Shakespeare's First Folio

Daniel Swift, Spectator A fascinating and provocative book.

Jerry Brotton, The Daily Telegraph Delightful.

Brian Vickers, Times Literary Supplement Her diligence in considering every aspect of the Folio's material existence is commendable.

Jerry Brotton, Financial Times This is a beautifully judged book about books, impeccably researched yet wry and affectionate.

Times Higher Education Smith's account of the Folio's distinguished career is very nicely written and consistently entertaining and informative... It is the modern equivalent of a magic book, and Smith's own book does justice to that magic.

Stuart Kelly, Independent Emma Smith's book comes as a welcome corrective to the fascination with Shakespeare the man ... as it is the "biography" of something far more interesting: a book.

Jem Bloomfield, Times Higher Education, Summer Reads 2016 I've been looking forward to Emma Smith's Shakespeare's First Folio ever since I heard her give a paper that asked, "can you actually read the First Folio?" It's that sort of arresting question that wouldn't occur to many other people that makes her scholarship so inventive and absorbing.

David Sexton, Evening Standard A charming, enlightening account, not so much of the origins, as of the fortunes over the years subsequently, of the great edition.

Bristol Magazine Smith is one of the cleverest scholars around, but her academic weight is balanced with an accessible tone and wry humour.

The Oxford Culture Review A marvelous bit of scholarship. Detailed without being dry, playful without being silly, it's a well-researched, thoroughly balanced account of this 'iconic book.'

Ben Higgins, Review of English Studies The book is well illustrated, and Smith writes with great style.

Jos Mara Prez Fernndez, Bulletin of the Comediantes ... offers a wealth of important information, fascinating episodes, and sophisticated critical insight. It will, therefore, be of great interest to a variety of scholars in different disciplines, with literary critics, cultural historians, and scholars of book history foremost among them.

Charlotte Scott, Shakespeare Survey [A] compassionate biography... a wonderful testimony to the 'worlds most expensive book' and the readers who keep it that way.

Alan H. Nelson, Renaissance Quarterly This book is a very good read, a largely anecdotal but always entertaining account of copies of the Shakespeare First Folio from their production in 1623 to the present ... the pleasure and instruction this book will bring to the casual bibliophile or the Shakespeare enthusiast.

Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 Smith's second book, Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, picks up where The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio leaves off, tracing different ways of interacting with the Folio owning, reading, forging, acting, collecting...

Emma Smith teaches at Hertford College, Oxford, and has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and on the reception of Shakespeare.