The Shakespeare Thefts

Preface A Literary Detective Story
One The Most Hated Man in England: The Gondomar Copy
Two First Folio Hunters
Three A Cuban Fraud: The Durham University Copy
Four The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
Five Unrecovered: The Manchester University Copy
Six The Pope's Sticky Fingers
Seven A Close Personal Relationship: The Pembroke Copies
Eight Nationalism, Bullets, and a Recovered Treasure
Nine The Bibliomaniac: The Sir Thomas Phillipps Copy
Ten Looking into Shakespeare's Eyes
Eleven Fell in the Weeping Brook: The Fiske Harris Copy
Twelve Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden
Thirteen The King's Companion: Royalist Copies, Puritan Copies
Fourteen Obsessed
Fifteen A Literary Thief, a Bootlegger, a Shoe Salesman, and Hitler: The Williams College Copy
Sixteen Why Is The Whore of Babylon Well Thumbed?
Seventeen Alienated: The Hereford Cathedral Copy
Eighteen Creative Control
Nineteen 'Purloined & Embezzled': The William Beeston Copy
Twenty The World's Worst Stolen Treasure
Appendix The Making of the Shakespeare First Folio
Acknowledgments
Notes

ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.

"An enjoyable literary detective story . . . Shakespeare himself would have enjoyed each of the tales recorded in this diverting book" --"The Wall Street Journal"

"Rasmussen uses a lively, nonacademic style and engrossing anecdotes to tell us about one of history's most fascinating books . . . an entertaining and informative book." - "Library Journal

""You don't have to be a Shakespeare fan or a rare book expert to enjoy The Shakespeare Thefts. Light and lively...and a highly accessible read."--"The Washington Independent Review of Books""A gripping narrative." "-The Washington Post

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"A wonderfully engaging, witty, accessible account both of the fates of first folios and of the continuing efforts by Rasmussen's team to find the folios and analyze them for authenticity . . . This is as un-put-downable as the most gripping mystery: along the way, readers will learn much about the social history of the folios, about the murders most foul connected to them, and about the "dead within two years" fate that has often befallen the folio's owners. Marvelous on every level." --"Booklist"

" Eric Rasmussen's worldwide pursuit of extant Folios [is] a compelling account.... fascinating stories" --Peter J. Smith, Times Higher Education supplement

"A collection of witty and entertaining essays about how, since it was first published in 1623, the First Folio ... has attracted the attention of thieves and conmen; how copies of one of the most valuable books in the world have been purloined over the centuries ... And there can be few people better qualified to tell the story [than Eric Rasmussen]. [Shakespeare Thefts] is great fun, and full of self-deprecating humor. But what makes it more than just an erudite addition to the true crime genre is the author's all-consuming passion for his subject. This is a gloriously geeky book."-- Adrian Tinniswood, "The Literary Review""A Shakespeare authority recounts his attempts to identify and document all extant copies of Shak