The Album Amicorum and the London of Shakespeare's Time

This book documents the many autographs and illustrations of Shakespeare’s London in alba amicorum (autograph albums). Begun in German universities in the early 16th century, the autograph album served the early modern equivalent of a photograph album or scrapbook. Professors as well as fellow students made their contribution to these albums and some of them contain inscriptions by major scholars of the day. Many of the albums also contain illustrations.

This is the first full-length study in English of the album amicorum and is the product of research in more than 70 libraries and archives. It aims to secure a place for this intriguing, underexamined genre in the study of early modern culture. It focuses on the many traces of Shakespeare’s London contained in these books as the albums’ owners travelled to London and recorded their impressions and their encounters with Londoners. England, then as now, was part of a network of European relationships with complementary and competing ideas about politics, religion, trade and leisure. Continental documents such as alba amicorum provide a revealing perspective on that culture.