Shakespeare is synonymous with English literature.
It will shed much-needed light on the birth of the First Folio--of which fewer than 250 copies remain--and the birth of Shakespeare\'s towering reputation..
Extensively illustrated, The Making of Shakespeare\'s First Folio is a landmark addition to the copious literature on Shakespeare.
Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folio\'s origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade.
Nearly one thousand pages in length, the collection comprised thirty-six plays, half of which had never been previously published.
Long in the making, Master William Shakespeare\'s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies--as the First Folio was then known--appeared seven years after Shakespeare\'s death.
In November 1623, the book arrived in the bookshop of the London publisher Edward Blount at the Black Bear.
The Making of Shakespeare\'s First Folio offers the First comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare\'s plays.
It wasn\'t until four hundred years after Shakespeare\'s death that the book would be the subject of a national book tour.
Yet no fanfare surrounded the initial publication of Shakespeare\'s First Folio--no queue of eager readers, no launch to the top of the best seller list.
We endlessly debate not only the finer points of each of his plays and sonnets but also the identity of the Bard himself.
Well-loved the world over, his work endures for its ability to speak powerfully to the follies and foibles of human nature.
Shakespeare is synonymous with English literature
