Ben Higgins
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- March 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780192848840
- eISBN:
- 9780191944116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192848840.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introduction reviews the production of the First Folio from the perspective of its publishers. It treats the book’s imprint and colophon as neglected sites of rhetorical significance and ...
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This introduction reviews the production of the First Folio from the perspective of its publishers. It treats the book’s imprint and colophon as neglected sites of rhetorical significance and cultural conditioning and argues that we can use these brief texts––together with the personalities they name––as interpretive keys to learn more about the ways in which Shakespeare’s books were made. It introduces the four book-trade businesses that financed Shakespeare’s collected works and provides an overview of how the Folio was made. Methodologically, the introduction argues that we need new ways of working with early modern stationers. Rather than limiting ourselves to the riveting but isolated case study, books like the Folio urge us to think about communities of stationers in relation to one another. Bringing these stationers together allows their individual tactics and strategies to emerge in sharper relief, and encourages us to consider the interpretive life of a networked model of literary production.Less
This introduction reviews the production of the First Folio from the perspective of its publishers. It treats the book’s imprint and colophon as neglected sites of rhetorical significance and cultural conditioning and argues that we can use these brief texts––together with the personalities they name––as interpretive keys to learn more about the ways in which Shakespeare’s books were made. It introduces the four book-trade businesses that financed Shakespeare’s collected works and provides an overview of how the Folio was made. Methodologically, the introduction argues that we need new ways of working with early modern stationers. Rather than limiting ourselves to the riveting but isolated case study, books like the Folio urge us to think about communities of stationers in relation to one another. Bringing these stationers together allows their individual tactics and strategies to emerge in sharper relief, and encourages us to consider the interpretive life of a networked model of literary production.
