Reviews for The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World

The average rating for The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-11-05 00:00:00 Christopher Chapman Yet another nice little book treat from Mr Collins. I must caution you, however, or perhaps entice you, by saying the book is almost peripherally about Shakespeare biographically, and more about his first collection of works. From a book collecting/book history point of view, I cannot think of a more intriguing and more storied topic than that of Shakespeare's First Folio. Collins touches upon the printing of the First Folio and basically the history surrounding these exceedingly rare, singularly unique documents. It was fascinating to learn there exist only several hundred copies of this work and that each copy has a unique and distinguishable history. Collins spins tales about the more noteworthy editions and the more interesting collectors of these First Folios. The book finishes quite strongly with a look at the Folger library in Washington DC and the Japanese and their connection to Shakespeare. I never thought I would find a "beautiful" passage in such a book, but right near the end Collins compares a popular modern Japanese literary(?) form, manga, and draws an unexpected parallel to the literary atmosphere in which Shakespeare wrote. It's a nice gem of a possibility he leaves us with. Collins compresses a staggering amount of scholarship -- not the regurgitative (my newly coined word?) kind, but truly curious scholarship -- that adds a surprising depth to such a short book. I did not want the book to end. Highly recommended.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-06 00:00:00 Chumo Steve Who knew that following in the footsteps of a world-conquering first edition would be such an emotional experience. Starting at one and the same time at an auction house and the original printing house, Collins does an impressive job chronicling where the extremely limited edition came from, and whose grubby hands were lucky enough to hold on to them - turns out that Samuel Johnston, the creator of the first English dictionary, wins the messiest reader sweepstakes whereas another Johnson, the 16th century Prof of Mathematics William Johnstone gets the most-thorough annotator award as well as the happy distinction of being the first-known scholar of Shakespeare's plays. It got really emotional for me when Collins went to the land of tomorrow, Japan, to discover the future application for the First Folio, at Meisei University in Tokyo. Not only home to the second largest collection of Folios after the Folgers' collection in Washington, but also that one of the scholar working on the digitization of the texts happens to be related to world-famous filmmaker Akira Kurosawa had me in tears. Someday the words that Shakespeare wrote, scratched onto parchment with his own quill, may be found, but I will stick to the argument that the stack of pages Condell and Heminges originally commissioned are as close as we will get to Shakespeare's mind.