As 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare it was fortuitous that this summer the National Library was able to purchase a wonderful miniature edition of the Bard’s works. It is a 40 volume Complete Works of William Shakespeare printed in Scotland by Andersons Edinburgh Ltd. and published by Allied Newspapers […]
Tag: Shakespeare
Music display at the National Library of Scotland
August has become a regular month for a small music display at the National Library of Scotland to coincide with the Edinburgh International Festival. A selection of items from the collections of the many musical works that will be performed over the coming month will be shown. A major theme this year is music related to the literary […]
Complete works of William Shakespeare in miniature
No two days are the same for a National Library of Scotland Cataloguer but is quite unusual for books to arrive on our desks with their own bookcases provided!
Playing Shakespeare – curtain coming down very soon
Our Treasures exhibition – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting– part of this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, is coming to the end of its run, with only a few days left. Monday 13 June is your last chance to see four centuries of Shakespeare on stage.
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 […]
Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our new Treasures display
Ellen Terry and Henry Irving It is great to see the curtain go up on our new Treasures display – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our contribution to this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616. I’ve been working on the display for the last few months, and as always it is […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]