Research publications

Shakespeare in Geneva

by Lukas Erne, Devani Singh
16 March 2018

 

Version française

 

The Early Modern English Books subset of the Martin Bodmer Collection contains 174 titles, mostly printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America, dating from the late 15th century. Among these books is a particularly noteworthy holding: the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana has the largest collection of first editions of Shakespeare outside the English-speaking world.

In Shakespeare in Geneva, Lukas Erne and Devani Singh provide a detailed description of this holding. The first part of the work is devoted to its history and composition. The second part takes the form of a catalog that provides, for each of the 174 titles, a full bibliographic profile, including complete physical descriptions and provenance information, along with annotations and particularities about each book.

 

 

The Authors

Lukas Erne is Professor of English Literature at the University of Geneva. He is the author of Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (2nd edition, 2013) and Shakespeare and the Book Trade (2013). He has also given, under the auspices of the prestigious Lyell Readership in Bibliography 2011-2012 at Oxford University, a series of lectures dedicated to Shakespeare and the book trade.

Devani Singh, Ph.D., Cambridge University, is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Geneva. Specialist in the history of book and reading, she has published, among others, several articles on Chaucer’s Renaissance readership.