Lesser, Edward W. Kane Professor of English, had just taught a class with Peter Stallybrass, now an emeritus professor of English. They used the 1619 Pavier Quartos, the first collection of Shakespeare’s work, to address questions of authorship, style, and the history of publishing and reading.
It started Lesser thinking more about the history of these quartos, which can be seen as a kind of bootleg collected works. Analytical bibliographers examining the texts in the early 20th century realized that the copies, despite having different dates and printers’ names, had all been printed at the same time by the same person. Since then, scholars have believed that a publisher named Thomas Pavier put out the collection in 1619, but Shakespeare’s acting troupe, the King’s Men, asked the Lord Chamberlain to issue an order forbidding the printing of any their plays. (It’s been thought that the King’s Men didn’t want to be scooped, since they put out their own grand edition of collected Shakespeare—the famous First Folio—four years later.) Following the Lord Chamberlain’s order, Pavier put false dates on his plays and split them up to make them look like leftover copies of early editions.
Since then, no one has gone back to look at the texts themselves. Over five years, Lesser did just that, examining about 350 copies in about 35 libraries from London to Geneva to Fort Worth, Texas, to Penn Libraries’ own Kislak Center. “Analytic bibliography is the study of textual objects,” he says. “It’s a kind of forensic analysis of books.” It was work that had to be done in person. “The ghost images I talk about are really hard to see on the page. You have to squint and make yourself cross-eyed a bit to see them.”
He also worked with the librarians to learn more about the history of the books and their conservation, saying, “The book would not be the book it is if not for the work that all of these librarians and curators did and the kind of expertise that they brought to the table.”
The result is “Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes: Shakespeare in 1619, Bibliography in the Longue Durée.” “Ghosts” are faint images caused by the interaction of ink on a page as it's pressed up against another for a long time. “Almost all of these plays have been bound, rebound, reconditioned, particularly in the 19th century,” Lesser says. “What these ghost images tell us is that at some previous point in their lives they were bound next to another book.” He found ghosts of title pages that let him reconstruct a census of lost bound collections and conclude that many more copies of the Pavier Quartos were sold as a bound set than previously thought.
In Senegal, the ambitious Dakar Greenbelt project seeks to create an extensive network of ecological infrastructure in and around the city to sustainably address environmental concerns and enhance urban life. With support from David Gouverneur and Ellen Neises, Ph.D. candidate Rob Levinthal in the Weitzman School of Design led two courses that included a field trip to Dakar, that culminated in students presenting their visions for parts of the Greenbelt.
From a desert to an oasis: Penn engages in ambitious greening effort in the Sahel
Students from the Weitzman School of Design journeyed to Senegal to help with a massive ecological and infrastructural greening effort as part of their coursework. The Dakar Greenbelt aims to combat desertification and promote sustainable urban growth.
As part of an undergraduate course, Penn faculty and students curated an Arthur Ross Gallery exhibition of works from the Neumann family’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary art.
The University’s nexus for technology transfer supports researchers in their innovative efforts, from CAR T to mRNA advancements that have dramatically reshaped the world.
