#fourth folio

[shakespearenews]

Early Modern Female Book Ownership

You are what you read—at least, that’s how I have always understood the feeling of dissolving into a book. Books absorb us into their pages: we feel our edges blur and disappear. The world goes away, until reality breaks the charm and we resurface and reappear among the living.

Except when we don’t. Sometimes, those who are forgotten by history live on only in the books they left behind, fathoms beneath our memory of the past. That is exactly what happened to Charlotte Rowe (1718-1739), daughter of Nicholas Rowe, England’s fourth Poet Laureate and the first editor of Shakespeare’s works. Charlotte Rowe was swallowed by a book. In fact, she disappeared into the Fourth Folio of Shakespeare’s plays (1685).

[shakespearenews]

Charleston Library Society adds museum-quality displays, including Shakespeare collection

Cleveland said some of the items were coveted by curators of the Folger Museum in Washington, D.C., but she is glad Igoe’s family chose to keep them here.

She told the family the items would have been properly cared for by the Folger, but they also might have gotten somewhat lost in a museum that already touts its Shakespeare collection as the world’s largest.

“I told them, ‘If you gave it to the Library Society, it would be a crown jewel,’” she said.