Shakespeare's First Folio: 400th Anniversary Facsimile Edition

“The importance of the First Folio is impossible to exaggerate. Like Cleopatra, “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” Without this landmark collection, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays might have been lost — including “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “As You Like It,” “The Comedy of Errors,” “Julius Caesar,” “Macbeth” and “The Tempest.” The British Library and Rizzoli recently produced a remarkable facsimile edition of a complete First Folio held at the British Library. I’ve been reading it this week and have felt both awed and challenged. Open to any page and you’ll immediately be grateful for the textual and critical work that’s been done over the centuries to produce the clean, well-footnoted editions we used in school. That you can own this endlessly fascinating facsimile of the most important book in the English language for \(135 (or less) seems incredible to me.” — The Washington Post<br /><br />"There are only 235 known copies of “Shakespeare’s First Folio” in the world, and the going rate for one is around \)10 million. This 400th anniversary facsimile edition makes a handsome, and far more affordable, gift for the theater buff in your life.” — New York Times

“Ultimately, for Bard loyalists, this facsimile is worth its weight in gold—or at least the $135 it costs to be able to crack open those storied covers yourself. “The [goal], which is also part of what the library stands for, is to make things more accessible to a broader readership,” Lee says. “This book is as close as you’re going to get to actually holding the real thing.” ” — Fast Company

“Sure, you may have paperback editions of William Shakespeare’s plays, highlighted and dog-eared from your high-school English classes, but you and the Bard deserve better. To that end, Rizzoli has just published a sumptuous reproduction of Shakespeare’s First Folio, first printed in 1623, seven years after the playwright’s death. The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which were not published during Shakespeare’s lifetime and, without the efforts of two of the Bard’s fellow actors, we would have been denied-these include faithful renderings of plays such as Macbeth and The Tempest. Beautifully bound and covered in red goatskin, the First Folio will delight anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of the world’s finest playwright.” — Air Mail

Adrian Edwards is Head of the Printed Heritage Collections at The British Library.

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