Announced in 1622: A book now known as the First Folio

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.”

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.