A Unique Collection of Shakespeare Editions Digitized in Geneva

 

 

The Fondation Martin Bodmer located in Cologny (Geneva) hosts the greatest collection of early Shakespeare editions outside the English-speaking  world:  36  titles  from  Shakespeare  are  part  of  the  174  vo-lumes  of  the  collection  of  “Early  Modern  English  Books”.  Published  between the late fifteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, these  books  have  been  digitized  by  The  Bodmer  Lab  from  the  Uni-versity  of  Geneva  (UNIGE)  and  will  be  made  freely  available  to  the  public. Scholars across the world will gain easy access to more than 50,000  images of books that were hardly  accessible  before.  With  the book Shakespeare in Geneva, two UNIGE researchers bring these unknown documents into new light and reveal how Martin Bodmer built his collection.

Describing  each  item  in  the  collection,  Shakespeare  in  Geneva,  writ-ten  by  Lukas  Erne  and  Devani  Singh,  shows  the  importance  of  Shakespeare  to  Martin  Bodmer  and  documents  how  the  latter  built  his  collection  from  1914  onwards.  Two  quotations  from  Martin  Bodmer  himself  are  self-explanatory  and  describe  the  very  beginnings  of  his  great library.