{"id":477,"date":"2021-02-22T16:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/?post_type=phernalia&p=477"},"modified":"2023-09-19T16:16:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T15:16:42","slug":"the-munro-first-folio","status":"publish","type":"phernalia","link":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/phernalia\/the-munro-first-folio\/","title":{"rendered":"The Munro First Folio"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Professor Emma Smith<\/strong><\/h4>

Every copy of the book published in London at the end of 1623 as Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies<\/em> is unique. We tend to assume that the printing press produced identical copies, but in fact, early modern printing practices meant that books of the period comprised different combinations of corrected and uncorrected sheets. Most books were sold unbound in order for purchasers to customise them to their own requirements. And standard accounts of reading in this period described it as an activity undertaken with a pen. Writing in books, sometimes engaging directly with their content but equally often simply using up blank paper, was standard. The book we now know as the First Folio is no exception, and copies carry clues, from doodles to lost pages and from inscriptions to bindings, that bear witness to the circumstances of their production and reception.<\/p>

The Munro copy that is reproduced on this website is a fine example of this book in an early nineteenth-century rebinding. Shakespeare\u2019s high cultural status in the age of empire really transformed the First Folio into an iconic object. As Darwinism chipped away at biblical authority, the Victorians invested another big old book with meaning and value, substituting the First Folio as a kind of secular scripture. At the same time, booksellers worked to repair and revive copies that often showed considerable signs of wear and tear. The Munro Folio shows some of this work. It has replacement facsimile leaves \u2013 for the titlepage (although the portrait itself is an original) and for Ben Jonson\u2019s famous eulogy in which he predicts that Shakespeare is \u2018not of an age but for all time\u2019, and a couple of pages at the end of the final play in the volume, Cymbeline<\/em>. It also has a beautifully executed ink facsimile repair to one of the margins of this play. The skill with which damaged paper has been replaced and the lines of type provided in perfect hand-inked characters is remarkable: only by holding the page up to the light can we see the join. It\u2019s a testimony to the value of the book in the period.<\/p>

Some booksellers were experts in this kind of repair \u2013 known in the trade as \u2018vampment\u2019 \u2013 producing old books that were as good as new. In the process, of course, evidence of previous owners and marks of their use were often destroyed. But the Munro copy retains some details of its own biography. Firstly, there are a number of names and initials written at different points in the book, attesting to owners and readers over a couple of centuries. One seventeenth-century hand identifies \u2018Ann Bruce\u2019 written neatly in the gap around the title The Tempest<\/em> \u2013 a surprising number of Shakespeare First Folios are marked by early women readers suggesting that it had a particular resonance for them (and one thing I\u2019ve noticed is that early readers are more likely to sign their name deep in the book\u2019s pages than on the title or preliminary pages). There are also numerous initials, some with a curly pomposity that may suggest a young person practising a grown-up signature. The inscription at the bottom of one of the history plays, \u2018James Graham with his hand\u2019 also looks as if it might represent an immature reader. We know that the copy was owned by the Bruce family and sold in the early nineteenth century to the Munros, Baronets of Lindertis (the 4th Baronet was also a keen mountaineer and gave the family name to his list of Scottish mountains over 3000ft).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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