The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios

ISBN-13: 9780230341678 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 240 str.

Eric Rasmussen

Opis

Published in 1623, the 750 copies of the first edition of William Shakespeare's collected works, known as the First Folio, has been sought after relentlessly by kings, earls, and bibliophiles. In his effort to track down the extant 232 copies renowned Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen and his team of First Folio hunters embarked on an incredible adventure around the world. This fast-paced narrative takes us from the court rooms of England to high-security vaults in the rare book rooms of Japan, encountering thieves, reclusive librarians, and eccentric billionaires along the way, all lusting for one of the world's most valuable books. This fascinating account explores how manuscript hunters identify a book's past through distinguishing marks: a bullet hole, desecrated pages, and splashes of red that resemble blood; and how a book's location and condition can reveal its story. Part literary detective story, part Shakespearean lore, The Shakespeare Thefts is a rare glimpse between the covers of one of the most coveted books in the world.

Spis treści

Preface A Literary Detective Story
One The Most Hated Man in England: The Gondomar Copy
Two First Folio Hunters
Three A Cuban Fraud: The Durham University Copy
Four The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
Five Unrecovered: The Manchester University Copy
Six The Pope's Sticky Fingers
Seven A Close Personal Relationship: The Pembroke Copies
Eight Nationalism, Bullets, and a Recovered Treasure
Nine The Bibliomaniac: The Sir Thomas Phillipps Copy
Ten Looking into Shakespeare's Eyes
Eleven Fell in the Weeping Brook: The Fiske Harris Copy
Twelve Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden
Thirteen The King's Companion: Royalist Copies, Puritan Copies
Fourteen Obsessed
Fifteen A Literary Thief, a Bootlegger, a Shoe Salesman, and Hitler: The Williams College Copy
Sixteen Why Is The Whore of Babylon Well Thumbed?
Seventeen Alienated: The Hereford Cathedral Copy
Eighteen Creative Control
Nineteen 'Purloined & Embezzled': The William Beeston Copy
Twenty The World's Worst Stolen Treasure
Appendix The Making of the Shakespeare First Folio
Acknowledgments
Notes

O autorze

ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.