Heritage et AL

Today, October 25, marks the 600 year anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, a major English victory in the Hundred Years’ War won by King Henry the Fifth. This gives us a great excuse to have a look at a couple of our editions of Shakespeare’s Henry V. The play Henry the Fifth as we now know it first appeared in 1623 in what is known as the First Folio . Ref: William Shakespeare, First Folio Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories & tragedies, pp.68-69, 1623, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1623 SHAK.

There are  a number of Shakespearean treasures in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Central City Library. Many of these are from the founding collections donated by Sir George Grey in 1882. The First Folio was the first edition to collect together 36 of Shakespeare's plays and is a highly prized publication. Without it, Shakespeare's plays would be lost to us. The publication was edited by the actors John Hemminge and Henry Condell and only about 1,000 copies were originally printed. The library's First Folio is one of just three in the Southern Hemisphere and one of only 228 remaining copies in the world. Thanks to Grey's donation, we are also the only library in NZ with a rare First Folio and a contemporary quarto of one of the plays (Pericles, 1619). The library also hold many publications by Shakespeare's contemporaries, such as Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and John Donne. Dr. Emma Smith of Hertford College, University of Oxford University...