at all.
Zigzagging back and forth across time, Smith explains her approach from the point of view of material history and cultural theory: Bourdieu, Benjamin, Chartier, Veblen, Mauss and Habermas all get name-checked. However Smith is also the master of the appropriate illustrative detail, and it's these wonderful evocative details that really bring this book to life. I can live without modern-day parallels (such as when she discusses people buying clothes similar to their own, for their children, using the phrase 'Mini-Me') but her command of the material moments of the book itself is fantastic and amply compensates for a couple of uses of the word 'networking'....
Wonderful book that i looked forward to reading each night. Might be in places slightly too academic for some tastes (you need a basic vocabulary of folios, quartos, signatures etc but these can be googled....) but all in all a brilliant read. Highly recommended.
From the early modern owners who didn't mind spilling food or leaving cupmarks on the book, to the Victorian booksellers who could cut and 'scrub' a copy into fresh new life (even minting new pages where necessary - one such 'fixer' so talented he had trouble identifying his own work when summoned to do so by the British Museum), the users and fans of this book are vividly conjured up. And so is the sense of the volume's meaning: I adored the Protestant ascetic who thought the paper was too posh for mere plays and complained it was better than that used for some Bibles; I loved the library who keep the ashes of a Folio that burned in a house fire visible inside a glass sarcophagus; I loved the owner who inherited Samuel Johnson's copy, and then had to replace all the pages upon which Johnson had 'scribbled' (!!!) it tells us SO MUCH about how our culture and attitudes have changed.
Most of all though I loved the little seventeenth-century girl who drew childlike houses and furniture inside one copy; and the two sets of cat footprints identified, quietly making their way across pages of these (nowadays) million-dollar volumes. The evidence of USE. Wonderful. And Smith caused me to reflect on today's Instagram, with Bookstagram in particular, and ponder the relationship we have with books as objects of show, display, learning, wisdom and enlightenment, and wonder whether that aspect of our human nature has changed at all.
Zigzagging back and forth across time, Smith explains her approach from the point of view of material history and cultural theory: Bourdieu, Benjamin, Chartier, Veblen, Mauss and Habermas all get name-checked. However Smith is also the master of the appropriate illustrative detail, and it's these wonderful evocative details that really bring this book to life. I can live without modern-day parallels (such as when she discusses people buying clothes similar to their own, for their children, using the phrase 'Mini-Me') but her command of the material moments of the book itself is fantastic and amply compensates for a couple of uses of the word 'networking'....
Wonderful book that i looked forward to reading each night. Might be in places slightly too academic for some tastes (you need a basic vocabulary of folios, quartos, signatures etc but these can be googled....) but all in all a brilliant read. Highly recommended.
July 28, 2021
This is a thoroughly researched and informative book about a book: the First Folio of the Bard’s plays which was printed seven years after Shakespeare’s death. The print run of 1623 consisted of 750 copies of the first view of Shakespeare’s plays as a collected body of work. Emma Smith’s academic but entirely readable book covers who and why people purchased the First Folio, how they (plus their food, drink and even a cat) interacted with the book, and what happened to the copies across the world over the following four centuries in five chapters: Owning, Reading, Decoding, Performing, and Perfecting. It is thought that there are about a third of the 750 copies surviving in various conditions, plus numerous facsimiles and this permits a thorough examination across these themes. As a self-confessed bibliophile and Shakespeare lover, I greatly enjoyed this very different, but entertaining, book to my usual reading thanks to Goodreads.
April 13, 2018
Surpassed all my expectations.
This book took me a long time to read. It's very scholarly (which is not intended to be a criticism in any respect). It was hugely enjoyable to read a book on a subject I find absolutely fascinating, supported so strongly by evidence garnered from a serious amount of research. I wanted to savour it, and so I chose to dip in and out of this book at very quiet moments when I could concentrate. This is not a book I could easily read on a train, or anywhere with distractions and noise (though those with better brains than mine could probably manage it).
Couple the laudable amount of academic research, with Smith's ability to perfectly judge her observations, and you have a piece of work that is genuinely astonishing in both its scope and detail.
If you're interested in the First Folio, read this book.
This book took me a long time to read. It's very scholarly (which is not intended to be a criticism in any respect). It was hugely enjoyable to read a book on a subject I find absolutely fascinating, supported so strongly by evidence garnered from a serious amount of research. I wanted to savour it, and so I chose to dip in and out of this book at very quiet moments when I could concentrate. This is not a book I could easily read on a train, or anywhere with distractions and noise (though those with better brains than mine could probably manage it).
Couple the laudable amount of academic research, with Smith's ability to perfectly judge her observations, and you have a piece of work that is genuinely astonishing in both its scope and detail.
If you're interested in the First Folio, read this book.
February 22, 2019
An history of the ownership of Shakespeare's First Folio from 1623 to the present. Smith focuses on the owners and how they read and used their books.
It's a short but dense treatment of the topic and is focused on reading and readership, ownership, provenance, and what that says about how owners saw and treated the book. This study is part of the field of Reader Reception.
If you are interested in an academic study of the book as opposed to something more 'romantic' like the quest for a copy, then read Smith's study.
Look for a longer, more academic review at SHARP http://www.sharpweb.org
NOTE: I received a copy of the book from SHARP, in exchange for a review on their site.
It's a short but dense treatment of the topic and is focused on reading and readership, ownership, provenance, and what that says about how owners saw and treated the book. This study is part of the field of Reader Reception.
If you are interested in an academic study of the book as opposed to something more 'romantic' like the quest for a copy, then read Smith's study.
Look for a longer, more academic review at SHARP http://www.sharpweb.org
NOTE: I received a copy of the book from SHARP, in exchange for a review on their site.
November 17, 2025
Tough going ,So much to unpack
Written in academese with little concern for readability it is nevertheless an essential read for any one interested in Shakespeare , I loved it , as someone who started reading Shakespeare and continued reading Shakespeare as a text rather than a Play to perform on stage for decades before I saw a play I found the History of the Book we call The first Folio fascinating how the book informs The fortunes of Shakespeares reputation how After Centuries of interruption where Text of the plays were interpreted and adapted to fit different times , The First Folio became instrumental in Shakespeare returning to the Stage
Written in academese with little concern for readability it is nevertheless an essential read for any one interested in Shakespeare , I loved it , as someone who started reading Shakespeare and continued reading Shakespeare as a text rather than a Play to perform on stage for decades before I saw a play I found the History of the Book we call The first Folio fascinating how the book informs The fortunes of Shakespeares reputation how After Centuries of interruption where Text of the plays were interpreted and adapted to fit different times , The First Folio became instrumental in Shakespeare returning to the Stage
July 18, 2023
Brilliantly written. A must for Bardologists, and regular folk who love history and a good (book-related) mystery.
August 23, 2023
My favorite Shakespeare scholar these days.
November 27, 2023
Interesting look at how the Bard got his plays to become eternal classics.
December 1, 2016
Today's nonfiction post is on Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book by Emma Smith. It is 320 pages long and is published by Oxford University Press. The cover is black with the first folio on the bottom opened to Richard the Third. The intended reader is someone very interested in the physical history of the copies of the first folio. There is no foul mild language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- 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 recognize Shakespeare.
Review- This is an interesting book but not easy to read. It is very scholarly and detailed but at times it can make your eyes cross. Smith follows the surviving copies of the first folio and traces their history. She writes about how people have interacted with their personal copies of the first folio. From the food stains to the notes in the margins, she examines the remains of these owners and the marks they left behind. It was very interesting to see what people did to the first folio and sometimes I was pulling my hair. Like a copy that a Jesuit monastery had they removed all the female roles from the text. They cut out pieces from a first folio! It was interesting to read this history of one of the most iconic books ever printed.
I give this volume a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
From the dust jacket- 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 recognize Shakespeare.
Review- This is an interesting book but not easy to read. It is very scholarly and detailed but at times it can make your eyes cross. Smith follows the surviving copies of the first folio and traces their history. She writes about how people have interacted with their personal copies of the first folio. From the food stains to the notes in the margins, she examines the remains of these owners and the marks they left behind. It was very interesting to see what people did to the first folio and sometimes I was pulling my hair. Like a copy that a Jesuit monastery had they removed all the female roles from the text. They cut out pieces from a first folio! It was interesting to read this history of one of the most iconic books ever printed.
I give this volume a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
April 23, 2016
This is a book about a book. It's described as a biography of a book which seemed odd. Bios means life, and much as I view books as more than thinly sliced trees with some writing on can they really have a life? A biography often has a few pages on the early years of a life, focusing instead on the later years which the reader will more easily identify and understand. The story of a book is more typically before creation - the struggles of writing/producing. Perhaps something of the publicity tour these days.
Emma Smith proves that you can have a biography about a book. The early years are brief. This really is a life story. Not just of the First Folio, but of all the many unique and various copies of the First Folio. This isn't achieved by anthropomorphising the books, it's just telling how they grew and changed. The influences around them. Much like the plays within there are tragedies, histories, and even comedies. There's even some romance too.
Smith delivers many layers in this book. Each copy has been part of many lives. It is fascinating see how the world has changed, and the attitudes towards the book. From the early days when children used the margins to draw houses to the modern precautions for transportation and display that define things like the means of travel and the climatic requirements for preservation, not to mention the security concerns.
If you think calling it a biography might make this a light, easy read, you should realise that this is the one way the book really isn't a biography. The first of the five chapters runs to 97 pages, and contains 226 footnotes. This is a serious, well-researched, academic work. It's a dense, intense read too. Not a great choice to read after a long, hard day. But when you have the time and peace to read it properly it's very rewarding. Smith shows real passion for her subject, her writing is engaging and she conveys her enthusiasm well. It achieves that magical property of becoming hard to put down.
Much as a book is always judged by the reading, this is one that has a significance beyond then. I come away feeling more informed about both the main subject of the book and many ancillary aspects of society and history. It's a rich look at these broad topics, full of odd pieces of information I'll probably recall years from now when I hear something random.
A fascinating read. I received my copy through the First Reads programme.
Emma Smith proves that you can have a biography about a book. The early years are brief. This really is a life story. Not just of the First Folio, but of all the many unique and various copies of the First Folio. This isn't achieved by anthropomorphising the books, it's just telling how they grew and changed. The influences around them. Much like the plays within there are tragedies, histories, and even comedies. There's even some romance too.
Smith delivers many layers in this book. Each copy has been part of many lives. It is fascinating see how the world has changed, and the attitudes towards the book. From the early days when children used the margins to draw houses to the modern precautions for transportation and display that define things like the means of travel and the climatic requirements for preservation, not to mention the security concerns.
If you think calling it a biography might make this a light, easy read, you should realise that this is the one way the book really isn't a biography. The first of the five chapters runs to 97 pages, and contains 226 footnotes. This is a serious, well-researched, academic work. It's a dense, intense read too. Not a great choice to read after a long, hard day. But when you have the time and peace to read it properly it's very rewarding. Smith shows real passion for her subject, her writing is engaging and she conveys her enthusiasm well. It achieves that magical property of becoming hard to put down.
Much as a book is always judged by the reading, this is one that has a significance beyond then. I come away feeling more informed about both the main subject of the book and many ancillary aspects of society and history. It's a rich look at these broad topics, full of odd pieces of information I'll probably recall years from now when I hear something random.
A fascinating read. I received my copy through the First Reads programme.
May 11, 2023
I'd say this isn't quite as readable as The Making of Shakespeare 's First Folio, at times I just felt weighed down by the weighty implications of all those Facts. I'm feeling ahead of the game though having read it in the First Folio centenary year. Apparently 1923 was a big year for Shakespeare conspiracy theories, perhaps we can look forward to more of the same.
January 3, 2025
It is surprising that the unsure status of William Shakespeare as a verified writer of sole authorship over a prolonged period is less known by general readers. There is a cottage industry establishing the "Stratford" author but it is on the defense by the more likely "Oxford" alternative. "First Folio" refers to the collection that follows the historical Shake-speare's death and its circumstances / origin remain murky to the 21st Century. Many figures of historical and literary importance are / were engaged in the intricacies of this debate about an actor who is supposed to also be a playwriting genius / writer of sonnets-poetic narratives.
September 6, 2016
This is one of the most interesting books on the First Folio I have ever read, along with Eric Rasmussen's The Shakespeare Thefts. Emma Smith's analyses on annotations are clear and elaborate, through which we can understand the users' book-related activities. The chapters on performance and facsimiles are also intellectually stimulating.
And I am very happy she referred to my (really boring bibliographical) PhD thesis in this book!
And I am very happy she referred to my (really boring bibliographical) PhD thesis in this book!
July 6, 2016
I am interviewing the author from my "Talking Books" column in SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER, and so do not feel I should comment here other than to say that the book is enormous fun.
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August 5, 2016822.33 S6467 2016
November 14, 2017
Very readable, covering a lot of ground in a relatively short book. On point and informative.
December 31, 2016
Probably would have given it 2.5 stars. It has worthwhile information if you're interested in Shakespeare, but I felt it went on a little long and I had to force myself to pick it up near the end.
February 14, 2019
Smith did a phenomenal amount of research, which I truly admire. But I didn't care much for her style, and the subject was only marginally interesting. Several in the book club felt the same.
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December 11, 2018explores the biography of the First Folio as an object, and the myriad ways of owning, reading, and using it's been through. Too scholarly for anyone below English-graduate-student level so I just browsed this
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