THE PLAYS AND POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. CORRECTED FROM THE LATEST AND BEST LONDON EDITIONS .... FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

Book Description

Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by Bioren & Madan, 1795 - 1796.. Six volumes (of eight - wanting volumes six and eight). 12mo. Contemporary calf, spines gilt extra. Copper-plate engraved portrait in first volume. Occasional foxing, tanning and isolated moderate spotting, offsetting from portrait to first title, most joints weak (and three separated), three volumes with shallow loss at spine toes, early bookplate in first and seventh volumes, internally generally a good, crisp set. The first collected American printing of Shakespeare, reprinting Samuel Johnson's notes, and with a frontis portrait engraved by R. Filed after the Chandos portrait. The first volume also includes a ten page "Preface to the American Edition." Apart from the rare separate editions of HAMLET and TWELFTH NIGHT published by David West in Boston in 1794, this set constitutes the first North American printing of Shakespeare's plays and poems (though the volume printing the latter is not present here). "The first edition of Sh[akespeare] produced outside the British Isles and (quite appropriately) the first to be published in America. The portrait is also the first [sic] produced in the United States" - Jaggard. In fact, it is the second portrait of Shakespeare printed in North America, preceded by James Trenchard's portrait as an accompaniment to an advertisement that appeared in THE COLOMBIAN MAGAZINE (July 1787). While not rare in any absolute sense (ESTC cites over thirty locations), complete and incomplete sets (and now, even odd volumes) have indeed become rather scarce in the trade in recent decades. JAGGARD, p. 507. EVANS 29496 & 31180. ESTC W28892.

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