Title: The Plays of William Shakspeare, accurately printed from the text of the corrected copies left by the late George Steevens, Esq., and Edmond Malone, Esq., with a sketch of his life and a glosary.
Author: William Shakespeare, George Steevens, Edmond Malone
Publisher: C.J. Rivington, 1826
Condition: Full calf leather, with tooled leather boards and tooled bands on spine. Firmly bound, but leather worn and decorations to cover have been dulled. Marbled edges and end papers. Text mostly clean, no annotations we are aware of. 9×6 inches, 960 printed pages.
This is a very scarce, very special edition of Shakespeare’s plays, containing all his dramatic works except The Two Noble Kinsmen, whose authorship is disputed and which is said to have been co-written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher.
This edition was corrected by George Steevens and Edmond Malone, whose reprints of Shakespeare impressed their good friend Samuel Johnson. It was he, Johnson, who also first suggested that Steevens compile a complete edition of Shakespeare – which is the one we have now.
Originally, Steevens’ Plays of Shakespeare was published in 10 volumes in 1773, later to be expanded into 15 volumes. For some reason, however, we seem to have stumbled upon a complete single-volume edition – this must have been re-compiled and rebound into a single volume. Chances are, the binding is more recent than the pages of the book.
