University of Virginia Library

2. Gulian C. Verplanck, ed. The Illustrated Shakespeare. 3 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847. Serially issued in 138 (?) parts, 1844-47.

This handsome crown-quarto edition illustrated with some fourteen hundred engravings had a complicated publishing history, including a change of publishers and two printing-house fires. It was originally undertaken by the little-known New York engraver H. W. Hewet, apparently the publisher of Hewet's Excelsior New York Illustrated Times (1846) and Hewet's Illuminated Household Stories for Little Folks (n. d.). As Verplanck frankly admits in his "Preface" of 1847 (1:v), the edition was conceived in open imitation of two recent English illustrated Shakespeares, from which most if not all of its engravings are copied: Knight's edition (above), and that of "Barry Corn-wall" [pseud. Bryan Waller Procter], issued serially 1839-43 and in three bound volumes (London: R. Tyas, 1844), whose original illustrations by Kenny Meadows make up the bulk of those imitated by Hewet. To do the editorial work Hewet invited the New York lawyer, congressman, essayist, educator, and amateur Shakespearean scholar Gulian C. Verplanck (1786-1870). Verplanck based his text on John Payne Collier's recent edition of 1842-44, frequently (following Knight) restoring First Folio readings and occasionally adopting original conjectures. His commentary is largely a selection from the 1821 Variorum and the editions of Collier, Knight, and Samuel Weller Singer, amplified with many shrewd and sensible comments of his own, and he supplied an ample introduction to each play emphasizing especially Shakespeare's development as an artist. While this is a derivative edition and not of the first importance, it is yet a very good edition, and its generous, well-informed, and often original commentary and its handsome illustrations might have made it a more popular and influential one but for an accident, noted by Charles P. Daly in his memorial address before the Century Club, April 9, 1870 (Gulian C. Verplanck, 1870, p. 59): "It is much to be regretted that the plates of this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not reproduced, and it consequently never became as extensively known as it deserved to be."

In all Hewet published 38 weekly parts in 1844, each consisting of 16 pages, printed on two sheets folded into two quarto gatherings and bound together in paper covers. Unlike the parts in the Knight edition, each of these contained only a portion of a play, or in many cases the ending of one play and the beginning of the next. Hewet completed ten plays and part of an eleventh, then transferred publication of the edition to Harper's while continuing to do the engraving up to the end of the series. The Folger Library owns a complete set of Hewet's 38 parts; although undated they are numbered, and from occasional announcements on the back covers it is possible to reconstruct the publication timetable fairly accurately. Journal notices of the new edition (see below) began to appear in the spring of 1844. A notice on the covers of Nos. 5, 6, and 7 affirms the publisher's utmost efforts to get copies to "his most remote Agents" "on Friday each week," evidently for regular publication on Saturday. A notice in No. 4 announces that, the initial printing of 10,000 copies having been "disposed of" in response to popular demand, Hewet will have to "remove and increase his establishment" and so defer publication of No. 5 "until the 27th inst." The earliest month in 1844

when a fifth part could have been published on a Saturday the 27th is April. No. 37 advertises, clearly for the Christmas season, "A Splendid Holiday Present for Children. To Be Published on Wednesday, 11th inst. The Life of Christ!" In December 1844 the 11th of the month fell on Wednesday, so that No. 37 would presumably have been published on the previous Saturday, 7 December. If No. 5 had been published on 27 April and successive parts had appeared regularly each week, No. 37 would have been published on 7 December; the dates of Saturday, 27 April, and Wednesday, 11 December, thus confirm each other and establish a regular weekly publication schedule for most of 1844. Assuming that Hewet's move in April from 236 Broadway to 11 Spruce Street did not take more than a week or so, we may conclude that No. 1 was published in mid-March, probably on the 23rd or the Saturday before. No. 38, Hewet's last, must have appeared in December since it bears the same Christmas advertisement as No. 37. Thus the part of Verplanck's edition published by Hewet may be dated as follows:

• 1844: Pts. 1-5, Mar.-Apr., Ham.; 5-8, Apr.-May, Mac.; 9-12, May-June, Oth.; 13-16, June-July, Wiv.; 16-20, July-Aug., Rom.; 20-24, Aug.-Sept., Lr.; 24-28, Sept.-Oct., Cym.; 29-31, Oct., MV; 32-34, Nov., Err.; 34-37, Nov.-Dec., Shr.; 37-38, Dec., TGV (incomplete)

Two journal notices support this timetable: the May issue of The Columbian Magazine, whose copy would have been written in April, announces (1:238) that three "weekly Issues" of "Hewet's Shakspeare" have so far appeared, comprising most of the text of Hamlet, and the July issue of The Knickerbocker (24:102) notes that (as of June, when copy was written) twelve numbers have appeared.

Early in 1845 the publication was taken over by Harper's. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review announces in its March issue (16: 310), "Harpers have resumed the publication of the 'Illustrated Shakspeare,' edited by Verplanck," and the New York weekly The Anglo American for 1 March (4:451) notes receipt of review copies of "Double No. xxxix and xl. . . . This work has passed from the hands of the publishers who commenced, and will be completed by the Harpers. . . . The numbers before us consist of the concluding portion of 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' and the commencement of 'The Winter's Tale'." I have not been able to find a complete set of the unbound parts of the plays published by Harper's: the Folger Library owns a few early parts without covers; the New York Public Library owns a single part of 2H4 misbound in a cover for Rom.; the Boston Public Library owns parts for most of the plays, unfortunately cut apart and rebound, sometimes in original wrappers, to form whole plays; and the Library of Congress owns Nos. 63-82 and 93-130 of the issues originally submitted by Harper's for copyright, about half of them misbound in the wrong covers and all of them bearing the clerk of the court's notations of dates when batches of these parts were deposited. In the Copyright Record Books of the District Courts, 1790-1870, now held at the Library of Congress, that for the New York Southern District court, Sept. 1844 to July 1845, records on 6 June

1845 (147:485) a claim of copyright for "Harper's Illuminated and Illustrated Shakespeare," and at the bottom of the page the clerk has noted from time to time when the parts were actually deposited, as follows: Parts 1-54, 6 June 1845; 55-60, 19 July; 61-70, 18 Oct.; 71-74, 10 Feb. 1846; 75-76, 14 Apr.; 77-90, 3 July; 91-108, 3 Sept.; and 109-134, 11 Mar. 1847. Since on most of these dates (or on the previous day) Harper's entered other copyright claims at the court, and since the dates always agree with those written on the actual parts deposited for copyright, these jottings are accurate. On 17 Feb. 1847 (150:1556) the clerk records Harper's application for ownership of "the title of a Book," to wit Verplanck's edition issued in three volumes under the new title Shakespeare's Plays; as will appear below, the edition was not yet complete, and there is no record that the volumes were ever deposited. The book notices in The Anglo American, the New York journal which appeared every Saturday, record publication of many parts of the edition. Since in several cases these notices occur a week or more after a part was deposited for copyright, I infer that Harper's regularly issued its parts near the end of the week, too late for them to be noticed in Saturday's review column, and so I regularly assume publication about a week before these journal notices. From the evidence listed above and from the numbering of quires in both serial parts and the 1847 edition, I have been able to reconstruct a schedule of publication of the parts of Verplanck's Shakespeare issued by Harper's.

On the back of the Romeo and Juliet wrapper in the New York Public Library is printed this notice: "The thirty-eight numbers already issued by H. W. Hewet are sold at twelve-and-a-half cents each: those hereafter to be published will contain at least double the quantity of matter, and will be sold at twenty-five cents each. They will be issued at intervals of about two weeks by the subscribers, from whom back numbers may be procured. New York, February 15, 1845. HARPER & BROTHERS." Evidently Harper's was reissuing Hewet's back stock in its own newly printed wrappers; perhaps some of the former numbers had been or were being reprinted by Harper's, since for some early numbers Hewet had run through his original printing of 10,000. Harper's must have commenced publication of new numbers within a week or ten days of the notice of 15 February, since by 1 March The Anglo American (see above) had received Harper's first double Number, 39-40.

Harper's immediately abandoned Hewet's practice of randomly publishing comedies and tragedies, and instead from February into early October concentrated on finishing the comedies, presumably to allow owners of the parts to have them bound into a single volume of Comedies. The schedule as I have worked it out is as follows:

• 1845: Pt. 39, Feb., TGV (completed); 40-43, Feb.-Mar., WT; 43-46, Mar.-Apr., Ado; 46-49, Apr.-May, LLL; 49-52, May, TN; 52-[56], May-June, AYL; [56]-[59], June-July, MND; [59]-62, July-Aug., MM; 62-65, Aug.-Sept., Tmp.; 65-69, Sept.-Oct., AWW

Production slowed somewhat during the summer, when the double parts appeared at longer than bi-weekly intervals on the average. Up through No. 50 Harper's continued Hewet's format of two sheets (two eight-page quires) per numbered part, so that Harper's semi-monthly double parts included 32 pages of text. Halfway through Twelfth Night, from No. 51 onward, the format changes to 36 pages per double part, three twelve-page quires of quarto-in-six. These quires are signed (or numbered) consecutively throughout the rest of the edition, beginning with quires 68, 69, and 70 in No. 51-52. Apparently the numbering begins at 68 because the 800 pages of the edition already printed can be considered approximately the equivalent of 67 of the new twelve-page quires; probably Harper's was anticipating the possibility of a later reprint of the edition entirely in twelve-page gatherings. In all bound volumes of the Comedies that I have seen the quires are a mixture of those of eight pages (for plays issued before TN) and those of twelve pages (for plays issued afterwards).

The new format of 36 pages per double part was apparently intended to be the norm from now on, since it is approximately the same number of pages as in the 32-page format of Harper's previous issues and fulfills Harper's promise of three months before to provide "at least double the quantity of matter" in Hewet's single parts. Nonetheless, the parts extant in the Library of Congress reveal that about every third issue was a smaller one consisting of only two quires and 24 pages. I am assuming that the first issue in the new format, No. 51-52, immediately set the norm and consisted of three quires and 36 pages; however, irregularities begin almost immediately, and the uncertainty that results for parts whose exemplars I have been unable to see is reflected in the bracketed numbers in the chart above. The Library of Congress's series of extant parts begins with No. 63-64 (quires 84-86); if, as I assume, the last quire in No. 51-52 was quire 70, then the ten intervening parts, Nos. 53-62, consist of thirteen rather than the fifteen quires regularly to be expected, and thus two of these intervening double Numbers are short a quire. In the Anglo American notices and on original printed wrappers in the Boston Public Library collection, issue numbers are linked with play titles as follows: Nos. 53-54 and 55-56, AYL; Nos. 57-58 and 59-60, MND; No. 61-62, MM; No. 63-64, Tmp. Doubtless some of these issues contain pages from a play beside the one named on the wrapper, but from the assumption that an issue is likely to bear the title of the play printed on the majority of its pages, I deduce that Nos. 53-54 and 57-58 were the short issues, consisting of quires 71-72 and 76-77 respectively. The conjectural division of plays among parts in the table above reflects this conclusion; in any case, other possible divisions are not likely to make any difference in the month(s) of issue of each play as a whole.

The order of comedies in the bound volumes, as indicated by a Contents page supplied in 1847, is TGV, Err., Shr., Ado, LLL, MV, Wiv., TN, AYL, MND, MM, Tmp., AWW, WT; this is neither the order of publication nor the order of composition described by Verplanck in his essay "Order of the Plays" (1:xi-xvi), but a compromise, approaching as nearly as possible to Verplanck's chronology without the necessity of cutting apart quires in order to separate plays printed on conjugate pages. Cymbeline, Troilus, and Pericles are included among the Tragedies, in the next volume.

The first pages of Tim. share No. 69-70 with the last pages of AWW, and Harper's clearly intended now to complete the remaining tragedies; but two lengthy interruptions of printing attest to difficulties complicating that process. No. 69-70 appeared in mid-October, with the beginning pages of Tim. in quires 92-94; the rest of Tim. is delayed a month and a half until early December (Anglo American, 20 Dec., 6:212), in quires 95-96 of No. 71-72. I know of no reason for this hiatus. A short time later occurs another delay in printing, this time of more than three months. On 27 Dec. Anglo American (6:236) announces No. 73-74, Coriolanus (quires 98-99), but not until 11 April the next year does it notice (6:597) No. 75-76 (which was deposited for copyright on 14 April), and another month passes before it notices (9 May, 7:71) the appearance of No. 77-78. The reason for the long delays in early 1846 is given in the notice of 11 April: "We are happy to observe that this truly elegant edition . . . has been resumed by Messrs. Harpers: the delay having been caused by the loss of plates at the late fire." Perhaps to make up for lost time, Harper's doubled its rate of production shortly thereafter: as is clear from notices two or three times a month in Anglo American, from June 13 through September Harper's without fail published a double Number every week, at the end of which time they had completed more than half of the third and last volume, the Histories.

The probable schedule of publication for those tragedies not previously published by Hewet is as follows:

• 1845: Pts. 69-72, Oct.-Dec., Tim.; 72-74, Dec., Cor. (incomplete)
• 1846: Pt. 75, Apr., Cor. (completed); 76-79, JC, Apr.-May; 79-83, May-June, Ant.; 83-87, June, Tro.; 87-90, June-July, Tit.; [90]-93, July, Per.

The Library of Congress owns most of these parts but lacks Nos. 83-92 (quires 111-123). Since here again a run of ten parts includes only thirteen rather than fifteen quires, the distribution of these quires among the double Numbers is uncertain. Since previously there have never been two short issues in succession, and since the ends of Tro. and Tit. make convenient breaking points, I conjecture that the two short issues (two quires, 24 pages) are Nos. 85-86 (quires 114-115) and 89-90 (quires 119-120). Two bits of evidence may give some slight support to this conjecture. In noticing No. 87-88, Anglo American (4 July 1846, 7:262) discourses on the lack of literary merit of its play, Titus Andronicus; if the majority of pages in this issue are from Tit., it must consists of at least quires 117 and 118, and for that to be possible no more than one of the two numbers preceding it could have been short numbers. In its next issue (11 July, 7:285) Anglo American does not name the play title(s) of No. 89-90 but singles it out for special praise for its illustrations "by the magic pencil of Kenny Meadows and the graver of Hewet"; this description fits well with the two quires I have conjectured for this number, since quire 119 has a higher number of engravings than usual, and quire 120 contains the full-page frontispiece engraving for Per. Such evidence gives only the slightest support at best, and in any case other possible divisions of the quires can make virtually no difference in the month of issue of these plays.

The last of the "tragedies," Per., shares a quire with the beginning of Jn.,

and the histories, none of which Hewet had published, now follow in order of reign. Through September Harper's maintained a rate of production of a double Number every week. From October until the completion of H8 in early 1847, production slowed to about a double Number every two weeks. The Anglo American for 9 Jan. 1847 (8:286) announces No. 129-130, which ends exactly with the completion of H8, and on 6 Feb. (8:382) it describes the next Number, 131-132, as containing Rowe's Life, part of the introductory matter intended to be bound in the Histories volume. The probable timetable of publication for the histories is as follows:

• 1846: Pts. 93-96, July, Jn.; 97-99, Aug., R2; 100-103, Aug., 1H4; 104-107, Aug.-Sept., 2H4; 107-111, Sept., H5; 111-114, Sept., 1H6; 115-118, Oct., 2H6; 118-121, Oct.-Nov., 3H6; 121-126, Nov. [-Dec.?], R3; 126-128, [Nov.-?] Dec., H8 (incomplete)
• 1847: Pts. 129-130, Jan., H8 (completed)

With the completion of H8 there remained to be published 120 pages of introductory matter, mainly Rowe's Life and a longer biography of Shakespeare abridged from Collier's edition. Since I know of no surviving serial parts containing this material, I can only conjecture their number and format. As of 11 Mar. the copyright records list the deposit of parts only through 134, i.e. through two regular double Numbers after H8, but at least three issues of introductory matter are noticed by Anglo American, on 6 Feb. (8: 382), 20 Feb. (8:430), and 27 Mar. (8:550; "the concluding issue"), each of which must have appeared a week or so earlier, and in all likelihood one or even two others must have appeared in late February or early March. If these were issued in something like the previous format (double issues of either two or three quires), there are only two possibilities: five issues of 24 pages, concluding with No. 139-140, or four issues, two of 36 pages and two of 24, concluding with No. 137-138. Since 36-page issues are preponderant in the edition and 24-page issues the exception, the latter possibility seems the more likely. I assume that the title pages, table of contents, and Verplanck's Preface and essay on the "Order of the Plays" were printed last; since the quires (A and B) containing these preliminaries, together with the final four-page quire K, comprise 24 pages, I think it very likely that these made up the final, short issue, No. 137-138. I conjecture that the 120 introductory pages appeared as follows:

• 1847: Pts. 131-136, late Jan.-Feb. or early Mar., Biographical introductions (quires C-J); 137-138, Mar., Preliminary matter (quires K, A, and B).

The publication of the edition in three volumes under the new title Shakespeare's Plays may have occurred some two or three months after its copyright entry of 17 Feb. 1847. It certainly did not appear before its completion in mid-March, and had probably appeared at least by May, since The Knickerbocker announces its appearance in its June issue (29:580) and reviews it in July (30:77-78).