Description
In 1623 a team of stationers published what has become the most famous volume in English literary history: William Shakespeare's First Folio. Who were these publishers and how might their stories be bound up with those found within the book they created? Ben Higgins offers a radical new account of the First Folio by focusing on these four publishing businesses that made the volume. By moving between close scrutiny of the Folio publishers and a wider view of their significance within the early modern book trade, Higgins uses Shakespeare's stationers to explore the 'literariness' of the Folio; to ask how stationers have shaped textual authority; to argue for the interpretive potential of the 'minor' Shakespearean bookseller; and to examine the topography of Shakespearean publication. Drawing on a host of fresh primary evidence from a wide range of sources, including court records, manuscript letters, bookseller's bills, and the literature itself, Shakespeare's Syndicate illuminates our understanding of how this landmark volume was made and what it has meant to scholars since. Moreover, it models exciting new ways of working with stationers and of reading the event of early modern publication itself. This innovative study demonstrates that despite four hundred years of history, the volume at the centre of Shakespeare's canon continues to generate new stories.
About the Author
Ben Higgins read English at the University of Exeter before going to the University of Oxford for postgraduate work. He has held lectureships at Wadham College, Lincoln College, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is currently Career Development Fellow in English Literature at Lady Margaret Hall.
Reviews
Ben Higgins's Shakespeare's Syndicate is a hugely impressive study of the bookish world around the First Folio. Conceived as an extensive close reading of the book's title page, it takes the reader on a thrilling tour of the book trade that published, printed, marketed, and sold this most influential of volumes. Devoting a chapter each to Edward Blount, John Smethwick, William Aspley, and William and Isaac Jaggard, Higgins makes the case for these figures as 'merchants of belief', vital to the formation of the book's value, and the 'creation of [its] literariness'. * Shakespeare's Globe Book Award Judges *
This is an important book for academic libraries to purchase, as it provides a deeper dive into the stated primary sources than most of the other books I have reviewed on this topic. * Anna Faktorovich, editor-in-chief, Pennsylvania literary Journal *
Ben Higgins has managed something we might have thought was by now impossible: he tells a completely fresh and fascinating story about the First Folio. Higgins's remarkable knack for uncovering new archival details gives us the deepest scholarly investigation yet undertaken into the lives of the men and women who produced Shakespeare's collected works. At the same time, Higgins uses each of the Folio publishers as a lens to reveal broader trends and networks in the book trade, offering an exciting and generative methodology for others to follow. Shakespeare's Syndicate is required reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, his plays, and his life and afterlife in print. * Zachary Lesser, Edward W. Kane Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania *
More careful, coherent, and convincing by far is Ben Higgins's excellent Shakespeare's Syndicate: The First Folio, Its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade * Catherine Nicholson, New York Review *
Indispensable for future scholarship [...] Shakespeare's Syndicate is a major study of the First Folio that is required reading for all those interested in the early modern book trade and the individuals who helped preserve in print so many of Shakespeare's plays. * Rory Loughnane, The Review of English Studies *
This is an extraordinarily detailed account of the agents behind the First Folio [...] Higgins offers nearly three hundred pages of fresh information and context based on extensive archival research. The book is punctuated by revelations throughout [...] Higgins has a special talent for making brilliant observations and offering keen insight into their import. * Eric Rasmussen, Shakespeare Jahrbuch *
Through small moments in the Folio, Higgins bends time away from the history and death of Shakespeare, to the lives and labor of the stationers, who ushered the completed books to buyers and readers who could grapple with Shakespeare's membership in the growing pantheon of English writers that Jonson identifies [...] By reorienting the Folio in time, Higgins asks new sets of questions of it, seeking to articulate the roles-both large and small-of the stationers who ensured that the volume reached readers' bookshelves. * Brandi K Adams, Shakespeare Quarterly *
Awards
Winner of Winner, Shakespeare's Globe Book Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780192848840
Author Ben Higgins
Format Hardback
Page Count 310
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 686g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 164mm * 24mm
About the Author
Ben Higgins read English at the University of Exeter before going to the University of Oxford for postgraduate work. He has held lectureships at Wadham College, Lincoln College, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is currently Career Development Fellow in English Literature at Lady Margaret Hall.
Reviews
Ben Higgins's Shakespeare's Syndicate is a hugely impressive study of the bookish world around the First Folio. Conceived as an extensive close reading of the book's title page, it takes the reader on a thrilling tour of the book trade that published, printed, marketed, and sold this most influential of volumes. Devoting a chapter each to Edward Blount, John Smethwick, William Aspley, and William and Isaac Jaggard, Higgins makes the case for these figures as 'merchants of belief', vital to the formation of the book's value, and the 'creation of [its] literariness'. * Shakespeare's Globe Book Award Judges *
This is an important book for academic libraries to purchase, as it provides a deeper dive into the stated primary sources than most of the other books I have reviewed on this topic. * Anna Faktorovich, editor-in-chief, Pennsylvania literary Journal *
Ben Higgins has managed something we might have thought was by now impossible: he tells a completely fresh and fascinating story about the First Folio. Higgins's remarkable knack for uncovering new archival details gives us the deepest scholarly investigation yet undertaken into the lives of the men and women who produced Shakespeare's collected works. At the same time, Higgins uses each of the Folio publishers as a lens to reveal broader trends and networks in the book trade, offering an exciting and generative methodology for others to follow. Shakespeare's Syndicate is required reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, his plays, and his life and afterlife in print. * Zachary Lesser, Edward W. Kane Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania *
More careful, coherent, and convincing by far is Ben Higgins's excellent Shakespeare's Syndicate: The First Folio, Its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade * Catherine Nicholson, New York Review *
Indispensable for future scholarship [...] Shakespeare's Syndicate is a major study of the First Folio that is required reading for all those interested in the early modern book trade and the individuals who helped preserve in print so many of Shakespeare's plays. * Rory Loughnane, The Review of English Studies *
This is an extraordinarily detailed account of the agents behind the First Folio [...] Higgins offers nearly three hundred pages of fresh information and context based on extensive archival research. The book is punctuated by revelations throughout [...] Higgins has a special talent for making brilliant observations and offering keen insight into their import. * Eric Rasmussen, Shakespeare Jahrbuch *
Through small moments in the Folio, Higgins bends time away from the history and death of Shakespeare, to the lives and labor of the stationers, who ushered the completed books to buyers and readers who could grapple with Shakespeare's membership in the growing pantheon of English writers that Jonson identifies [...] By reorienting the Folio in time, Higgins asks new sets of questions of it, seeking to articulate the roles-both large and small-of the stationers who ensured that the volume reached readers' bookshelves. * Brandi K Adams, Shakespeare Quarterly *
Awards
Winner of Winner, Shakespeare's Globe Book Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780192848840
Author Ben Higgins
Format Hardback
Page Count 310
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 686g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 164mm * 24mm
