Map of locations of copies of the First Folio

Brighten your weekend with this global opportunity to celebrate one of the more important books in New Zealand, the 1623 folio collection Shakespeare’s plays.  The Auckland Public Libraries’ copy is the one farthest away in the world from it’s point of origin, but this event provides a chance to see where all the others are as well and to learn more the copy here.

Here are links https://folio400.com/  to the global First Folio celebrations with some delightfully presented information about the publication, it’s history and where copies are now held.

This page https://folio400.com/first-folios-on-show-in-2023/ – shows where and when you can see an original copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio ranked in their distance from William Jaggard’s Print House. Ours is furthest away at 11,386 miles.  This page https://folio400.com/where-are-they/ – has a beautiful map showing where copies of the First Folio are in the world.

Here is the link to the event on World First Folio Day –10:30am on 23 April.  Registration is free and will ensure you receive the Zoom link for the talks.

https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/events/2023/04/a-living-document-rather-than-a-relic-the-auckland-first-folio-at-400/

• Auckland Libraries’ book conservator David Ashman will give an illustrated overview of what’s involved in conserving and digitising a 400 year-old treasure of English literature.
• Dr. Sophie Tomlinson will talk about the University of Auckland Summer Shakespeare productions in the 1960s and 70s.
• Michael Hurst will mark the official launch of the First Folio on Kura Heritage Images Online with a reading.
• Robert Eruera will read from Ngā waiata aroha a Hekepia, Shakespearean sonnets translated into te reo Māori by Merimeri Penfold.

The Auckland First Folio will be on display, and visitors can also explore the online version.

Dall-E image depicting conference theme

Each year, the Centre for the Book at the University of Otago organises a symposium with a theme designed to engage with ideas about the roles that books and print have played in shaping identity, indicating what’s important, explain how to do (and not to do) things.

The theme for the 2023 Centre of the Book Research Symposium is ‘Books and Resistance’.  We often discuss books as repositories or shapers of culture, most often considering the ways such print is revered, studied or transmitted, without so often pausing to think about all the ways that print, frequently in more ephemeral forms, also objects, resists or reframes our perspectives.  This year’s symposium offers an opportunity to reflect on how texts create, embody, celebrate, or challenge aspects of cultures that may otherwise be marginalised or silent, deviant or devout, brilliantly (but dauntingly) original or factually false that all find greater voice through print.  Resistance takes many forms, from graffiti to public manifestos and from handbills to social media posts.  The presentations in this symposium will discuss a variety of genres from different periods, some attending to distribution, some to subversive modes of production, some to resistant readers.  Why does print both enable resistance and provoke resistance?  Are some forms of print better suited to resistance?  Can choosing not to engage with print be a form of resistance?  These and no doubt other questions will be the focus of the 2023 Centre for the Book Symposium.

We hope you have something you wish to contribute to this topic, and that you will plan to join us for the public lecture on Thursday evening and the day of presentations on Friday, 16–17 November 2023

In line with this brief context, abstracts are welcome that examine any aspect of how books, newspapers, and the written word in all its forms enact, depict, obstruct or otherwise engage with resistance.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• The inertia of physical books as a form of resistance
• The ability of books to include or exclude voices of groups, individuals or nations
• Radical publishing, whether on the left, right, or in areas otherwise marginal to the prevailing norms
• Print permissions and censorship
• Small publishers: acts of resistance, obstacles they face, survival as a form of resistance
• Print and environmental issues
• Print and Indigeneity
• Print design to effect change
• Print design that elicits unexpected resistance
• Print and AI
• Print and protest

Please submit abstracts of 250–300 words to the Centre for the Book (books@otago.ac.nz) by 1 September.  Feel free to contact either of the organisers, Shef Rogers (shef.rogers@otago.ac.nz) or Donald Kerr (donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz), if you have any questions.  We aim to send out notifications about acceptances and a draft programme by mid-September.  Online participation and attendance may be possible; precise format to be confirmed in July.  Whether online or in person, registration will be free.

For those who might have missed this week’s Sunday Morning interview on Radio NZ, here’s a link to Donald Kerr discussing his current research on Ernie Webber.  We look forward to full story in print in due course.