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3. Howard Staunton, ed. Plays of Shakespeare. 3 vols. 1858-60. Serially issued in 50 parts, 1856-60.
Besides being an internationally renowned chess master and author on chess, Howard Staunton (1810-74) produced this complete edition of Shakespeare's plays and in later years a score of articles in which he turned his acute and logical mind to problems of textual emendation in Shakespeare. This edition, with its conservative text, full commentary, selections from critics, and more than eight hundred original illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, was still considered handsome and useful enough in 1979 to be reprinted in a one-volume facsimile and sold widely to a popular readership. The three bound volumes were issued by Routledge in 1858, 1859, and 1860, each when enough of the individually issued parts had appeared to make up a volume. In his own Preface (1:xiv), dated April 1860, Staunton by lapse of memory makes the erroneous remark that has misled later cataloguers and bibliographers: "The present work was begun in Nov. 1857, and has been published month by month in parts up to the first of May, 1860." In fact, as will be seen below, publication of parts began a year earlier in December 1856.
Providing a publication timetable for the edition is a relatively simple matter, since unbound parts survive in their original green paper wrappers; the majority of these are numbered and dated, and since publication was regular, one issue per month, the intervening dates may easily be inferred, the only irregularity being that three or four times a year Routledge issued double Numbers. I am grateful that to my original timetable, reconstructed from an incomplete set of parts at the Folger Library and from scattered issues in the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library, Professor John Hazel Smith contributed confirming and supplementary information from his own complete set of parts. The plays were issued in a very rough approximation of their order of composition. The order of publication of parts is also the order of appearance in the bound volumes, since, as was the case with Verplanck's edition, most of the parts contain pages of two and in some cases three different plays, so that changing the order in binding would have required much cutting apart of quires. In some parts appear title pages and other preliminary matter for the bound volumes, along with inserted printed instructions for the binder. Inside the front paper cover of No. 1 is the announcement, "To be published monthly, in shilling parts [25 cents in the United States]. On the 1st of December, 1856, will be issued . . . the first Part of a new . . . Edition . . . by Howard Staunton." All dates given in brackets in the following timetable are inferred.
- Vol. I. Issued in parts 1856-7; title page dated 1858.
- 1856: Pt. 1, [Dec.], TGV, LLL (incomplete)
- 1857: Pts. 2-3, [Jan.-Feb.], LLL (completed); 3-4, [Feb.-Mar.], Err.; 4-5, [Mar.]-Apr., Rom.; 5-6, Apr.-May, Shr.; 6-7, May-[June], Jn.; 8-9, [June]-July, MND; 9-10, July-Aug., MV; 10-11, Aug.-Sept., R2; 11-12, Sept.-[Oct.], 1H4; 12-14, [Oct.]-Nov., 2H4; 14-15, Nov.-[Dec.], Wiv.; 15-16, [Dec.], Ado
- The double parts are 7-8 [June], 12-13 [Oct.], and 15-16 [Dec.].
- Vol. II. Issued in parts 1858; title page dated 1859.
- 1858: Pt. 17, Jan., AWW; 17-19, Jan.-Mar., H5;
19-20, Mar.-[Apr.], AYL; 20-21, [Apr.], Per.;
21-22, [Apr.]-May, TN; 22-23, May-June,
1H6;
23-24, June, 2H6;
19724-26, June-Aug., 3H6; 26-27, Aug.-Sept., Tim.; 27-28, Sept., R3; 28-29, Sept.-Oct., MM; 30-31, Nov.-Dec., H8; 31-32, Dec., Cym.
- The double parts are 20-21 [Apr.], 23-24 (June), 27-28 (Sept.), and 31-32 (Dec.) Vol. III. Issued in parts 1859-60; title page dated 1860.
- 1859: Pt. 33, Jan., Tmp.; 34-35, Feb.-Mar., Lr.; 35-36, Mar., Cor.; 37-38, Apr.-May, WT; 38-39, May-June, Tro.; 39-41, June-Aug., Ham.; 41-42, Aug.-Sept., JC; 42-43, Sept.-Oct., Mac.; 43-45, Oct.-Nov., Ant.; 45-46, Nov.-Dec., Tit.; 46, Dec., Oth. (incomplete)
- 1860: Pt. 47, Jan., Oth. (completed); 48, Feb., Ven., Luc.; 48-49, Feb.-May, Son., minor poems; 49-50, May, Preface, Life, Appendices, Glossarial Index.
- The double parts are 35-36 (Mar.), 44-45 (Nov.), and 49-50 (May).
The bound copies in the Folger Library represent both volumes in trade bindings offered by the publisher and others privately bound. In the latter sets the accessory matter in No. 49-50 is bound variously at the end of Vol. III, following order of publication, or at the beginning of either Vol. I or Vol. III. Many library catalogues date their sets 1858-61, and these are also given as the original dates in the 1979 reprint, but so far as I can tell the pages in the 1858-60 and 1858-61 sets are identical.
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