Professor Emma Smith

We may have heard quite a bit over the past year about Shakespeare’s First Folio but what is really so special about it?
​
Find out from distinguished Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith on 2 March 2024 at the Heart Centre.

Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623 ...... in Leeds!

The first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays is probably the most influential secular book ever printed. This lecture discusses how it was put together and its lasting significance, including two copies in Leeds.

2023 marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first collected edition of thirty-six plays by William Shakespeare. Published only seven years after his death, the First Folio is a monument to Shakespeare put together by his fellow actors in partnership with London publishers. This talk traces the afterlife of the First Folio and the ways copies of this book have moved around the world in the centuries since its publication.

Learn about the tumultuous origins of what has become one of the most valuable printed books in the world and hear about what happened to copies of the First Folio after 1623. Some show how the plays were received in different theatres, others contain doodles and even children’s drawings. Its changing value can be traced as books were rebound and sold for higher prices. Copies formerly owned by aristocrats were bought up by factory owners, including the Gott family from Leeds. English libraries were broken up and sold to wealthy Americans - and in some cases, as with the copy in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, came back again!

Emma Smith was born and brought up in Leeds. She is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, and the 2023 Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe. Her books include The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio and Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, both with second editions published for the anniversary in 2023. Her This Is Shakespeare was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Inspire Inclusion
IWD event

This International Women’s Day event at the Headingley Heart Centre features Heartlines Writers,
local musician Maria Sandle and Harissa (women’s acapella group),
all celebrating the 2024 IWD theme “Inspire Inclusion”.
Please arrive at 10.15 for a 10.30 start. Expect poetry and prose, music, homemade cake, tea and coffee.
The event is free (donations are welcome) and refreshments will be served after the performance.
​There is no need to book.
Shire Oak Room, HEART, Bennett Road. Headingley. LS6 3HN. 5th March 10.30. Kindly sponsored by Headingley Lit Fest.