Oxford's First Folios: same book, different lives

In this talk, Professor Emma Smith will discuss the four copies of Shakespeare's First Folio now in Oxford, and the ways in which their specific stories illustrate the wider biography of this charismatic edition.

From the proof-reading of the plays in the printing-house, to the trans-Atlantic rivalry over the best copy, from 18th-century classicism to the careful completion of missing leaves in manuscript, our local copies give an insight into the lives of this book across four centuries.