Watch, Read, Listen

Henry Huntington acquired one of the rarest books in the history of English literature: the so-called “bad quarto” of Hamlet. Zachary Lesser, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses how this book’s discovery in 1823 transformed our ideas about Hamlet, how it made its way to The Huntington, and what can we learn through this book’s history about modern libraries.

This interdisciplinary conference explored the subterranean world of Elizabethan Catholic print and scribal culture, set against the backdrop of press censorship, illicit printing, book smuggling, subversive scribal publication, and the uses of Catholic writing by government agents. The study of book circulation illuminated the nature and significance of the persecuted religious minority that was, by the end of the 16th century, no longer supposed to exist.

Dennis Kruska, a noted authority on the Yosemite Valley, discusses the literature that enticed sightseers to experience the Yosemite’s scenic wonders following the first tourist party to the valley in 1855. The literary lure on tourism has worked so well, says Kruska, that today Yosemite is painfully loved to death.

Dympna Callaghan, William L. Safire Professor of Modern Letters at Syracuse University, considers Shakespeare’s complaints about the limitations on what he could say and how he could say it.

A conversation between authors Susan Orlean (The Library Book) and Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer) and moderated by William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.