"We really want to share some of our most significant works: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling …people who were internationally recognized and hopefully speak to a Chinese audience," says Catharine MacLeod, senior curator of 17th-Century Collections at the gallery. "I hope audiences will come, enjoy and look at the relationships between the manuscripts and the works, and read the books as well."

The portrait of Shakespeare is modest, depicting the head and shoulders only without any elaborate clothes. It is "the only portrait of Shakespeare that has a good claim of having been painted from life", according to the gallery. It may have been painted by John Taylor and acquired by the gallery when it was founded in 1856.

The portrait, along with the first publication of Shakespeare's collected plays, known as The First Folio, is on its first public exhibition on the Chinese mainland, MacLeod says.

The exhibition is structured into five thematic sections. The first section, In Search of the Author, explores different facets of the authors' lives and illuminates otherwise hidden stories behind the finished literary product.