First Folio

Let’s face it, every special collections library has at least a few mystery items in the vault that are quietly passed down over the decades from curator to curator (or cataloger to cataloger, or acquisitions librarian to acquisitions librarian). These…

A guest post by Dr. Nigel Smith I am writing a transnational history of early modern European literature. Our inherited history of the different early modern vernacular languages and their literatures was fashioned through the lens of the 19th-century and…

Henry V fragment. Photo by Elizabeth DeBold. There were several good guesses about this month’s Crocodile Mystery—a crease in the paper, or an off-center, pre-stamped envelope. But, Elisabeth Chaghafi was right on the money with her guess: this is a…

The Book of Will, a new play by Lauren Gunderson, explores the back-story of how Shakespeare’s friends assembled his plays into the book we know today as the First Folio, without which we might have forever lost plays such as…

Our current exhibition, First Folio! Shakespeare’s American Tour comes to a close this weekend. While we all know how important the Folio is as a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, did you also know it can be a valuable tool for…

Folger First Folio number 54 traveled over 10,000 miles from Washington D.C., to San Diego California and Honolulu, Hawaii, during our First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare tour, and is on view in our Great Hall through January…

Shakespeare’s First Folio has been under the microscope for centuries, studied by historians, students of literature, and actors, as well as by those who are convinced that the works of the Bard are hiding something. As many of you may…

This week we will continue our discussion of the First Folios currently on display in the Folger Shakespeare Library exhibition, First Folio! Shakespeare’s American Tour. This post will look at their “sophistication.” A “sophisticated” or made-up book is a defective…

The rusty outline we showed in last week’s Crocodile post is, as one of our responders, Giles Bergel, correctly guessed, from a pair of scissors. It appears in Folger First Folio number 58, in Henry IV, part 1 (pp. 50-51). This First Folio…

One the First Folio’s owners, Captain Charles Hutchinson, clearly valued the book as a reflection on his family’s place in English history. Not only did he restore it, but he also treated it as a scrapbook of sorts, working in details and documents related to his family history.

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” It may be October, but we’re feeling a little nostalgic for all the places our First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare touring exhibition traveled this summer. See a few social media highlights…

Curious about the book that gave us Shakespeare? We’ve assembled a playlist of seven Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes about the First Folio. Without this first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1623, we might not have such famous plays as…