SHAKESPEARE, William.

£1,875 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Pictorial Edition of the Works. First edition of Knight's illustrated Shakespeare. Distinguished for its textual accuracy, excellent biographical preface, and wealth of wood-engravings, the edition was an "extraordinary achievement" on the part of its editor (Young, p. 30).Charles Knight (1791-1873) was already a Shakespeare lover and bibliophile in his teens, when he owned an imperfect First Folio which he made up by printing the missing pages from a facsimile edition. "His first major project as an author took shape in 1837, when he resolved to produce a pictorial edition of Shakespeare's works. He started searching for 'authentic' visual materials and began a critical reading of the texts" (ODNB).This led to a deep interest in the playwright's life, and an original biography issued with this set. This set also includes a volume titled "Doubtful Plays", which includes works now attributed to Shakespeare, and excerpts from more obscure plays generally considered part of the Shakespeare apocrypha, including The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell and The Merry Devil of Edmonton.

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