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Senate House Library

Exhibitions

Current exhibition: Shakespeare’s First Folios: a 400-year journey 

Shakespeare’s First Folio (SHL)

The First Folio is one of the most valuable and intently examined in the world and an icon of English literature. It ensured the survival of Shakespeare’s plays and over the last 400 years it has been duplicated, republished and collected in many ways. Senate House Library’s exhibition explores the history of this iconic book through its reproductions as facsimiles, how the text was repackaged and republished and how the book became prized by collectors, including Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence and Sir Louis Sterling, whose First Folios are now treasures of the Library’s collections.

Join our curators for a tour of the exhibition, including an opportunity to see a First Folio on display.