About this item
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.
About the Author
I am the author of the forthcoming title THE SHAKESPEARE THEFTS (Palgrave Macmillan) , a part literary detective story, part Shakespearean lore that follows my efforts to catalog Shakespeare's First Folios. I am also co-editor of the RSC Complete Works of William Shakespeare, the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama, and of the works of Christopher Marlowe in the Oxford World's Classics series as well as individual plays in the Arden Shakespeare series, the Revels Plays series, and the Malone Society series. Since 1997, I have written the annual review of editions and textual studies for Shakespeare Survey. When I am not writing about the bard, I lecture about his great works as a professor of English at the University of Nevada. He lives in Reno, Nevada.
