Books and Reading in Shakespeare's England

Do you have a book that means something special to you? 400 years ago, when printed books were a fairly new thing, they meant something to their owners too. But what they meant was, in many ways, much different from what they mean today. In this episode we talk to two authors about how people read, acquired, and collected books in Shakespeare’s time. Stuart Kells is the author of Shakespeare’s Library (Counterpoint, 2019). It speculates on what books the Bard might have owned and tells some intriguing stories about people over the years who’ve claimed either to have found the library or to have owned pieces of it. Jason Scott-Warren’s book is Shakespeare’s First Reader (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), which dissects the library of Richard Stonley, an Elizabethan bureaucrat who was the first person we know of to buy a printed book written by Shakespeare—a copy of Venus and Adonis that Stonley picked up on June 12, 1593. Kells and Scott-Warren are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Stuart Kells is an Australian writer. He is the author of Penguin and the Lane Brothers, and The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Jason Scott-Warren is a College Lecturer and Director of Studies in English at Cambridge University in England. Recently, we had him on Shakespeare Unlimited when he discovered, based on research by Claire M.L. Bourne, that the First Folio at the Free Library of Philadelphia was once owned by John Milton. From the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 4, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Give Me Some Ink and Paper,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, Roger Chatterton at Kite Recording Studio in Cambridge, England, and Simon Knight in the recording studio at La Trobe University’s College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce in Melbourne, Australia.