English professor and NPR literary detective Paul Collins recounts the extraordinary journey of Shakespeare's first folio, an edition of the bard's plays first published just after his death and commonly considered as the crown jewel of literary collecting. The terrific saga, which can perhaps best be described as Shakespearean, includes lots of nefarious characters and thrilling suspense, as various copies of the folio are auctioned, stolen, burned, shredded, sunk at sea, and even used to wrap fish. Collins has many opportunities to explore tangent tales, such as the history of paper and the strange world of obsessive Japanese collectors, as well as the involvement of Alexander Pope, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Henry Clay Folger, founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library. The most astounding aspect of the story is how very close the folio came to extinction on multiple occasions, which would have robbed the world of half of Shakespeare's dramatic classics.

A popular narrative history of the bard's competitively pursued First Folio traces the author's travels from the site of a Sotheby auction to regions in Asia, throughout which he investigated the roles played by twentieth century oilmen and the electronic age. By the best-selling author of The Trouble with Tom.

A popular narrative history of the bard's competitively pursued First Folio traces the author's travels from the site of a Sotheby auction to regions in Asia, throughout which he investigated the roles played by twentieth century oilmen and the electronic age. By the best-selling author of The Trouble with Tom.