We have an excellent facsimile of the Third Folio, which appeared in 1663, and a second issue in 1664, augmented, as the title-page tells us, with seven plays:  Pericles; The London Prodigall; The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham; The Puritan Widow; A York-Shire Tragedy; The Tragedy of Locrine.  Only Pericles is considered to be Shakespeare’s (partially)

Because of their scarcity relative to the other folios, it is though that many were destroyed before distribution in the London fire of 1666.

According to one of the standard scholarly works on the subject, the Third Folio “does more credit to the printing house which turned it out and is largely free from gross typographical errors. But from the fact that it unintentionally omitted a great many words, we infer that the proof reading given it was not sufficiently careful to catch unobtrusive compositor’s errors. The editor, furthermore, was not nearly so aggressive as the editor of F2 [2nd Folio] and did not feel free to go further than to correct blunders that make nonsense of meaning, grammatical improprieties, an archaic diction.”

–Black & Shaaber, Shakespeare’s Seventeenth-Century Editors, 1632-1685 (1937), who identify 943 editorial changes made in the Third Folio.

Unfortunately we do NOT have the so-called “First Folio” (London, 1623) of Shakespeare–a critically important book in Shakespeare studies as the first collected edition of his plays, wherein were printed for the first time eighteen plays!  They were as follows:

The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well that Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, King John, Henry VI part I, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline.

We do, however, have an excellent facsimile of it, produced in 1866 by Howard Staunton, which was created using the newly invented technology of photo-lithography. These were initially issued in sixteen (16) monthly parts at 10s. 6d. per part, or a total of 8 guineas–the price was relatively high (about $1,500 in today’s money).

In 2012, through the generosity of the Watkinson Board of Trustees,  we were able to acquire a copy of the “2nd Folio” (1632) of Shakespeare. This copy had been in one family’s possession since the mid-19th-century.

This second edition, as it were, was issued with five different title-pages (representing the five different principal investors).  However, since ours lacked the title-page, we don’t know which issue we have. The 2nd Folio bears over 1,200 corrections (mostly in restoring meter and the spelling of Latin phrases and classical names), but is principally famous for the dedicatory poem to Shakespeare written in 1630 by John Milton—which was his very first publication of English verse (he was 24).

As noted, our copy of the fourth edition (technically) of Othello is only one of two 17th-century “player’s quarto” editions of Shakespeare in the Watkinson.

“We should remember that no concept of ‘copyright,’ in its modern sense, existed in Shakespeare’s time. ‘Ownership’ of texts was confined to publishers, who established their right to produce a work by licensing it with their professional body, the Stationers’ Company; a publisher might additionally guarantee ownership of the text by paying a futher fee to have the title entered into the Stationers’ Register. An author who brought a new work to a publisher would be paid for the text—sometimes, in part at least, by being given copies of the printed book—but this payment secured outright ownership of the text . . . In the case of theatrical scripts, a further transactional layer intervened between the writer and the publisher. Plays for commercial production were, for the most part, commissioned by theatre companies from a pool of jobbing playwrights, many of them working collaboratively to produce scripts . . . Once purchased, the play became the property of the theatre company.”

–Murphy, Shakespeare in Print

In celebration of the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, I will be posting about our holdings every day in April.

The first play by Shakespeare to be printed, as far as we know, was Titus Andronicus in 1594, which survives in only one copy. It was discovered in Sweden in 1904, purchased by Henry Clay Folger, and now resides at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.  Of the many editions of the plays which were published in quarto prior to 1700, the Watkinson owns only two—the first separate edition (1684) of Julius Caesar, and the fourth edition (1681) of Othello.

Both of these were given by Allerton C. Hickmott (Hon. 1958), a very generous donor to the Watkinson who gave both books and funds for acquisitions. Among his many gifts were private press books and English imprints ranging from the 16th to the 19th centuries, especially (as here) Elizabethan and Jacobean titles.

In the case of Julius Caesar, five more editions were produced in the next 6 years, mostly due to the performances of actor Thomas Betterton and to a general interest in the tragedies.

We were thrilled to host Eric Johnson, Curator of Early Books & Manuscripts at the Ohio State University, from March 10-13 for a series about medieval manuscripts. On Tuesday he delivered a great talk on the notions of “value” or “worth” that underlie our understanding and appreciation of medieval manuscripts by examining the life of the Hornby-Cockerell Bible (OSU MS.MR14).

An example of a rare “proto-Paris” Bible likely produced in a Parisian workshop sometime in the early 1220s, this Bible survived intact until 1981 when it was sold at auction and promptly broken by its purchasers to be sold off leaf-by-leaf. Johnson is purchasing those leaves as they come back on the market and re-assembling them at Ohio State.  He discussed the manuscript’s original value as an objet d’art, its destruction and “re-packaging” into 440 constituent units of sale, and the slow, methodical process of reconstructing it at The Ohio State University.

Then on Wednesday Dr. Johnson spoke to the students in Jonathan Elukin’s course on the history of the Bible, where he discussed the transition from manuscript to print, using leaves from both the Watkinson and Ohio State University Libraries. Later, we had well over a dozen staff, faculty, alumni and students take part in a guided workshop on medieval manuscripts, when Dr. Johnson spoke at length about the production of parchment, inks, and other elements of the medieval book.

In a humble little volume with the spine title “Collection of Pamphlets” (volume 14), bound with six other unrelated titles, is The Journal of Major George Washington sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq; His Majesty’s Lieutenant-Governor, and Commander in Chief of Virginia, to the Commandant of the French Forces on Ohio . . . with A New Map of the Country as far as the Mississippi.

Intitially printed in Williamsburg in 1754 (of which there are only seven (7) copies reported in institutional libraries), ours is a copy of the London reprint of the same year, held by thirty (30) other libraries. Washington’s fame at home and abroad begins with this pamphlet.

“In the early part of the 1750s French and English forces were expanding into the Ohio Valley, both forming alliances with Indian tribes and setting up trading encampments. In 1753 the French took possession of a tract of land within the chartered limits of Virginia. They then proceeded to erect a chain of military posts from Canada to the Ohio River. All the while, French soldiers and traders made their way up from the south and down from the north, taking possession of the Ohio country. The French encroachments on the English settlements forced Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie to send a commission to warn the French to halt their advances. However, the commission stopped 150 miles short of the French posts and turned back after witnessing the slaughter and defeat of the Indians by the French.

An officer in the Virginia forces — Major George Washington — was recommended to Dinwiddie as an up-and-coming light, someone who might accomplish the mission. Although only 21 years old, Washington was appointed by Dinwiddie to go into the Ohio Valley and deliver a letter to the commander of the French forces, warning him against their actions in violating British rule over those lands. In addition, Washington was to observe French activity and enforcements, and make friends with the Indian tribes.

On October 31, 1753 Major Washington set out from Williamsburg with a small band of men experienced in the ways of the wilderness. The group consisted of Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune and French interpreter; Christopher Gist, a Virginia frontiersman of great renown; two servitors; two Indian traders and accompanying horses. During Washington’s 78 days in the wilderness he met with chiefs of the Indian nations and delivered Gov. Dinwiddie’s letter to the French Commandant, LeGardour de St. Pierre. In a private meeting with Major Washington the French Commandant refused to back down.

On their return to Williamsburg Washington’s entourage encountered bitter cold, deep snow, ice and freezing rain. At one point Washington writes in his Journal “…our horses were now so weak and feeble, and the baggage heavy….therefore myself and others gave up our horses for packs…”  Washington disguised himself in Indian dress while he and Gist decided to return alone on foot. While traveling through the woods they ran into an ambush of French Indians. One of the Indians…”not 15 steps away”… fired at the pair but missed. While crossing a turbulent river on a homemade raft, Washington was thrown off into 10 feet of water. The weather was so severe, he writes in his Journal, “that Mr. Gist had all his fingers, and some of his toes frozen.”

Washington returned to Williamsburg on January 16, 1754. He spent the entire next day writing his account from the entries he had made during the course of the trip. The following day — January 18 — his Journal was presented to the Virginia Assembly which immediately raised a regiment of 300 men to defend their frontiers and maintain England’s rights over the disputed territory.”

Quoted from http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/journal/

We recently acquired a bit of Connecticut history that has been in a mid-western historical society since 1965, and was recently deaccesioned by that archive. We bought it from a dealer in Philadelphia and brought it back to Connecticut!

Dated 14 July 1763 at Preston, CT, this is an apprenticeship indenture which binds Asa Greer, “son of Elisabeth Parke and one of the poor of this town,” to John Greer and his wife to serve as an apprentice until age 21.

Young Asa (who was probably about seven years old) “shall not absent himself day or night from his master’s service,” and in return his master will “teach him to write and cipher and provide him with suitable board and clothes.” The nature of his apprenticeship beyond “service” is not specified.

I am pleased to announce the availability of copies of a limited, signed and numbered edition (1 through 30) of a 3-color lino-cut print by local artist Kait Lennon, a recent graduate of the University of Hartford Art School and a printer at Hartford Prints!

All proceeds from the sale of these prints will go toward the purchase of a copy of the first edition (1855) of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

The dimensions of the sheet are 9 x 12 inches, and the print itself is 8 x 10, ready-to-frame!

Cost: $150.00

Please e-mail richard.ring@trincoll.edu if you would like a copy.

Also available for those who donate to the Whitman:

On December 3, 2013, the students of Clare Rossini’s First-Year Seminar (“The Practice of Poetry”), having visited the Watkinson to compose lines of Whitman’s poetry in metal type the week before, went on a field trip to print keepsakes at Hartford Prints!, a local letterpress shop.  The news article covering the event is here, and here are pics of the students printing.