Jason Scott-Warren's Shakespeare's First Reader: The Paper Trails of Richard Stonley is a magisterial contribution to our understanding of readers and their books during the reign of Elizabeth I. The subject of the study, Richard Stonley (c. 1520–1600), is familiar to Shakespeare scholars as the person who, on 12 June 1593, purchased a copy of Venus and Adonis less than two months after its entry in the Stationers Register on 18 April by Richard Field. Stonley adds “per Shakspere,” confirming his understanding that the signatory to the dedication to the Earl of Southampton, “William Shakespeare,” was also the author. Stonley reported the title as “Venus and Adhonay,” recording one price for two books, the second being The Survay […] of France (1592). Given the 12d total, are we to conclude that each book cost 6d? Or did Venus and Adonis sell for 4d, The Survay, being twice the length and with a foldout map, much costlier in paper and workmanship, for 8d? Or something in between?

Although Richard Stonley is fairly well known to scholarship, the full range of available documentation for this Elizabethan worthy has not been exploited until now. The principal focus of Shakespeare's First Reader being bibliographical, Scott-Warren's chief sources for Stonley's library are the inventory of Stonley's house in Aldersgate, with more than four hundred book titles; an extensive but incomplete diary that records books among Stonley's many purchases over the years; and individual books signed by Stonley. Indeed, one of Scott-Warren's finest contributions to bibliography is his discovery of books from Stonley's collection in libraries throughout the Anglophone world.

Our knowledge of Richard Stonley's library would be much less complete if he had not fallen afoul of the law. Having amassed considerable wealth over a long career as one of the four tellers of the Exchequer of Receipt, like many a fellow officer he mixed personal with official funds. Accused of embezzling some £13,000 over the years, he spent the last years of his life in the Fleet prison. His personal discomfiture, however, affords the social historian and bibliophile two benefits: the last of three surviving parts of his diary preserves an insider's view of imprisonment in the Fleet; and the inventory, assembled with the goal of recovering royal debts, serves as a virtual catalogue of a private library from the closing years of Elizabeth I (first analyzed by Leslie Hotson, “The Library of Elizabeth's Embezzling Teller,” Studies in Bibliography, no. 2 [1949]: 49–61).

The organization of Shakespeare's First Reader is largely guided by its three principal documentary sources: a preface; an introduction (“Material Readers,” a contemporary hot topic); chapter 1, placing Venus and Adonis in a wider context of book acquisition; chapter 2, a reflection on accounting practices in commerce, record-keeping, journaling, and in life; chapter 3, an analysis of books listed in the inventory; chapter 4, an analysis of books surviving from Stonley's collection, and their varying inscriptions; chapter 5, a discussion of two books which perhaps should not have been in Stonley's possession, one banned by decree, one a salacious French confession/romance; chapter 6, on books associated with Robert Nicholson, a close relative of Stonley's; chapter 7, on two books by two quasi-mysterious individuals both surnamed Chillester; and chapter 8, a completion of the discussion begun in chapter 2, considering book purchases recorded in the diary through the final years of Stonley's life.

Scott-Warren is a bibliophile's bibliophile. While many historians of the book are satisfied when books are identified and reduced to lists, he is both a reader and a cataloguer. Everyone who would choose to read Shakespeare's First Reader must be familiar with Venus and Adonis; but who else has read, or would care to read, A most excellent hystorie, of the institution and firste beginning of Christian princes, and the originall of kingdomes: wherunto is annexed a treatise of peace and warre, and another of the dignitie of mariage. Very necessarie to be red, not only of all nobilitie and gentlemen, but also of euery publike persone. First written in Latin by Chelidonius Tigurinus, after translated into French by Peter Bouaisteau of Naunts in Brittaine, and now englished by Iames Chillester, Londoner (1571)? More appealing, judging from its title, might be Youthes witte, or, The vvitte of grene youth[;] choose gentlemen, and mez-dames which of them shall best lyke you / compiled and gathered together by Henry Chillester (1581). Still, Scott-Warren categorizes Youthes witte as “another book about which almost nothing has ever been written”—and then proceeds to write about the book (219).

One problem is that chapters 6 and 7 concern topics that Scott-Warren makes interesting but have little or nothing to do with Richard Stonley. The more we learn, the farther we stray from the diarist. Chapter 8, which returns to the last years of Stonley's book purchases, diary entries, and life, comes as a welcome return to familiar landscapes.

A couple of quibbles. Scott-Warren notes Stonley's spending much time “at my bokes” (52). Does this mean “at my accounts” or “reading books from my library”? Little or no evidence is advanced to support the suggestion that it ever means the latter. Scott-Warren cites modern cultural historians to the effect that books were sometimes treated as objects of display, or financial investments, and might not have been read by the owner. Little evidence is advanced either way to relate these observations to Stonley. Scott-Warren relates Stonley's miswritten Adhonay to the theologically loaded Adonai but passes on without comment. He is surprised that “Shakespeare's first reader” purchased the semi-erotic Venus and Adonis in his early seventies, “by the standards of his day a very old man” (44). This octogenarian reviewer sees no justification for that surprise, as a human being or on historical grounds. Richard Stonley owned a picture “discribing the ages of the world” (93) that Scott-Warren thinks must have shown the Four Ages of Man (anticipating Shakespeare's Seven Ages?); but “the Ages of the World” (Golden, Bronze, Silver, Iron, etc.) was a commonplace in its own right.

It is unfortunate that the book as printed contains no checklist of books culled from the diary; of books from the inventory; of surviving books carrying Stonley's signature. The reader is referred instead to a list of books from the inventory on the Private Libraries of Renaissance England website hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Fair enough. But, given the absence of any or all of these lists, Shakespeare's First Reader cannot be recommended as a “must have” for the open shelves of all special collections, to be placed alongside The Library of John Morris: The Reconstruction of a Seventeenth-Century Collection, by T. A. Birrell (1976). Whatever its shortcomings as a reference book, however, Shakespeare's First Reader is a “must have”—or at least a “must read”—for anyone interested in printed books, private libraries, readership, social history, or prison literature from the time of Elizabeth I.