SHAKESPEARE, [William].
The National Shakespeare: A Fac-simile of the Text of the First Folio of 1623, illustrated by Sir J. Noël Paton, R. S. A.
London, William Mackenzie, [1888].
Three vols, large folio (400 x 250 mm), with 24 photogravure plates (3 as frontispieces), each with tissue guard; offsetting to guards and some foxing from plates, but a very good set; bound in publisher’s green morocco, blocked in blind and gilt with central oval sunken panels, spines gilt in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, top-edges gilt, others uncut, marbled endpapers; extremities rubbed, Comedies somewhat sunned; bookplates of Joseph Hamilton to front endpapers, with his ink ownership inscriptions to vol. I and occasional neat pencil notes; signed portrait postcard dated 1976 of Albert Finney as Hamlet loosely inserted.
Added to your basket:
The National Shakespeare: A Fac-simile of the Text of the First Folio of 1623, illustrated by Sir J. Noël Paton, R. S. A.
The ‘special’ issue of The National Shakespeare, a handsome wide-margined type facsimile of the First Folio accompanied by photogravure plates after drawings by Sir Noel Paton, here in India-proof impressions and bound in green morocco.
‘Unfortunately the scarcity of the original “First Folio,” and the enormous price it has consequently attained in our times, exclude it from the shelves of most private libraries. The publisher of the “National Shakespeare” has, however, undertaken the task of reproducing this valuable work in a manner which he hopes may be found worthy of England’s National Poet, as well as of the taste and art of the present day. The text will be a scrupulously accurate reproduction of the original, including all those peculiarities of paging, spelling, and punctuation to which so much interest is now attached. It will be printed in a special antique type, such as was actually employed in the “First Folio,” upon hand-made paper, with rough edges, specially manufactured for this work, to maintain the antique character of the edition’ (prospectus).
The twenty-four photogravure plates comprise copies of the First Folio frontispiece and of the Chandos portrait, a view of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon and of Shakespeare’s tomb, and twenty scenes from the plays after drawings by the Scottish artist Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901), in a nearly Pre-Raphaelite style perhaps more suited to Scott than Shakespeare.
Due to the weight of the laid paper – and to add to the overall grandeur of this magnificently Victorian production – the First Folio is here divided into three volumes, for the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies respectively. It was offered both in an ‘Edition de Luxe’, in cloth at £3 10s per volume, and in a ‘special edition’, as here, bound in morocco with India-proof impressions of the illustrations, for a total cost of £15 15s.