I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review

podcast. It's the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's first

folio, which gathered in 1623 for the first time several dozen of the Bard's plays all

in one place.

The British Library and the publisher Rizoli have just released a quite large and beautiful edition of that first folio.

This week, Sarah Lyle, who was last year on the podcast speaking with Zady Smith

about her novel The Fraud, is in conversation with Adrian Edwards, head of the

printed heritage collections at the British Library in London.

Sarah and Adrian talk about what the Hecafolio even is, that famous portrait of Shakespeare

and some of the particular delights of the British Library.

Let's turn now to that conversation.

I'm Sarah Lyle with the New York Times Book Review podcast and I'm delighted today to have Adrian Edwards,

a rare books librarian at the British Library with me today. We'll be talking about Shakespeare's first folio, which is celebrating its 400th birthday

this year and has been reprinted in facsimile by the British Library.

And we can all buy it and Adrian if you could start off

by telling me what is the first folio and why is it so important?

Hello Sarah. Hello The first folio is a collected edition of the plays of William Shakespeare.

It's a very large volume. Most copies contain around nine pages, that sort of number, and it

contains 36 plays written or co-written by William Shakespeare.

And it's important because half of those plays, 18 of those plays, had never been printed

before.

And the other half had been printed but not necessarily with the texts

...