Show Notes
In this special edition, we revisit three conversations with Shakespeare and Company rare book dealer Ben Brown, originally recorded in 2022. Across these episodes, Ben guides us into the fascinating, often mysterious world of book collecting.
We begin with the basics: what makes a first edition and how collectors identify them. Ben shares insights into the thrill of the hunt and the appeal of owning a first edition. Next, we explore the extraordinary publishing history of Ulysses, from censorship battles to rare early editions, revealing how controversy shaped its legacy. Finally, we turn to signed books, unpacking why an author’s signature adds emotional and monetary value—and how provenance can transform an object into a story.
Discover our rare books collection here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/lists/rare-books Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Shakespeare and Company Interview
Jeanette Winterson joined us to celebrate the French edition of One Aladdin, Two Lamps, her book-length exploration of storytelling, built around One Thousand and One Nights. She recalls finding Shahrazad in her hometown library and the insight this led her to: that she could read herself as fiction as well as fact, and so rewrite her own story. The conversation moves from Freud, epigenetics and the plasticity of the brain to Manchester's Industrial Revolution and the lessons we failed to learn from it. Winterson traces AI from Ada Lovelace to Turing to today's tech moguls, making a case for cautious optimism and for calling it "alternative intelligence." She also argues for being present in the world, and looking at art without a phone.
“Childhood is once again a resource to be extracted at any cost.”
Dave Eggers joins us to discuss his 14th novel, Contrapposto, a six-decade love story between childhood friends Cricket and Olympia, illustrated with his own drawings. Eggers traces the book's twenty-year gestation, the moment Olympia's character unlocked its structure, and why he gave Cricket his own boyhood fantasy of being "apprenticed" as a young artist. The conversation ranges widely: the decline of art-school access and the pier-side art collective he's launched in San Francisco; his literacy nonprofit 826 Valencia and its typewriter-obsessed students; and a candid, sometimes fiery take on AI's effect on writing, translation, and education, including an anecdote from his visit to OpenAI's offices.
In the second episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist Megan Nolan to discuss Illusions by Ruth Rehmann, in a new translation by Rob Madole, the latest title in the Faber Editions imprint.
Amit Chaudhuri joins Adam Biles to discuss his new novel Chateau Rouge, set not in the postcard Paris of Hemingway and Midnight in Paris, but in the neighbourhood around Gare du Nord — a Paris that resists being known, curated, or confirmed. Chaudhuri talks about writing against the "already known" city, drawing on Roland Barthes and the idea of "heritage modernity" to explain why he wanted to deconstruct Paris's status as a museum-piece rather than a lived-in place. He discusses his narrator's disorientation on arrival, the subtle presence of race and visibility in the book, and how global events — the Gilets Jaunes, the Notre Dame fire — pass through the novel as lived, unfinished moments rather than history. The conversation turns, too, to marriage: how a decades-old, unread copy of A Moveable Feast, gifted by his wife, becomes a quiet emotional throughline.