Description

The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins

Shakespeare's First Folio, the first complete collection of his plays, was almost never printed. Its eventual publication went practically unnoticed, and many of the original 750 copies were gone before the turn of the eighteenth century. But a hundred years later the plays were rediscovered, beginning the long, surprising process that secured Shakespeare's legacy.

Paul Collins, lover of odd books and author of the national bestseller Sixpence House, takes up the strange quest for this white whale of precious books. Broken down into five acts, each tied to a different location and century, The Book of William s travelogue follows the trail of the Folio s curious rise: a dizzying S otheby s auction on a pristine copy preserved since the seventeenth century, the Fleet Street machinations of the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century quests for lost Folios, obsessive acquisitions by twentieth century oilmen, and the high-tech hoards of twenty-first century Japan. Finally, Collins speculates on Shakespeare s cross-cultural future as Asian buyers enter their Folios into the electronic ether, and recounts the book s remarkable journey as it is found in attics, gets lost in oceans and fires, is bought and sold, and ultimately becomes immortal.

Features;

• Publisher Bloomsbury, New York; 2009
• Black Cloth Hardback with Gilt Titles, 246 pp
• Size 215 x 145mm, 550g
• ISBN13: 9781596911963

Condition: Brand New Copy

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