Alice Griffin Lecture 2024: Shakespeare’s Books?

Title: Shakespeare’s Books?

Event details

When: Wednesday 2 October

Location: : Level 4 Lecture Theatre - 201-440, B201, 10 Symonds Street, Auckland CBD

T ime: : 5.30pm–6.30pm, followed by refreshments.

Lecture Description:

This lecture discusses two possible instances of Shakespeare’s book ownership in collections in Australia – the first a signature in a 1560 copy of Antony Cope’s History of Hannibal and Scipio held in the State Library Victoria, and the second a gift inscription in a 1577 Bible held at the National Library of Australia. One of the great mysteries in Shakespeare scholarship is his missing library and I ask in this lecture whether these books might fill that gap, making them some of the most valuable and significant early modern books in the world.

Professor Rosalind Smith is Chair of English and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the Australian National University. Her books include Sonnets and the English Woman Writer (Palgrave, 2005), Material Cultures of Early Modern Women’s Writing (Palgrave, 2014), Early Modern Women’s Complaint: Gender, Form, Politics (Palgrave, 2020) and a forthcoming monograph on Early Modern Women’s Complaint Poetry with OUP in 2025. She co-edits the journal Parergon and is general editor of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing.

Photo credit

Emmerson Collection, State Library Victoria

Host or Publisher University of Auckland, Faculty of Arts