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

Shakespeare’s famous First Folio, published in 1623 and now a holy grail for book collectors, is the subject of this cogent “biblio-biography” from Smith (The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio). Smith dispels the notion of the folio’s rarity: 233 copies were known to exist when Smith wrote her book (a 234th has since been found) and First Folio copies are offered for sale more regularly than many scarcer volumes. She analyzes shifting patterns of ownership, noting that even the very first known sale of the book attested to the purchaser’s wealth. Copies were once exclusively owned by English aristocrats but gradually wound up in the hands of nouveau riche American capitalists, most famously Standard Oil chairman Henry Folger, and Tokyo’s Meisei University, which acquired 12 copies during Japan’s late 20th-century economic boom. In the book’s most engaging chapter, “Reading,” Smith collates the many marginal notations written in copies, pointing out that folio owners saw fit to correct, critique, annotate, and otherwise “improve” upon the Bard’s text, especially in the first century after its publication. Smith condenses a remarkable amount of scholarship into her study, and her writing is lively and insightful. For the millions of book lovers and bardophiles who will never own a copy of the First Folio, this engrossing book will serve as a suitable surrogate. (June)