Ghosts, holes, rips and scrapes : Shakespeare in 1619, bibliography in the longue durée / Zachary Lesser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lesser, Zachary, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Hiram G. Haney Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criticism, Textual.

Bibliography.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism, Textual.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Bibliography--Quartos.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

x, 198 pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Shakespeare in 1619, bibliography in the longue durée

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Four years before the publication of the First Folio, a group of London printers and booksellers attempted to produce a "collected works" of William Shakespeare, not in an imposingly large format but as a series of more humble quarto pamphlets. For mysterious reasons, perhaps involving Shakespeare's playing company, the King's Men, the project ran into trouble. In an attempt to salvage it, information on the title pages of some of the playbooks was falsified, making them resemble leftover copies of earlier editions. The deception worked for nearly three hundred years, until it was unmasked by scholars in the early twentieth century. The discovery of these "Pavier Quartos," as they became known, was a landmark success for the New Bibliography and played an important role in establishing the validity and authority of that method of analysis. While more recent scholars have reassessed the traditional narrative that the New Bibliographers wrote, no one has gone back to look at the primary evidence: the quartos themselves. In Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes Zachary Lesser undertakes a completely fresh study of these playbooks. Through an intensive bibliographical analysis of over three hundred surviving quartos, Lesser reveals evidence that has gone entirely unseen before: "ghosts" (faint, oily impressions produced when one book is bound next to another); "holes" (the tiny remains of the first simple stitching that held pamphlets together); and "rips and scrapes" (post-production alterations of title pages). This new evidence-much of it visible only with the aid of enhanced photographic methods-suggests that the "Pavier Quartos" are far more mysterious, with far more consequential ramifications for book history and Shakespeare scholarship than we have thought"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Ghosts

Holes

Rips and scrapes

Conclusion. Questions.

Notes:

"Published in cooperation with Folger Shakespeare Library"-- title page.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Hiram G. Haney Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Lesser, Zachary. Ghosts, holes, rips and scrapes.

ISBN:

9780812252941

0812252942

OCLC:

1178869342

Publisher Number:

99987463106

99994075015