Courtesy: thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com

Recently, the literary world was in for a surprise when one of Shakespeare’s rarest gems, First Folio, was discovered at a stately home on a Scottish island!

First Folio, a collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare, was compiled a few years after his death in 1623, and is one of the most sought-after books in history. Apparently, it is the first compilation of his dramatic works, of which only a few hundred copies survives to this day.

Discovered at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute, the book has sent waves of happiness among academicians and Shakespeare scholars, as there are only about 230 copies of the book existing.

The existence of the new copies of the three-volume collection is so uncommon that after receiving the news, academicians could not really believe their ears.

Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, said that her first reaction over the news of First Folio was: “Like hell they have”. She travelled all the way to Mount Stuart to see it for herself.

Speaking on this rare discovery, Alice Martin, the head of collections for the Mount Stuart House Trust, said, “In terms of literary discoveries, they do not come much bigger than a new First Folio, and we are really excited that this has happened on Bute.”

Apparently, the Mount Stuart copy of the First Folio has been lying at the mansion library for more than a century but came into limelight when Martin accidentally discovered the book when she was cataloging the collection.

As per Smith, this particular copy of the First Folio was once owned by an influential 18^th century London editor, Isaac Reed, who allegedly bought the book in 1786. Smith came to this conclusion since the book contains many annotations made by Reed, who re-edited a 1785 collection of Shakespeare, as well as blank pages that would have likely been used for illustrations, according to a statement by the Mount Stuart Trust.

Smith suggested: “Books like this are like ‘CSI’ crime scenes. They carry tiny bits of evidence about the people who used them. The vast majority of plays from this period have been lost, because they were never printed.”

According to a report carried on BBC news, Smith carried out several technical checks, like the age and appearance of the paper it was printed on, the process involved in making the page, imperfections, like smudges left by the people who printed the book and misspelled words to determine the authenticity of the book. The report also said that the First Folio isn’t just the first known collection of Shakespeare’s plays but was also the first time that nearly half of his dramatic works were published. Without it, plays like Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, As You Like It, and Macbeth could have been lost to time.

The book will be put on display for public viewing at Mount Stuart’s library on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death ,which falls on April 23.