Shakespeare’s First Folio

To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Library is displaying its copy of the First Folio on Friday 22 April, from 12:00 to 14:00. It is often said to be one of the most significant books ever printed – but why? William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April, 1564, and died there on April […]

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Shakespeare lives on…

Our Shakespeare exhibition has finished, but it still lives on in our Digital Gallery in the form of two different features. Shakespeare Collected allows you to explore the collectors and collections we celebrated in our exhibition, through text, films, and images. You can also follow in the footsteps of the collector James Halliwell-Phillipps and build […]

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On World Book Day: in praise of books

I thought it would be appropriate to mark World Book Day with some quotations from our exhibition Beyond Macbeth in praise of books. William Drummond is one of my favourite collectors – his motivation in building his collection seems to have been his love of reading all kinds of literature. He wrote two essays about libraries. The first […]

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Shakespeare Exhibition: Beyond Macbeth

  Our new exhibition Beyond Macbeth: Shakespeare in Scottish Collections is now open! This exhibition is a collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, showcasing the two libraries’ world-class collections of early editions of Shakespeare’s plays, other early modern drama, and manuscripts relating to the study of Shakespeare. On display are the First Folio, the first […]

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