Published to mark the 400th anniversary of the book's original publication, this facsimile edition faithfully reproduces one of the finest copies held in the British Library collections. The significance of the First Folio cannot be underestimated. It is the only contemporary source of eighteen of Shakespeare's plays. Without it, performances of such popular plays as The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Macbeth would not be possible. Changes and corrections were made during the long printing process. Small alterations were also made to the (now iconic) portrait of Shakespeare created by Martin Droeshout for the title page. As a result, no two surviving copies of the First Folio are identical and few are complete. Of the 750 copies that were originally published, some 200 exist today. The British Library has five copies, one of which is complete, and it is this copy that is presented with an introductory booklet by curators Adrian S Edwards and Tanya Kirk.

"But something odd does happen here at Christmas time. When I first heard the story, I thought it was an old wives' tale, but-well, these old houses-you hear strange things-" He lifted his shoulders and stared into the fire..." From the troves of the British Library collections comes a new volume for Christmas nights-when the boundary between the mundane and the unearthly is ever so thin-ushering in a new throng of revenants, demons, spectres and shades drawn to the glow of the hearth. Included within are eighteen classic stories ranging from 1864 to 1974, with vintage Victorian chillers nestled alongside unsettling modern pieces from L. P. Hartley and Mildred Clingerman; lost tales from rare anthologies and periodicals; weird episodes from unexpected authors such as Winston Graham and D. H. Lawrence; stories simmering with a twisted humour from Elizabeth Bowen and Celia Fremlin and many more haunting seasonal treats.

Fantasy is an expansive genre, wrought of epics, folklore, strange worlds and forays into Horror. In this book of essays which accompanies the British Library exhibition, twenty authors have mustered to explore four key themes; Fairy and Folk Tales; Epics and Quests; Weird and Uncanny; Portals and Worlds. Within these pages, Terri Windling traces the legacy of fairy lore in fiction and Cristina Bacchilega shows how fairy tales are just one niche of the world’s diverse wonder tales; Sofia Samatar explores how writing Epic Fantasy is akin to building a new universe and Robert Maslen sets off to pinpoint the eternal significance of the quest narrative; Ann VanderMeer unpicks the appeal of the Weird Tale in global terms, and China Miéville is our guide through that which does not seem weird, but is actually the wildly uncanny hiding in plain sight; Dimitra Fimi encapsulates how Fantasy takes us to infinite elsewheres and Wendy Froud brings us into the studio where The Dark Crystal and its incredible creatures were born. Featuring mindblowing illustrations and representing the gamut of Fantasy fiction from Gilgamesh to Gaiman, this new volume is a treasure trove shining with fresh insights and curiosities.

'Like any other boy I expected ghost stories at Christmas, that was the time for them. What I had not expected, and now feared, was that such things should actually become real.' Strange things happen on the dark wintry nights of December. Welcome to a new collection of haunting Christmas tales, ranging from traditional Victorian chillers to weird and uncanny episodes by twentieth-century horror masters including Daphne du Maurier and Robert Aickman. Lurking in the blizzard are menacing cat spirits, vengeful trees, malignant forces on the mountainside and a skater skirting the line between the mortal and spiritual realms. Wrap up warm - and prepare for the longest nights of all.

Festive cheer turns to maddening fear in this new collection of seasonal hauntings, presenting the best Christmas ghost stories from the 1850s to the 1960s. The traditional trappings of the holiday are turned upside down as restless spirits disrupt the merry games of the living, Christmas trees teem with spiteful pagan presences and the Devil himself treads the boards at the village pantomime. As the cold night of winter closes in and the glow of the hearth begins to flicker and fade, the uninvited visitors gather in the dark in this distinctive assortment of haunting tales.