SHAKESPEARE, William - LAMB, Charles & Mary.

£4,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Tales from Shakespear: Designed for the use of young persons. First edition, in a contemporary binding. Charles and Mary Lamb's retellings of Shakespeare's plays for children stand as "the first work for children of British authorship never to have been out of print. Its success established the retelling of classics of English literature to children as a worthy task" (Grolier).Shakespeare's stories were adapted for a young audience from at least the 1790s, but this work was the first to enjoy a great commercial success, establishing "children's Shakespeare" as a subgenre. Though only Charles is credited as the author on the title page, the collection was the result of a collaboration, with Mary contributing fourteen adaptations and Charles the remaining six. The Tales are beautifully illustrated with engravings generally attributed to the Irish painter William Mulready (1786-1863).This was the copy of Angoulême Moira Forbes (1796-1810), the fourth son of George Forbes, 6th Earl of Ganard, with both title pages inscribed with his name and the date 1807. Angoulême Moira was 11 at the time and it seems likely that he received the books as a gift; the confident handwriting suggests that they were inscribed on his behalf. On the front pastedown of volume II is the later inscription of another member of the family, one C. S. Forbes.This copy has Wise's points of first issue, with the imprint of the printer T. Davison on the verso of p. 235 in volume and with the Hanway Street addre

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