uispeccoll:

Today is Shakespeare’s birthday!!! Featuring the Bard’s sonnets seems to me, a perfect way to begin wrapping up National Poetry Month!

This lovely collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets is actually a forgery! If you tuned into the Shakespeare Livestream last April, you may remember this little book. If not, Professor Adam Hooks has written a wonderful blog post about how he discovered that this book is an altered version of A Collection of Poems published by Bernard Lintott in 1709. In brief, that title page in not a title page at all!  It was originally signature L–the initial at the bottom of the page was scrubbed out to create a title page.

Athough it is a fake, made even further obvious by the type and paper, this book is still lovely. The tree calf binding is stunning and the vignette and book plates are equally charming. Shall we compare this book to a summer’s day? It is certainly more lovely and temperate than an Iowa summer’s day!

-Jillian

PR2848 .A2 1700

P.S. Don’t forget to look at Adam Hooks’s longer post on Shakespeare Forgeries!

P.P.S. Yesterday’s Livestream video!