Celebrate two of literature’s biggest celebrities in Folger Shakespeare Library’s Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity. This exhibition will delight Jane Austen and William Shakespeare fans, and anyone curious about the origins of modern celebrity. It features early versions of fan fiction, celebrity tchotchkes, and movie and TV adaptations that have sustained the fandom of Will & Jane—two writers on a first-name basis with much of the world.

The exhibition explores early stories of the very nature of celebrity and how we continue to reinvent and “idolize” Shakespeare and Austen in popular culture, with events and objects that bear more than a striking resemblance to contemporary celebrity. The exhibition is on view through November 6.

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