First Folio! Shakespeare's American Tour

First Folio! Shakespeare's American Tour, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened November 19, 2016 and will close January 22, 2017. The exhibition was curated by Heather Wolfe, Curator of Manuscripts and Archivist at the Folger Shakespeare Library and  Caroline Duroselle-Melish, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints at the Folger Shakespeare Library with assistance from Maribeth Cote, the Public Engagement Coordinator at the Folger Shakespeare Library. It is part of The Wonder of Will: 400 Years of Shakespeare 2016 commemoration of Shakespeare's death.

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger Shakespeare Library sent First Folios to all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC. This exhibition celebrates their return to the Folger, and is the largest ever display of First Folios in a single venue. Forty-three thousand miles later, and safely back in the Folger’s Great Hall, the eighteen traveling copies of the First Folio (and one understudy), the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, tell their stories–of the half million people they met, the programming to celebrate their visits, the unique attributes of each book, and the overwhelming relevance of the plays they include.