About this Item
Eight volumes. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 3/16", 215mm x 131mm). For collation, see final image. Bound by Brian Frost (ex-Bayntun) signed on the upper edge of recto of the first free end paper of each volume) in XXc half green crushed morocco over green buckram boards. Double blind fillets at edges of morocco. On the spine, five raised bands. In the panels, a gilt musical ornament. Title and number gilt in second panel, editor gilt in third panel, date gilt at tail. Marbled end-papers. All edges un-trimmed. With gilt bookplate of Louis Auchincloss on upper fore-corner of front paste-down of vol. I. Johnson s great variorum edition of Shakespeare, which with his Dictionary won him universal fame and renown throughout Britain, is built primarily on the 1747 edition of Warburton, though it includes references to Pope and to other editors (including the "Oxford editor", Hanmer), along with Milton and Homer and a great variety of authors. It includes Shakespeare s last will and testament, perhaps its earliest publication. It is the rock upon which countless nearly all modern editions are founded. His preface marks the induction of Shakespeare into the canon: "The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit." (Vol. I, A2r; editor s preface.) Although contemplated as early as 1745, and publicly proposed in 1756, the great lexicographer s edition did not appear until October 1765. A notice in The Gentleman s Magazine (Vol. XXXV, p. 479 [October]) reads: Of this work all commendation is precluded by the just celebrity of the author, and the rapid sale of the impression which has already made a second necessary, though it has not been published a month… This is hardly surprising, as Johnson had been sluggish in bringing the work out, as Churchill s jibe in The Ghost (1762) attests: He for subscribers baits his hook / And takes your cash but where s the book? / No matter where Wise fear, we know, / Forbids the robbing of a foe; / And what, to serve out private ends, / Forbids the cheating of our friends? The present item is nonetheless certainly of the first issue (1,000 copies), containing all but one of the cancellations listed in Chapman & Hazen (see above in collation of vol. I) and even one not noted: vol. III Kk4. They acknowledge that the presence or absence of cancels is hardly damning, as copies in deposit libraries (the BL and Bodley especially) vary, and many corrections seem to have been made at press (such that cancellantia and cancellanda are identical). The reason for the cancels, according to Chapman & Hazen (147), was to soften criticisms of Warburton. The connection with Louis Auchincloss (1917-1910), a New York living landmark and one of the great American novelists of the XXc, is particularly alluring because of Auchincloss s Motiveless Malignity (1969), a collection of essays on Shakespeare (whose title comes from a letter of Coleridge). One likes to imagine the great chronicler of inherited status reading through this Shakespeare as he formulated his ideas… RB. Adam Library of Samuel Johnson, II.(16); Chapman & Hazen 146-147; Courtney & Smith 107; Ebisch & Schuckling 54; ESTC T138601; Fleeman 65; Grolier, Shakespeare s Plays 16; Wm. Jaggard (1901) 501; Pforzheimer 911. Seller Inventory # 50431
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Bibliographic Details
Title: The Plays of William Shakespeare, in eight ...
Publisher: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, C. Corbet, H. Woodfall, J. Rivington, R. Baldwin, L. Hawes, Clark and Collins, W. Johnston, T. Caslon, T. Lownds, and the Executors of B. Dodd
Publication Date: 1765
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Edition: 1st Edition
