This book is a very good read, a largely anecdotal but always entertaining account of copies of the Shakespeare First Folio (henceforth FF) from their production in 1623 to the present. As approximately one copy in three of an estimated 750 survives, the FF may be the least rare but most valuable book printed in early modern England. Smith’s introduction concentrates on Sir Edward Dering, first known purchaser of a FF (in fact, he purchased two). Numbered chapters are “Ownership,” on the history of private ownership, purchasing, and collecting, touching on Henry Clay Folger and his famous library, but concentrating on other collectors and institutions; “Reading,” as evidenced by marking and extracting; “Decoding,” covering interpretation, message hunting, and machine-assisted analysis; “Performing,” covering both the neglect and the use of the FF for theatrical performances; and “Perfecting,” on the creation of “perfect” copies, whether by facsimile or by “sophistication.” The concluding chapter is typically anecdotal in narrating, among other things, the theft of a FF from Durham University and its recovery by the Folger Shakespeare Library. One could dine out for a month on stories told between the covers of this engaging and informative book. Only the “Decoding” chapter runs off the tracks, drawing an unconvincing analogy between the useless machine created by the fanatic Ignatius L. Donnelly (The Great Cryptogram [1888]) and Charlton Hinman’s ingenious collator. Smith is too tolerant of Donnelly and too dismissive of Hinman.

Sophisticated language may place a heavy burden on the general reader. A reference to “the supercessionism of the Venice court room” (278), for example, sent this reader to the Oxford English Dictionary, which cites “supersessionism” (with s not c) in four theological treatises from 1972 to 2010. Similarly, “grangerized” is used twice (118, 219) before it is defined (300). Professional academics may find information that is new, but little that is surprising. Most books from the period were treated exactly the same as the FF; differences occur only when the FF achieves astronomical and therefore unique cultural and financial value. Bibliographers will grouch that unbound books were sold in sheets, not in “gathered pages” (70). Signature marks are not alternate forms of pagination (172). Printer’s waste was not “torn unceremoniously into strips” by a binder (288), but cut with an edged tool (paper does not tear in straight lines). Particularly confusing is the statement that “these last two copies also show the distinctive deckled edges of the paper, marking their original trimming with a binding knife” (288). Deckled edges occur on all paper from the handpress era, and survive when a book has escaped the ministrations of the binder’s knife (properly called a “plough”). Catchwords are nowhere mentioned, nor, except indirectly, is the concept of the conjugate leaf, necessary for understanding how copies are “perfected.”

Though Sir Edward Dering also purchased jewels, it seems mean-spirited to characterize his purchase of the FF as “conspicuous consumption” (13). Smith treats Continental purchases of the FF (93), but overlooks advertisements for the Frankfurt Fair in 1622 and 1624. Humphrey Dyson’s early bibliographic notice of Shakespeare’s “workes” in an inscription on the title page of a Troilus and Cressida (1609), now in the Huntington Library, is also overlooked. The destruction of unsold sheets of the Third Folio (1663–64) by the Great Fire of London (1666), which made Third Folios exceptionally rare, goes unmentioned. Another missed opportunity: folios listed in auction catalogues, 1676–1700.

This product of a top academic press suffers from a lack of copyediting, with misplaced commas (e.g., 68, penultimate line); redundancies like “difficult crux” (162); a single use of “s/he,” elsewhere “he or she” (162); a duplication of “2014” (339); “Gizman” for “Guzman” (182, 345). The vaguely identified “one Thomas Looney” (219) later becomes “Thomas J. Looney,” though his first name was John, whence he is correctly called J. Thomas Looney (232). A table of all copies analyzed in Smith’s survey, with page numbers, would have been of great service. Such irritants to the nitpicker do not seriously compromise the pleasure and instruction this book will bring to the casual bibliophile or the Shakespeare enthusiast.