Books by type

Macbeth

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

This facsimile edition of Macbeth is taken from the large and handsome book known simply as the ‘First Folio’, the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s ‘Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies’. It was printed in 1623, seven years after his death. Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays had already been published in the small, cheap format known as quartos during his lifetime, including such favourites as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The First Folio added another eighteen, including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night all of which are indispensable to the modern repertory. Without the First Folio only half of Shakespeare’s dramatic output would have survived.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, drawn again from Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles, although much altered. The First Folio edition is the first ever printing of the play, which is thought to date from 1603 to 1607.

This is an eBookTreasures facsimile edition.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99


Hamlet

A Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

This facsimile edition of Hamlet is taken from the large and handsome book known simply as the ‘First Folio’, the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s ‘Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies’. It was printed in 1623, seven years after his death. Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays had already been published in the small, cheap format known as quartos during his lifetime, including such favourites as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The First Folio added another eighteen, including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night all of which are indispensable to the modern repertory. Without the First Folio only half of Shakespeare’s dramatic output would have survived.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most enduring and famous tragedies, and the version in the First Folio is one of three early and very different versions that exist. It was written around the turn of the 17th century and the part of Hamlet has always attracted the most illustrious actors.

This is an eBookTreasures facsimile edition.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99


Anthony and Cleopatra

Anthony and Cleopatra Cover

by William Shakespeare

This facsimile edition of Anthony and Cleopatra is taken from the large and handsome book known simply as the ‘First Folio’, the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s ‘Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies’. It was printed in 1623, seven years after his death. Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays had already been published in the small, cheap format known as quartos during his lifetime, including such favourites as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The first Folio added another eighteen, including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night all of which are indispensable to the modern repertory. Without the First Folio only half of Shakespeare’s dramatic output would have survived.

Anthony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies and has been performed on stage and screen many times. It draws extensively from Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans. Cleopatra must surely rank as one of the most compelling of Shakespeare’s creations. The play was written some time between 1603 and 1607.

This is an eBookTreasures facsimile edition.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99


Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets
The most famous sonnets to be written in English are probably William Shakespeare’s. The John Rylands’ copy of the first edition, published on the 20th May 1609 during Shakespeare’s lifetime, is a modest little book in octavo format. Printed rather erratically by George Eld and sold by John Wright for Thomas Thorpe, it comprises forty leaves of paper, 2,156 lines of verse, and 154 sonnets.

Remarkable for its rarity, it is thought to be one of only thirteen copies to have survived to the twenty-first century. Purchased from Dr Richard Farmer by Earl Spencer for £8 in 1798, and bound in an elegant green morocco binding by Roger Payne, it found its way to Manchester in 1892 when Enriqueta Rylands purchased the Spencer Collection of books.

This is an eBookTreasures facsimile edition.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99


A Medieval Bestiary

A Medieval Bestiary
A bestiary is a book of real and imaginary beasts, though its subjects can extend to plants and even rocks. It combines description of the physical nature and habits of animals with elaboration on the moral or spiritual significance of these characteristics.

This amazing book was produced in the first decade of the 13th century, and is one of the earliest bestiaries to feature vivid paintings of animals.

This enhanced eBookTreasures facsimile edition of selected pages from the original manuscript and contains text and audio interpretation on every page.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £2.99


The Bedford Hours

The Bedford Hours
The Bedford Hours is one of the most lavish surviving medieval prayerbooks. Made in Paris between 1410 and 1430, its prayers are illustrated by 38 large images and over 1,200 small marginal roundels. Books of hours were popular devotional collections. Their text was drawn from Psalms and included prayers and chants.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £3.49


Henry VIII’s Psalter

Henry VIII's Psalter
Henry VIII’s Psalter is a small manuscript and, as indicated by the many notes added in Henry’s own handwriting, it became his personal Psalter and a much-loved and heavily consulted book. The annotations are made using three different writing implements: a pen; a pencil; and a red crayon.

This is is an enhanced eBookTreasure edition and contains interpretative text and audio on selected pages.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £3.49


Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an

Sultan Baybars' Qur'an Cover
Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an is one of the most magnificent Qur’ans in the British Library. Produced in Cairo in seven volumes between 1304-1306 AD (704-705 in the Muslim calendar), it is named after the Mamluk ruler who commissioned it, Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Jashnagir. It is the earliest dated Qur’an of the Mamluk period.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99


The Tyndale New Testament

Tyndale Bible Cover
Only three copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament printed in Worms in 1526 are known to survive. This is one of them, currently held in the British Library. It was clearly once a treasured possession, for (unlike the two others) it has been beautifully illuminated. It is a rare and precious survival of a text which was once revolutionary, because it allowed everyone to read the Scriptures for themselves.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £3.49


A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol Cover

by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol is surely the best-known and best-loved Christmas story of all time.

This eBookTreasures facsimile edition is a reproduction of an incredible illuminated copy, produced by the artist Alan Tabor in 1916. Every page is handwritten in the gothic style and the whole book is filled with illustrations of Scrooge, the ghosts, the Crachits and many others. It has been produced by digitally photographing the original handwritten manuscript, donated by Alan Tabor’s widow to the John Rylands Library in 1958.

More…


Buy Now from iTunes £1.99