The Library Bids Adieu to First Folio

The First Folio—the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays to appear in print—has left the main exhibition gallery of the Harrison/Small Special Collections building today, and is now traveling to its next venue, one of the four priceless volumes the Folger Shakespeare Library has touring the United States to mark the 400th year since Shakespeare’s death in 1616.

According to UVA Today‘s article “Bidding ‘Fare Thee Well’ to Shakespeare’s First Folio at UVA” the public’s response to the tour has been very positive. Interim senior director of the Harrison-Small Research Center Carla Lee says that, since the First Folio arrived on October 1st, more than 1,800 people have come to see the book that preserved 18 plays for which there is no earlier source.

The Main Gallery will be closed from Thursday, October 27–Saturday, October 29 while the current exhibition “Shakespeare by the Book: Four Centuries of Printing, Editing, and Publishing” is reinstalled. The main gallery will reopen on Monday, October 31, and the Library exhibition will remain up through December 29, 2016.

Read the article “Bidding ‘Fare Thee Well’ to Shakespeare’s First Folio at UVA” (UVA Today, 10/26/2016).

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