The Complete Works of Shakspere: Revised from the Original Editions, with Historical and Analytical Introductions to each Play, also Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Life of the Poet (Fine Bound

A$300 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

SHAKESPEARE, William (ed. Henry Tyrrell J. O. Halliwell [attrib.]). The Complete Works of Shakspere: Revised from the Original Editions, with Historical and Analytical Introductions to each Play, also Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Life of the Poet. London New York: John Tallis/The London Printing Publishing Company, c.1850. 4 vols. Quarto (28 × 19.5 cm). Half burgundy Morocco and red cloth boards. Covers margined in blind and decorated in gilt. Spine with raised bands, titled and elaborately decorated in gilt to compartments. All edges marbled. Marbled endpapers. Text in double columns, printed within double black lines. Vol. I: Comedies, 576 pp; Vol. II: Tragedies, 496 pp; Vol. III: Histories, 488 pp; Vol. IV: Doubtful Plays, 484 pp. Steel-engraved frontispiece, illustrated title page, and numerous steel-engraved portrait plates in each volume, depicting the greatest actors of the age from daguerreotypes. First edition thus. The Shakespeare edition that was famously disclaimed by its own listed editor, James Orchard Halliwell (1820–1889), one of the most distinguished Shakespeare scholars of the nineteenth century and a founder of the Shakespeare Society. Despite this, Halliwell himself wanted nothing to do with it. Halliwell described this as a "pirated cheap edition" and publicly disclaimed all responsibility for it in The Times in October 1850. This is an undoubtedly beautiful edition with a strong aesthetic befitting the period of its production. Particularly, th

• Binding: Hardcover

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