The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, without which many of Shakespeare’s plays might have been lost, has always been at the heart of the Folger collection. A display of the 82 copies of the First Folio collected by Emily and Henry Folger, by far the largest First Folio collection in the world, is on display and accessible to the public for the first time at the heart of the Folger’s Shakespeare Exhibition Hall.
But how did 17th-century booksellers in the international book trade learn that this collection of Shakespeare’s plays was on its way? As Greg Prickman explains, the advance publicity for this book was, surprisingly enough, not entirely different from what it would be today: a few descriptive lines in an English-language list of titles, supplementing the book catalog at a leading fair in Frankfurt, Germany—the same city where a major annual international book fair takes place today.
It’s a waterfront scene that could take place today: ships unloading consumer goods, containers being maneuvered into piles, cranes hoisting heavy loads. People in talking in groups, dogs playing, sunlight on a public square. But this isn’t a busy port or vacation town today. It’s Frankfurt, Germany in the 17th century, site of one of the largest trade fairs in Europe.
The Frankfurt Fair took place twice a year in the spring and autumn, and for the book trade it was so important that a significant percentage of annual sales occurred there every year. Many of the prominent printing firms rented year-round warehouse space in Frankfurt to store books, tying up inventory against the likelihood of guaranteed sales. Exhibition space to display goods and conduct business was highly sought. A recent addition to the Folger collection is a contract for a clothing merchant from Hamburg, Georg Laubengeier, to rent exhibition space in the Frankfurt Saalhof, which at the time was used for cloth trading during the Lenten and Autumn fairs. The term of the contract is 16 years, perhaps demonstrating the perennial value of “location, location, location.”
![Frankfurt contract blog Manuscript contract from 1590 described in the blog post.](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2025/10/Frankfurt-contract-blog.jpeg?fit=300%2C300)
Printers used the fair to meet in person to exchange money and to conduct all manner of in-kind business—delivering copies of printed books as credit against other work, exchanging fonts of type and woodblocks among themselves, and promoting their publications. One of the promotional methods included printed lists of books that were newly available or forthcoming. As the 16th century turned into the 17th, it was increasingly the case that catalogs of book titles would be produced for each of the two seasonal Frankfurt Fairs. They were typically in Latin or German, but eventually a supplement of English-language publications was also produced for the book trade in England.
For the Autumn fair of 1622, the English supplement contained the usual list of religious and contemporary political titles. In amongst such works was one with a rather different focus—”Playes, written by M. William Shakespeare, all in one volume, printed by Isaack Jaggard, in fol.” What we now call the First Folio was first announced in England on the occasion of the trade fair at Frankfurt more than 400 years ago.
It was not until November 1623 that the finished book was available for purchase. The year-plus from the book being announced to copies being set in London in the Paul’s Churchyard shop of Edward Blount, a major financer of the endeavor, is one of progress, negotiations, interruptions, trail and error, illness and death, and ultimately some measure of success.
You can learn more about the 1622 reference and 1624 reference in Shakespeare Documented, a multi-institutional resource.
ON VIEW AT THE FOLGER | Books of the 1620s
![Visitor looking at Books of the 1620s](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2025/10/Folger-opening-6-23-24-096-sm-blog3.jpeg?fit=300%2C300)
Photo by Lloyd Wolf
To learn more about the book trade during the time that Shakespeare’s First Folio emerged, explore our current special exhibition “Into the Vault: Books of the 1620s,” which shows an extraordinary range of books from the Folger collection that were printed in that decade. Some of the books on display are other volumes printed by members of the group that formed to finance and print Shakespeare’s First Folio: William Jaggard and his son Isaac, Edward Blount, John Smethwick, and William Aspley. Others are books that were printed in the 1620s in the most prominent centers of European book production, including Rome, Venice, Leiden, Frankfurt, Paris, and Antwerp. Fittingly, this special exhibition, which is in the Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall, is located directly across from the First Folio Gallery in the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall.
More about the First Folio:
![First Folio title page First Folio title page](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2016/11/TitlePageFirstFolio_005198_small.jpg?resize=16%2C10&gravity)
Up Close: Shakespeare's First Folio
Get an up-close look at the title page of one of the Folger’s 82 First Folios and learn more about it by clicking through captions that zoom in on different parts of the page.
![Austin Tichenor as Richard Burbage Austin Tichenor as Richard Burbage](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/11/Richard-Burbage-Austin-Tichenor-group-table.jpg?resize=16%2C10&gravity)
“The book of his good acts”: Shakespeare’s First Folio onstage and on the page
Marking the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, Austin Tichenor compares The Book of Will, Lauren Gunderson’s popular play about the Folio’s creation, with new research shared by Chris Laoutaris in Shakespeare’s Book.
![ShakespeareSkyrocketing_FB](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2023/11/ShakespeareSkyrocketing_FB.jpg?resize=16%2C10&gravity)
400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith
Emma Smith of Oxford University tells us what the First Folio has been up to since it was published 400 years ago.
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